Make it Easy to Speak using Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are visual tools and one of the scaffolding techniques that teachers can provide their students to help them think smoothly, classify ideas, find relationships, communicate more effectively, and construct meaning of their own. I always use them when teaching writing in my EFL classes and they were a great success. Today, I will not talk about how to plan writing, but I would like to share a speaking lesson utilizing such an amazing tool.

It is still PowerPoint, but more Interactive using Office Mix

I have just heard about Office Mix from one of Microsoft leaders in Egypt; Eng. Ebeid Atef Ebeid. It is an add-in to PowerPoint 2013 that allows you to create more interactive and engaging presentations. This means that this piece of magic will reinvent the way we present using the traditional program of PowerPoint and add more life to its boring slides and features.

Happens Today: Reinventing the Classroom Conference

Reinventing the Classroom conference Happens Today tonight for two days "Wednesday April 30th and Thursday May 1st, 2014 (May 2nd in some time zones)". This online free world-wide conference is a unique chance to participate in a collaborative global conversation on innovative classroom uses of ed tech with presentations by your peers. 

To be kept informed of the latest conference news and updates, please join the Reinventing the Classroom network and conference website. Follow conference discussions on Twitter using #reinvent14.  

Conference strands include the following topics:  

How to Get your Visitors Comment on Google Sites!

Google Sites is a fantastic platform that helps you to create fabulous customized websites in a short time. It also enables you to invite other people to collaborate and leave comments. However, when it comes to viewers and visitors, it provides users nothing. Public can only view the website and leave without saying anything.

That is why I decided to find a way which can be integrated in Google Sites.The two resources below helped me a lot to embed a discussion forum easily and let the conversation go on my site:

WANT, but I have NOT

Sometimes, I feel I strongly want to write a story, but no words come out as powerful as my feelings and desire to express my inside. I am quite good at writing instructions and explanations to my students and colleagues, posts about my teaching experiences, or debates to explain my viewpoints with others. My problem arises when it comes to writing stories and descriptions.  

I know I have a great desire to start writing creatively. 

Want 2 Write Fiction! Why NOT Join FutureLearn FREE Course on April 28, 2014?

Derek Neale starts a new online course "Start Writing Fiction" on the FutureLearn platform on April 28, 2014 for 8 weeks. This hands-on course helps you to get started with your own fiction writing, focusing on the central skill of creating characters.

Register for Google FREE Online Course " Making Sense of Data"

Do you work with surveys, demographic information, evaluation data, test scores, or observation data? Are you interested in making the data you collect more useful by organizing it, analyzing it, and applying it in different ways?

What are you waiting for?

Register for the new FREE online course offered by Google that is intended for anyone who wants to learn more about how to structure, visualize, and manipulate data. This includes student, educators, researchers, journalists, and normal business owners.

Let's Create a Badge in 5 Minutes!

Learning English as a foreign language is not an easy job. I always try to motivate my students intrinsically by providing them a variety of opportunities to use their English inside and outside classroom, but it is not the only type. I also motivate my students extrinsically by giving them extra marks, presents, or certificates. This is very great for the traditional learning environment. 

What about the online classes? 

In this semester, I'm working with my students on a blogging project and it doesn't work without an extrinsic encouragement. That's why I thought of creating some badges. I tried to find a way to embed a system that generates badges automatically for free, but in vain. After searching, I found an online website that allowed me to create badges, hearts, and ribbons as well.

REALize! Conference Jan. 24, 2014 ... 27 Great Sessions for English Educators

REALize! is a free online EAL/ ESL professional development conference where teachers and educators participate, join, chat, learn and share their experiences for a day. There are 27 sessions to choose from. Please, check the schedule to know more about these sessions.

When:

It starts today January 24, 2014 from 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM CST 

(Convert to your time zone)

 

3 FREE e-courses 4 building mobile Apps

Retrieved Jan.7, 2014

My school is not technologically equipped. And not all of my students have PCs or laptops, however, all of them have mobile phones. I just want to make use of what they have to develop their creativity and create an engaging atmosphere for enjoyable learning. In short, I want to bring life into my traditional classrooms. There are a lot of apps that I can download for free, but this is not my ultimate goal. I want to build my own apps that suit my students' needs and levels. That's why I decided to search for some online courses that can help me to achieve my goals. I'd love to share them with +Clara Cordero Balcázar  and other friends who are interested in the same area:

18 EVO Professional Development Sessions to Start 2014

Retrieved Jan. 2, 2014

This is my fourth Electronic Village Online (EVO) session that I participate in. As an EFL teacher, I always search for such opportunities for professional development. It doesn't only help me to know more recent trends in teaching English and update my expertise, but it also connects me to a lot of educators and teachers from all the corners of the globe. In this crazy digital age, the emphasis is shifted from “how” and “what” to learn towards the question of “where to learn.” "Where" is the buzz word of the 21st century. In other words, “the pipe is more important than the content within the pipe” (Siemens, 2004). This means that the network itself is the basis and core of the learning processes. Once learners connect to a network, they share and find new information, change what they think according to what they learned, and then connect to the network again to share their insights and experiences. In this way, learning is a knowledge creation process rather than just knowledge consumption (Kop and Hill, 2008). 

Try ChatButton to Get a Chatbox for Free!

Retrieved Dec. 24, 2013

My students badly needed a way to get my instant help when blogging for the first time. I just wanted to put all things together in the class blog to make this experience easier and more interesting. I spent a lot of time trying some tools for live chatting, but unfortunately most of them need accounts. Of course, this is a kind of headache when it comes to signing up for many websites to do a certain task. Then, I found ChatButton. It is a free and easy-to-install chatbox for use anywhere. 

Hover over Words to Get the Meaning for Blogger and WordPress

Retrieved Dec. 20, 2013 from here

I'm working on a blogging project with my first-year high school students. During this experience, there are a lot of things that I have to learn. As a sharing fan, I decided to write a series of posts to document every skill I acquired and every tool I explored to accomplish the aims of this project and meet my students' needs. Among many things that my students need is a way to find the meaning of the new words that they encounter in the required tasks. I thought of some ways like linking the class blog to an online dictionary, and embedding a Bing or Google widget to translate the whole site, but they didn't work well with my students. 

Why not Join the College Writing 2.1x MOOC?

Register NOW!

Don't Miss The Macmillan Online Conference 2013!

 
When: 

Nov. 11-15, 2013

Where:

The Macmillan Online Conference uses Blackboard Collaborate. Check this link to register for the sessions you would like to attend.

What are you waiting for?