A place to remember how to set up tools I find useful for my teaching.
Name: Bertha
I am an EFL teacher with more than 25 years in the field, interested in the use of IT in higher education for EFL learning in a more autonomous way.
today
April 2008
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November 2007
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Mo'nonymous on My first Slideshow w...
Mo'nonymous on My first Slideshow w...
webgina on Twitter widget
Ahhhh, my Blogger Blog, more tips
Blogging at Wordpress
Comparison of blog software
Dafne Web 2.0 tools
ID2-124 Architecture course
Leticia´s Wikispaces Construction Materials wiki
Our groupboard
Rubena´s blog
Rubena´s pbwiki EFL reading Wiki
Rubena´s Wikispaces Class Wiki
aggregator
html code
rss
screen capturing
tutorial
video
web 20 tools
wikis
visited *loading* times
Since I have been using Bloglines, I never went back to a Technorati account I opened sometime ago. It gives a rather unusual instruction for claiming Motime blogs, so here I am writing this new post to do so. They also require to add a certain code, so here it goes. I hope everything works well. I thought having Bloglines was more than enough but there is a sort of renewed interest in using Technorati. Live and learn! Technorati Profile
Time and time again I keep forgetting how to link a URL when I am making comments and have no access to an html button. This is just another of this tiny details that make a huge difference of space and time on line (or at least it does to me). Another piece of info. my brain cannot hold is the link to tinypics to generate URL of pictures and videos for free.
Here it is then. I am sure I will come to find it a zillion times:
A HREF="http:// .html">my XXXXXXXX</A>
<A HREF="http://360.yahoo.com/bleiva2003">my 360 page</A>
Embedded it looks like this: my 360 page
I downloaded this program more than a year ago and have not "caught any screen" yet. I see it being used very frequently by ESL/EFL colleagues who prepare tutorials to help their students follow instructions, steps in a process, etc. I will give it a try soon but there are so many wonderful tutorials all over the place, it is really amazing and here is one on the basics of using this open source software, as Camstudio is.
Although I don´t do microblogging with Twitter that much (I forget about it, same as I forget to check Facebook, ha, ha), I decided to go ahead and get the twitter widget. Since it did not have the Motime logo, I clicked on the Wordpress logo and got the html code which I then inserted in the side bar by going to the template. Motime has not set an easier way to add elements to the sidebar. So I just guessed where it should be by adding it between the Cbox code and the counter code. It worked !!!
A very active and creative Webhead from Brazil has recommended this site which is solid gold. One can search a favorite song and then embed its code in one´s site, wow, it has great potential, especially when teaching reading with song lyrics. One thing is to have the song video from youtube, but another is to have the song available in just audio and have the lyrics available in another link. Ideally the song could have captions, like some at dotsub like this one by Nickelback.
Thanks Ronaldo for the tip. Here is one song from Foo Fighters, the grammy winners last Sunday and a link to its lyrics , DOA (Death On Arrival) , a bit dark, but enjoy it anyway.
This tool became quite a hit in one of the posts in my present classblog. Check it out here
I had been noticing a widget in many WiA blogs in the past months and did not quite understand its potential. Well I just embedded it today in my blog for the graduate course on Theory and Methods of ESL-EFL teaching and learning. I only have two students and they have set up blogs to reflect on the chapters we read every week. This way I can check when they post and get to their reflections very easily. I know Bloglines does the trick but this is quite straight forward visually. Feevy is very friendly so there is not much need for explaining steps here. Just sign up, add the blogs you want to follow and copy the html code to embed it in your site. I guess you will need to sign up with a different mail account every time you want to embed a Feevy in a completely different blog community.
Here it is, finally. Made as an assignment for the EVO_08 video session. A bit time consuming but it was worth it as I had a lot of fun playing around with different options. Windows Movie Maker offers a rather easy way to make our "videos" with our own pictures and upload them to Youtube, Teachertube, Google videos, etc. It is very friendly but there are a couple of details one has to watch out for. Here is a site I will check later on that deals with FAQ. I got all mixed up trying to get background music and my voice simultaneously. I tried placing two audio channels previously recorded with Audacity, but could not. So I finally left the music on in the background as I read the script recording it with the wmv mike tool, and towards the end, I just raised the volume of the music manually. Sergio Mazzarelli, our moderator, suggested to save the video, bring it back in WMM and then add the music in the audio channel. Great idea!!! I didn´t know how to create the Ken Burns effect but got it by playing with the features "simplify in, simplify out".
