There are some attractive new tools available for creating and sharing online art work. Why not check them out?
Some Web 2.0 style activities
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
More activities
Vocabulary activities
Need some online vocabulary practice?
There are literally hundreds of sites offering online vocabulary activities. Below you have links to just a few. Again, using your Google search skills should make it a simple affair to find more.
Finding craft activities
There are some good craft type activities at DLTK Crafts and also, at a site I am sure many of you already know: Enchanted Learning.
In Google, using some of the techniques we saw for effective searching, I ran a search with the following criteria:
"craft activities" ESL
Below you have some of the results.
MAKE STUFF
ENCHANTED LEARNING CRAFTS
ACTIVITY CUPBOARD
FUN LESSON PLANS
CHRISTMAS LESSON PLANS
When you are searching, remember you can experiment with different combinations. Try some of the following and see what you get:
"seasonal activities" ESL (or ELT or EFL or ESOL)
"handicrafts" +children -books
"make stuff"
"Christmas activities"
You can also refine your search for other seasonal activities such as Valentine's Day, Halloween, Easter, Mothers Day, Fathers Day and so on, applying the same sort of searching techniques.
In Google, using some of the techniques we saw for effective searching, I ran a search with the following criteria:
"craft activities" ESL
Below you have some of the results.
MAKE STUFF
ENCHANTED LEARNING CRAFTS
ACTIVITY CUPBOARD
FUN LESSON PLANS
CHRISTMAS LESSON PLANS
When you are searching, remember you can experiment with different combinations. Try some of the following and see what you get:
"seasonal activities" ESL (or ELT or EFL or ESOL)
"handicrafts" +children -books
"make stuff"
"Christmas activities"
You can also refine your search for other seasonal activities such as Valentine's Day, Halloween, Easter, Mothers Day, Fathers Day and so on, applying the same sort of searching techniques.
Online stories
There are lots of links out there to online stories.
- Kizclub Stories is a site with interactive stories.
- For example: Level 1 stories
Story creation activities can be a fun thing to do in a computer session:
Others:
- Magic Keys
- Woodlands
- Storyplace
- CBeebies
- Story Time
- STORY BUILDER
- LIL FINGERS STORYBOOKS
- SYMBOL READING ACTIVITY
- PRESCHOOL STORIES
There are some examples aimed at native speaker children that may be too difficult, but they are interesting in any case:
Downloadable banners
Enjoy a range of Fantastic Banners and Posters designed by a teacher for teachers.
Great range of topics and you can also freely request others. (Free registration required - coming soon)
Art & Graphics
Cavebark, Character Sketches, My Place
English
Alphabet, Fairy Tales, Fishy Stories, Reading for life, Reading Imagination,
Family
Congratulations, Happy Birthday
General Attitude/ Cross Curriculum
Congratulations, Happy Birthday, Birthday Months, Muscle Building, Welcome
Health (See also Values)
Biscuit, Bread, Choices, Don't Smoke, Fresh 'n' Fruity, Myself & Friends, My Place , Respect Yourself, Be Safe, Safety on the Road
I.C.T.
Junior Class
Can Tie Shoe, Pencil Use, Phonics,
Maori
Marare,
Maths
Money
Music
None yet
Social Studies, History (Topics see also Science)
Anzac, Black History, Cultural Diversity, Egypt, Emergency Helpers, Explorers, Farm, Grandparents, Japan, Kiwiana, Leadership, Money, Native American Indians, Refugees, School Secretary, Survival, Tourism, Who Works at the Airport, World War 2,
Science (Topics)
Acids & Gasses, Amazon, Animals & Animalia, Antarctica, Bears, Bush, Cars, Cougar Country, Dinosaurs, Fabric & Fibre, Flight, Floating & Sinking, Forests, Hydroponics, Insects, Inventions & Inventors, Oceans, Rainforest, Sea Life, Water, Weather, Worms
Technology
Technology,
Thinking
Life Long Learner, Life Long Learner 2, Multiple Intelligences, Think Smart
Values
Candle Quote,
Values Programme Posters: Diligence & Excellence, Equal Different, Fairness Winning, Forgiveness, Giving Sharing, Honesty Truthfulness, Honesty, Humility, Inclusiveness, Listening, Loss Grief, Patriotism, Perseverence, Respect, Responsibility, Service, Talents, Thankfulness, Vision
Values Programme Banner Overview: All Values Program Banners (Large File), Values Supporting Resources Activities, Programme Resources
Great range of topics and you can also freely request others. (Free registration required - coming soon)
Art & Graphics
Cavebark, Character Sketches, My Place
English
Alphabet, Fairy Tales, Fishy Stories, Reading for life, Reading Imagination,
Family
Congratulations, Happy Birthday
General Attitude/ Cross Curriculum
Congratulations, Happy Birthday, Birthday Months, Muscle Building, Welcome
Health (See also Values)
Biscuit, Bread, Choices, Don't Smoke, Fresh 'n' Fruity, Myself & Friends, My Place , Respect Yourself, Be Safe, Safety on the Road
I.C.T.
