alice’s posterous

Today I received an email by Carla Arena (one of the organizer of Images4Education) mentioning an exciting project.

Alison Miyake was the one who suggested it on http://images4education.ning.com/forum/topics/exchange-of-photos-with

She says : "I am teaching English at my daughter's elementary school this year (in the south of Japan) to grade 5 and 6 students. I was wondering if anyone here would be interested in exchanging photos of school and everyday life in other countries with us. My students are always asking me about what is popular with kids their own age in Canada (where I am from), and I have to say that I honestly don't have any idea! My students don't have a lot of experience with the computer, although they do have access to computers at their school. I am envisioning possibly creating a special Flickr page for our project and then deciding on themes to last a month or two (ie school, school bags, classroom photos, lunch, lunchtime play could be the first starting in September, then school events or holidays, popular books, favourite foods, my house, my neighbourhood, unusual objects - ie something the kids think might be unique to their country, etc.) and having the students take photos."

It is such a fantastic idea, I want to join next year with my new school (although it is supposed to be only for elementary school?).

And you? would you be joining as well?

Yesterday, I was telling you about Flickr groups.
After writing the post, I decided to create a group called Images to teach languages where you can share or use photos or videos to teach either a word, a conversation or a grammar point.

From my own experience, looking for the right picture to teach a word or a phrase is very time consuming so I thought it would be nice to have all the pictures in one place tagged by topic, i.e. animals, places in town, shops... (thanks for this tip @icpjones!). This way, it is much easier and faster when you need THE picture!
You can then copy and paste the pictures to your slideshow, or download them or print them and use them as flashcards (that might be expensive on cartridges though!)

Today, there are already 24 members (mostly from my twitter network) who have shared their own pictures (thank you :)). There are shops from Germany, France, Spain...And even pictures from as far away as Japan (thanks to @ajep). Now, this what web 2.0 is all about: collaborative work set in less than 2 days! I just find this very exciting :)

You can join groups on Flickr where you can share similar interests for photos.
I joined two groups:

• Images4Education part of the EVO course I attended in January
  
  
• Great quotes about Learning and Change. Look at some of the photos I already favorited, they prove useful as a display or to explain a post on a blog, a slideshow or a document...

Following my success with year 9 (13-14 years old) using BOOKR in the IT room, I decided to get my year 8 (12-13 years old) low ability group to the IT room and use BOOKR as well.

But this time, students had to create a photo book about their last holidays. You can see some of the work they produced, it's great and this is the first time I had no behavioural issues with this group in the IT room. All the students were engaged and focused in the task, and even some of them asked me if they could email their work to themselves.
So thumbs up BOOKR :)


To view some more of my students' work, go on http://www.leprofesseur.edublogs.org/

I had a productive day today in the IT room. Because it doesn't happen that often (i.e. computers don't work, the Internet is off, this site is blocked ....), I thought I would blog about it ;)

I used an easy web tool called BOOKR. Again I read about this on Ana Maria's blog
Ana Maria is an EFL teacher and works at a language Institute in Brazil, she also played a big part in the online course Images 4 Education. You can follow Ana Maria on twitter @anamariacult

This is another lesson I planned for year 8 (12-13 years-old) students. We are now learning European countries and languages in French and I wanted to have a change from my old flashcards showing flags of the different countries.

So I used a great tool called PHRASR. I read about this on Ana Maria's blog
Ana Maria is an EFL teacher and works at a language Institute in Brazil, she also played a big part in the online course Images 4 Education. You can follow Ana Maria on twitter @anamariacult
 
Basically PHRASR is part of Pimpampum, a website with other applications using Flickrtoys. PHRASR allows you to create a slideshow from words or sentences but only in English. You type a word or a sentence in a box, PHRASR browses through the pictures on Flickr and finds a set of pictures matching the word or sentence you typed. You then just choose the best picture.