I felt overly conscious as I was recording my voice and still find tons of mistakes I made as a nonnative speaker, but what the heck, I could not go on and on re-recording endlessly. So bear with me and give me as many suggestions as you want. I will take them into account in my next video "production" ;-)
Google for educators has these suggestions that look very promising for EFL writing. It offers a pdf tutorial too. I also found this site from Google where they mention new applications in 2008 like downloading powerpoint presentations that can be embedded to a blog.
I am just checking out this new tool. It does not work in Wordpress (as expected) and I am trying to see if it works here. The person following the thread has to register to the site (something not needed in Vaestro).
Here you will find the most successful sites in the web and their trends. Check out how Google, Flicker, Del.icio.us and other sites you use so much are doing these days.
Rubena is using this program which is downloadable, free and has easy to follow tutorials. Check it out here.
From April 21-24, I attended and presented at the AAAL in Costa Mesa, Orange County, California. A dear friend and colleague from Venezuela and I had never attended this convention before and felt as if we were surrounded by the rock stars of Applied Linguistics, authors we have cited countless times and whose articles and books we have read for many years: William Grabe, Tom Cobb, Marlise Horst, Norbert Schmitt, Diane Schmitt, Elizabeth Bernhardt, Rod Ellis, Keiko Koda, Barbara Kroll, Diane Larsen-Freeman, Fredricka Stoller, Zoltán Dörnyei, Doug Biber, Hossein Nassaji, James Lantolf, William Labov and the superstars from University of Toronto Jim Cummins, Merril Swain, Nina Spada, Alister Cumming and Sharon Lapkin ... It was a thrill to run into Grabe, Cobb, Horst and the Schmitts in almost all the presentations we went to as they dealt mostly with common areas of interest: lexical acquisition and reading comprehension.
Here is my presentation, as promised. I was honored to have Prof. Grabe in the audience and later have my study mentioned by him at the Invited Colloquium on Reading.
Just this afternoon I had the TV on and was listening to the news on criticism from teachers about Wikipedia as seen by students as a legitimate source of information where many seem to go to. It is our obligation as educators to raise students´ consciousness on the data they find on line and provide critical thinking opportunities for them to question their sources and validity. Very frequently students simply cut and paste without understanding or even reading what they are copying and this cartoon adresses the topic very vividly. Garbage in = garbage out. Let´s help them sort it out.
This is a powerpoint presentation by Jennifer Wagner in California on how to use Wikispaces. Its audio podcast is here.
I just ran into Tinypic. No need to download or register. Just go there, press "examine" and upload a picture or video. The site will generate three codes:
1) Embed HTML code, 2) IMG Link, 3) URL Link
Let´s see what I can do with my favorite sunset picture if I just embed the code. Here it is. I did not have to upload the picture to Motime, which saves space in the free amount one is allowed a month.
Dafne already explained this in BaW07 but I found a request in my Motime mail. So here it is.
Go to this site: http://www.clocklink.com
and select a clock with the time of your city. Copy the html code and open your Motime blog, go to "template" look for the "archives" section in your template and copy the html code after it. Then save. I hope it works. 
Hugs, Berta
I would like to share this video made by Graham Stanley, an English Webhead based in Barcelona, Spain, who gives a short and very clear presentation on Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Second Life. I enjoyed it so much that decided to have it in a post here. Graham is presently a Co-moderator in two Tesol-evo sessions.
I tried to post a powerpoint presentation in Wordpress and couldn´t; in Blogger I am still trying, and I wanted to check if it was possible here in Motime.
It is about Brain-based Learning and I presented it at Ventesol 2005 in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Please give me the deserved credit if you ever use it in front of an audience or class. Thanks. Here it goes:
Just found out about it at the BaW07 Motime blog. Go to Cbox and sign up. Once registered, copy the code that is generated and paste it in the sidebar of your blog. Voilá!
I used Picassa a couple of months ago and now I don´t remember how I made a collage then. I guess I downloaded Picassa onto my computer (free of charge) and then found my way through. I will try to go back and check. Here is a page for help.
