alice’s posterous

I happened to stumble on an interesting video whilst re-watching this other interesting video embedded in the presentation The PDO's are coming in my earlier post about using personally owned devices in the classroom:

Do you think Joe is joking? I don't think so. I think he is serious: a book is a foreign tool for him!!!

This is the other very interesting video about students talking about their personally owned devices. It really is time we, teachers,  should start using them, don't you think?

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In an attempt to get my Spanish students to practice their Spanish outside the classroom, I decided to set up a blog for them to be able to view, read and listen good stuff related to Spanish culture and language. To also share and view their work. The main objectives of this blog are for more students to keep up with their Spanish and to also make them share their views in the "comments" section. Especially when they listen or read other students' works, they will be able to compare, assess and see how work can be improved.

At my last school, I already set up a school blog using Edublogs. I chose http://edublogs.org/ because it was free and I suppose their tag line "Blogging for students and teachers made easy"! drew the attention on me. Nevertheless, it was not that easy to set up and at times, it took a long time to download resources.

My personal blog is with http://posterous.com/ and I find it so much easier to use, especially if you're not a geek :)
All you have to do is to write an email as your post (as I am doing now) and send it to Posterous. Posterous takes care of the rest. If you want to send a video, you attach it to the email or copy the URL into your email and Posterous will show the video in your post. If you want to send a picture, just copy the image location or attach it to your email. Again Posterous will show the picture in your post. If you want to send a slideshow or a document, attach it to your email, Posterous takes care of the rest.
I did a lot a recordings this year with students using a little microphone plugged into my laptop and Audacity. I save the recordings as .mp3 files and attach them to the emails I send to Posterous. Posterous insert the audio files into the new posts and this way, students can listen to their own recordings (which they looove!).
So far so good... They are not many comments made by students yet, but I know it takes a while and it is a learning process. The blog is http://spanishblog.posterous.com/ and of course, your comments are welcome as well :)

What about you? which platform do you use to blog and why?

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I was planning lessons related to French and African countries as part of a professional development day on elementary school. When I was trying to find ideas to incorporate in my lessons, I remembered I watched this moving video about a man in Malawi building a windmill on his own just by reading some books about windmills. I could not really use this video in my French lesson as it is all in English but I thought it would be useful for the grade 5 (9-10 years old) homeroom teacher who will teach about Africa.
This video shows what humans can achieve with few resources but with the will to accomplish something big.
When I am in a negative mood or feel I won't make it, I just remember this Malawian guy who did so much with so little!

What about you? what do you use to make yourself feel positive?

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After an interesting week at my school, this video reminds me that I am in the right when I try to teach my students some IT skills!
First I found out that most of my students didn't know how to do a slideshow using PowerPoint or Open Office Impress, which is even better because it is free to download so very cheap for schools to use. I had planned for my students to do a presentation on a Latin American country and we spent most of the lesson learning how to do a slideshow on a computer. Then, some students asked me if they could use Wikipedia to research their countries. I told them that of course, it was ok to use it! They told me some teachers did not allow them to use it because most of the time the content was wrong as the contributors were not "professionals". I showed them the discussion page where people can discuss, alter some of the content and they were amazed to discover this page. Obviously some teachers are scared of the revolution going on and talk about things they don't even know (which annoys me the most!).

This video comes from a very good post about the mandatory Youtube videos to watch. I had watched most of them but not this one:

What about you? do you feel a "lonely web enthusiast sometimes"?

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Yesterday, I showed the short animation Flatlife to my grade 12 students (17-18 years old)

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David Lynch is an extravagant film director who is most famous for The Elephant man and Twin Peaks.

He has just set up The Interview Project which is a 20 000 miles road trip over 70 days accross the United States. David Lynch meets people in different locations and interviews them about their lives, how they would like to be remembered, what they are proud of.

I find this project quite fascinating as it is not about fame, it is about everyday people who are sharing a bit of their lives.
I enjoyed this interview with Palmer Black, a retired naval officer who lives with his wife in Blanding, Utah. He says he wants to be remembered for "his barbecue and making people around him happy".

http://interviewproject.davidlynch.com/www/#/all-episodes/004-palmer_black

What is your favourite interview? what do you want to be remembered of?

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I found this brilliant video on Ideas to Inspire



This short animation could be used when teaching household tasks and furniture in another language. After watching it, students would have to discuss the following in the target language:

• the people: who are they? describe them, what are they doing?
  
• the rooms: name them, describe the different objects in the rooms
• opinions: what do you think about the people? are they helpful? kind? unkind?

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There are already great contributions with videos, poems, articles and websites, as well as ideas to implement reading strategies in the classroom. I have added my little contribution today with resources related to the 20th century's writer, Jean Giono and his book L'homme qui plantait des arbres (The man who planted trees).

I do believe reading books in a another language and understanding the literature of another country helps you to better learn a language and understand the culture behind the language.

So if you:

• need help with your plans for literature/reading in the classroom, click on the Discussion tab and start a thread with your question and/or comment.
• have a link to a video, song, poem, article, website, etc. for a reading, click on the century for which you have something to share and get started today!

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Today, I've found this fantastic website called Ideas to Inspire teaching and learning.

One presentation worthwhile having a look at is 30 Inspiring Youtube videos to use in the classroom (don't worry if Youtube is blocked in your school, follow this link!)

One video that caught my attention was The piano, a short animation by Aidon Gibbons. There are no words but the characters and the music (composed by Yann Tiersen for one of my favourite movie Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain) bring lots of different emotions.



Tom Barrett (@tombarrett on Twitter) wrote an interesting post on how to create a emotion graph from this video using google forms. It is targeted to a Primary English lesson but I can see myself adapting this lesson to MFL when teaching emotions and moods.

What are your thoughts?

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