So I entered some European countries in English: Austria, Germany, Ireland.... and I had my slideshow with amazing pictures from Flickr done for me in a matter of minutes :) I thought I would be able to then change to coutries' names into French but I couldn't alter anything :(

I showed the slideshow to my class and asked them to translate the countries into French.
It was the starting point of a discussion about each country: where it was on the map, what was the official language, what could you visit and since we had learnt about food previously, we also talked about the food specialities in each country. Students had a grid to fill in and then had to create a ID card about a country of their choice. Since you can't really pause the slideshow to focus on each picture, I favorited each picture on my Flickr account so we could have a closer look at them.

The students were engaged, they especially liked talking about the countries they visited like Spain or where their relatives come from like Ireland. It also (hopefully) opened their minds to Europe!

You can see my lesson's presentation below:

And you? have you used Pimpampum? or other Flickrtoys?

A few weeks ago, I had to plan a lesson on food and drinks to a year 8 (12 years old) low ability group to show how I use differentiation. I was going to be observed by some senior managers so I decided to show them my IT skills and what I have learnt so far thanks mostly to the great professionals I follow on twitter.

The aim of the lesson was to introduce different food from different countries to my students and to create a nice menu which would include the words they have learnt during the lesson.
To find pictures of different types of food, I searched on Flickr. I was introduced to Flickr by attending a free online course on exploring images in the 21st Century Classroom organized by EVO http://aliceayel.posterous.com/free-online-course-for-educato

Flickr is a free website where you can upload you photos and videos, but not only that, you can also edit your photos and make them look nicer, add comments and captions, and search for pictures taken by other members of Flickr. So I looked for pictures of different types of restaurants and then of different types of food. I favorited them on my account http://flickr.com/people/aliceayel/ .
Then I went to http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ to create two mosaics with my two sets of photos http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php
So on one hand, I have eight restaurants
and on the other hand I have 16 different types of food

My students were teamed up into groups of 3 to 4 and had to look at the mosaics and to decide the type of restaurant (French, Chinese, Mexican ....) and then on the nationality of the food and if it was a starter, main course or desert. In teams, they then created their own menu.

The lesson went well because students liked to work in teams and helping each other out and also because they liked guessing from the pictures.
You can view and download the lesson plan, as well as the slideshow for the lesson and the worksheet describing the food.

LESSON PLAN for Observations

Types of Food Explanation

Buddy Evaluation

And you? have you used Flickr or Big Huge labs in your lessons?

This is the first time I participate to a free online course, and I am
so excited about it I thought I would share the experience.
First of all, if after reading my post, you feel the excitement and
want to join this course, it is never too late as the course only
started today (12th Jan)! Also it is worth mentioning it is free
(yeah!).
All you need to do is to join the NING group http://images4education.ning.com
 
So, what is it about?
It is a 6 weeks set of online courses organised by EVO (Electronic
Village Online). EVO's goal is to allow learning anywhere, anytime,
with as little expense as possible for a global audience. Thus EVO
moderators and trainers are all volunteers, and participants need only
provide their own Internet access to take part in activities. Sessions
include a range from simple discussions to hands-on workshops. EVO
provides an invaluable service to teachers all over the globe, for it
brings the convention to those who cannot travel. They had over 1100
participants in 2007 and again reaching more than a thousand in 2008.
 
Over these 6 weeks, I am going to explore images in the 21st Century Classroom.
How can adding images to my in-class and online activities raise
student interest? How can I help learners develop 21st century
multiliteracy skills through active learning?
By the end of the workshop, I should have the chance to develop a plan
to begin incorporating digital production into their lesson plans.
 
For me personally (as a mum of 2 little boys), it is great to be able
to do a course from home. It means that as soon as the children are in
bed, I can log on and go through my weekly tasks! I just need to click
on http://images4education.pbwiki.com
All materials are kept opened for public access. This means I can
always get back to all our online resources at my convenience, even
when the session is over .
 
This first week starting is to get to know other educators in the
group, to join interesting discussions and to explore Fickr.
 
I have already created my account on Flickr http://flickr.com/people/aliceayel/
and watched Flickr in Plain English:

 
So, why not join in? it's never too late ;)