Go to Picassa and download the free software. All our photos will be re-organized in Picassa files. Click a photo in the albums on the right and it will appear in the window on the bottom left. Click the green bottom to keep the photo and the red to delete the photo. You have to do the green or red button click for each photo. Now press "collage" on the right bottom and the collage will appear (25 different photos will be an excellent choice, otherwise the program repeats the first photos). Click "create" and save in the same folder where the photos came from or in a different one. Here is a sample. You can crop (minimize) or enlarge photos, do slide shows and much more with this software. I have not experimented much with it yet.
This is an album I created using Bubbleshare. It is a quite friendly site: register and begin to create your first album. Download photos, write captions, change picture sequence and even add 30-minute audio captions if you want to. Then, click share and copy the html code to your blog post. Quite effective and relatively easy to handle.
This is a wonderfully useful site I found at BaW and LwC. It belongs to Rod Corbett, a professor who works at Mount Royal College in Alberta, Canada. He also has this site for students. Check them out, you won´t regret it.
Calgary, Alberta
Here is a tool I found at one of Daf´s blogs and which you can add to your sidebar by copying the following formula:
<form action="http://www.noslang.com/search.php" method="get">
<table><tr><td valign="bottom"><a href="http://www.noslang.com"><img src="http://www.noslang.com/realsmall.gif" border=0 alt="No Slang"></a></td><td><input size="5" name="st" value="lol"></td><td><input type="submit" name="submit" value="Search"></td></tr></table>
</form>
This is how it looks:
OK, I know there are many tools available (and I have already mentioned some of them). However My Chingo shows who has left a message and s/he does not have to sign in or dowload anything. Having a microphone will do. After YOU sign in, a message will be delivered to your mail with a password. Go to the site in the the mail, sign up and then go to the tag that says "my code". Select the color, click on it and get the html code and paste it either in your template or a post (remember to click first on the html code feature of the post. Here is mine:
Preparing for EVO 2007 A Project of TESOL's
CALL Interest Section Be prepared for more on line adventures in January 2007!!!
Go to http://www.zwinky.com , register, install software, create your avatar by following directions on face features, clothes, etc. Click on "share your zwinky", copy the html code and embed it in your site as given. What I did NOT like is that when the software is installed, a new tool bar appears mixed up with my Yahoo and Google bars and I had to disinstall it by right-clicking on it. I do not think I will use it that much. The picture cannot be copied either as it is in Flash.
I always forget how I permanently placed a picture in the header of the blog so it will always appear when the blog opens.
In Blogger, I need to go to the template and find:
<!-- Begin #content -->
<div id="content">
<!-- Begin #main -->
<div id="main"><div id="main2">
and place the html code of the picture before it :
<a href="...jpg" /></a>
Long time, no write ... but I will try to keep on adding helpful hints that will make me remember how I did things and hopefully help others in the way.
I finally bought a photocamera which can make videos as well. I am so absent-minded that I even did not notice it had a video camera built-in. How did I find out? When I was trying to organize my brandnew digital pictures, a voice and video streamed off my computer. I have no excuse for this but maybe most cameras have this feature nowadays anyway and this feature was not highlighted or mentioned in the ad, don´t you think?
Anyway, I wanted to place a video from the camera in a blog but Motime did not allow me to do so (I guess the video is too heavy so I could never finish the downloading process) . Then, I ran across a page that used goggle to post videos. Here is what I did. I went to http://video.google.com, signed in (I have an account at gmail so I wrote my username and password) and then followed the easy steps in the page that opened up. At the beginning I was kind of worried because it took too long, but then it finally finished and showed the URL address and also a section to easily embed the video in a blog (not Motime but others) and the html formula to embed it in a post. Let me try both ways (URL and embed) URL: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1919828272228277787 Now let me try to EMBED it using the code from Google and adding it to this post by using the HTML source function on the very top left corner oi the post writing window (Is it clear or awfully confusing?) IT WORKED!!! (the sound is in Spanish and BTW, I left the camera on at the end unknowingly ... )
Tool to add a whiteboard, chat , message board and games to your site. Here are the steps:
1) Go to Groupboard and find the heading that says "Hosted Groupboard Free Version"
2) Then place cursor where it says "click here to set up a free board"
3) Register, set title and page name.
4) Leave password blank if you want any visitor to have access to your board
5) An HTML code will be generated and you can cut and paste it to your site.
Visit mine, write your name in the name box, start experimenting and then save your drawing or message so I can see it later ;-)
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