Life as it used to BI
<![CDATA[BI=Before Internet Our collective memories get so easily altered with the advent and use of new technologies. It’s so common amongst people to resist new tech and for teachers […]
Xtranormal has become Nawmal
<![CDATA[ Bringing the glad tidings that my favourite animation tool seems to be coming back! Xtranormal was a hugely popular video making tool with hundreds of teachers making videos for free, choosing characters, scenes, camera angles and really achieving a very professional looking outcome. Until they went bust. Despite its popularity, […]
CELTA and Technology – With or Without it?
<![CDATA[ Giulia Forsythe via Compfight In a recent end-of-course evaluation report, one of our CELTA candidates suggested (complained is perhaps a better word) that her expectations of a higher grade on the CELTA course were not fulfilled because she did not know how to use technology. Had she not been encouraged to […]
My 11 from '11
<![CDATA[Am taking up Adam Simpson’s challenge, well, not really a challenge, more like an invitation but such a nice way to look back at what I have blogged about this year. Adam said, “Choose the best 11” but I must confess I don’t write as many posts as all that. Some people seem […]
A Little & Often: Integrating Technology on Teacher Development Courses
<![CDATA[A few months ago (April-June 2011*) I wrote a report on a survey on the use of technology amongst CELTA tutors. The results were rather disheartening and the prevailing attitudes among many of my respondents ranged from the completely negative (“It is not our job/place to introduce technology on CELTA […]
Survey on the use of Social Networks for Foreign Language Teachers
<![CDATA[Dear PLN, Many of you are aware that since earlier this year, I have been involved in an EU funded project – aPLaNet – whose aim is to help Foreign Language Teachers develop and maintain their own PLN in an autonomous way. Creating one’s PLN takes time, effort and commitment, […]
My Blog in the Clouds
<![CDATA[A quick and fun mini blog challenge by David Dogson in his blog post here – I fed my blog URL to Wordle and Tagxedo and look which words they have gone for! Here is my blog in the clouds! I still can’t embed this Tagxedo properly to show the […]
Animating Stories
<![CDATA[I have been playing with story animation tools for a long time, learning from colleagues' blogs and links on Twitter. Recent posts include Burcu Akyol’s 4-3-2-1 Action! Online Tools For Making Movies in the Language Classroom and Shelly Terrell’s presentation on Digital Storytelling which includes some excellent ideas. Here are […]
Tech Tools & Pedagogy II – Word Clouds
<![CDATA[In this post, I am going to look at Wordle, Wordsift , Word it out and Word Mosaic and try to briefly compare them as I think they all have great potential for a variety of learning activities. This post was inspired by a great discussion in the SEETA course […]
Painting Pictures – Innovation sometimes takes a long time to come home
<![CDATA[In the last few months, and mainly thanks to social media like Facebook and Twitter, I have been meeting and interacting with a good number of colleagues about all things digital in general and foreign language education. There is great excitement in the air about either integrating ICT into educational […]
