EFL CLASSROOM MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

This monthly blog/newsletter from EFL Classroom gives you ideas, resources, and a place to set up your own online classroom. Links to video talks, new online resources, ongoing discussions and blogs, student-created content, ideas for current seasonal holidays, and their own Diigo Group, et al.

EFL Classroom has developed well over the past year or so, and is well worth following.

Teaching Academic Writing

This is a great blog about teaching academic writing. The author, Dr. Rachael Cayley, Univ of Toronto, is obviously an experienced, well-trained teacher of composition. I'm looking forward to the subsequent issues.

Reverse Outlines

I have tagged this post with reading and mind-mapping, as Reverse Outlining is also a very useful technique for understanding academic papers and how extensive texts are organized. I used this technique frequently during paper conferences to help students see where their organization had gone awry.

Be sure to join the CALL-IS Diigo Virtual Software Library to see more on Academic Writing.

Resources for Teaching Poetry

Just came across Google's tool, Search Stories, for creating a video out of your online searches. I did one on Resources for Teaching Poetry.

It's a pretty nifty tool, and students might get a kick out of using it as a way to present their initial searches in a content-based project.

iSpeech Voice and Podcaster

I've been trying to get a newer, better look for my blog, but wound up back with the old style, but the new interface. Alas, my old blog is gone.

But this looks a little newer and crisper, I've got a new photo up, and I finally found a new text-to-speech reader in iSpeech. Et voilá! it is also a podcaster, so I'm feeling up to date. You click on the little icon to hear the text read, or go to the Podcast in the sidebar to start the feed.

The interface at the iSpeech site was simplicity itself to use:

I didn't even have to get a registration key. Interestingly, it is a dot org.

Let's hope it is as good as it looks--it does try to read a little too fast, but that may just be my processor speed or the server speed today.

Archival Video Sites

Both OurMedia and the Internet Archive are unbelievably slow and have made their interfaces much more difficult to use. OurMedia just transferred my video to a new address without telling me, and I can't find it at all on the Internet Archive. In OurMedia, a search for tags and for titles and for owner--none of them--didn't come up with the video, but it was still there. Go figure!

I also tried to edit the description in OurMedia to include the Web address of the wiki that also contains the presentation, but with no luck. I was asked to join a group before I could edit my own work--couldn't find any with "education" through the search engine, though I could see a few with that word in the title from a list. I then was told I hadn't completed the CSID (the test of human user), but that box wasn't available at the page where I was doing the editing. No win!

I hope to get the video from the 2008 TESOL presentation embedded here in the blog below. We'll see how long it lasts as a real link!

The address is now http://www.ourmedia.org/node/88432



Another video archive site, AuthorStream is also very slow. My presentation there (no audio) is at
http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/ElizabethHS-224813-effect-tech-sla-entertainment-ppt-powerpoint/. The sound version apparently has just vanished or was never accepted as an unload because it was too large or the wrong format.

Blip.tv still has the presentation, and seemed to load about the fastest. Unfortunately, it's not a place to take the children...

These sites are very frustrating, and I'm glad I uploaded the presentation to multiple venues. With the economic downturn in 2009, there has been a lot of moving and shaking, and I think there will be more changes in store in early 2010.