Junior Class
Can Tie Shoe, Pencil Use, Phonics,
Maori
Marare,
Maths
Money
Music
None yet
Social Studies, History (Topics see also Science)
Anzac, Black History, Cultural Diversity, Egypt, Emergency Helpers, Explorers, Farm, Grandparents, Japan, Kiwiana, Leadership, Money, Native American Indians, Refugees, School Secretary, Survival, Tourism, Who Works at the Airport, World War 2,
Science (Topics)
Acids & Gasses, Amazon, Animals & Animalia, Antarctica, Bears, Bush, Cars, Cougar Country, Dinosaurs, Fabric & Fibre, Flight, Floating & Sinking, Forests, Hydroponics, Insects, Inventions & Inventors, Oceans, Rainforest, Sea Life, Water, Weather, Worms
Technology
Technology,
Thinking
Life Long Learner, Life Long Learner 2, Multiple Intelligences, Think Smart
Values
Candle Quote,
Values Programme Posters: Diligence & Excellence, Equal Different, Fairness Winning, Forgiveness, Giving Sharing, Honesty Truthfulness, Honesty, Humility, Inclusiveness, Listening, Loss Grief, Patriotism, Perseverence, Respect, Responsibility, Service, Talents, Thankfulness, Vision
Values Programme Banner Overview: All Values Program Banners (Large File), Values Supporting Resources Activities, Programme Resources
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Resource banks for project research
Here you have links to some of the best maintained "internet library" sites aimed at young learners.
RESEARCH LINKS
KEWL LINKS
Not forgetting the simple Wikipedia at:
Activities for younger learners
Here are some more links to activities for very young learners:
These are very simple point and click activities:
DRAG AND DROP EASY VOCABULARY
HOW OLD ARE YOU?
HOW ARE YOU?
SIMPLE WORD GAME
Activities for colours:
COLOURS
MORE COLOURS!
Numbers and letters:
NUMBERS
LETTERS ETC
ALPHABET TIME
Others:
MAKE A FACE ACTIVITY
A WEATHER CLASS
These links are to online stories:
STORY BUILDER
LIL FINGERS STORYBOOKS
SYMBOL READING ACTIVITY
PRESCHOOL STORIES
And the last set to sites with all sorts of activities, games, colouring pages and so on:
UP TO TEN
DISNEY PLAYHOUSE
ESL KIDS
CRAYOLA
FUNSCHOOL GAMES
EFL CLUB
KIDIDDLES
NOGGIN'S GAMES
BIG SMALL
PRIMARY RESOURCES
PRIMARY GAMES
These are very simple point and click activities:
DRAG AND DROP EASY VOCABULARY
HOW OLD ARE YOU?
HOW ARE YOU?
SIMPLE WORD GAME
Activities for colours:
COLOURS
MORE COLOURS!
Numbers and letters:
NUMBERS
LETTERS ETC
ALPHABET TIME
Others:
MAKE A FACE ACTIVITY
A WEATHER CLASS
These links are to online stories:
STORY BUILDER
LIL FINGERS STORYBOOKS
SYMBOL READING ACTIVITY
PRESCHOOL STORIES
And the last set to sites with all sorts of activities, games, colouring pages and so on:
UP TO TEN
DISNEY PLAYHOUSE
ESL KIDS
CRAYOLA
FUNSCHOOL GAMES
EFL CLUB
KIDIDDLES
NOGGIN'S GAMES
BIG SMALL
PRIMARY RESOURCES
PRIMARY GAMES
E-mail and e-cards
With E-pals, you can set up e-mail accounts for your students that will enable you to communicate with them and they with each other and other e-pal members. This type of system offers a guaranteed child safe environment, but may limit your students if you wish them to mail other friends, or send English birthday or christmas e-cards etc.
There exist many child safe e-mail services, most of which promise to exclude unwanted adverts, risky links and so on. Another essential feature of a childsafe e-mail is that it does not require personal information such as identification numbers in order to sign-up. However, most ask for teacher or parent permission for the under 13s.
Most parents are OK with the idea of using a safe, teacher-moderated e-mail account for communicative activities, but it is still a good idea to check and get permission, especially in the case of the very young.
One good site for child safe e-mail can be found at Zilladog
The following links are to sites offering e-card services which we will evaluate during the course. If you know of any others, please post your comments.
SCHOLASTIC
ANIMATED CARDS
BLUE MOUNTAIN
MARLO
There exist many child safe e-mail services, most of which promise to exclude unwanted adverts, risky links and so on. Another essential feature of a childsafe e-mail is that it does not require personal information such as identification numbers in order to sign-up. However, most ask for teacher or parent permission for the under 13s.
Most parents are OK with the idea of using a safe, teacher-moderated e-mail account for communicative activities, but it is still a good idea to check and get permission, especially in the case of the very young.
One good site for child safe e-mail can be found at Zilladog
The following links are to sites offering e-card services which we will evaluate during the course. If you know of any others, please post your comments.
SCHOLASTIC
ANIMATED CARDS
BLUE MOUNTAIN
MARLO
Webquests
Below are some links to information and examples of Webquest activities. All of these links were found via a simple "webquests" search in Google. Refining your search by topic, level or age would lead you to more specific locations for material.
Monday, 15 March 2010
Podcasting
One area very much in fashion in ELT circles is podcasting. PodOmatic, enables you set up your own podcasting site free of charge.
SET UP A PODCASTING SITE
The following are links to two examples for young learners: you will notice they are both made with blogger, the tool you are using for the project and in which you are reading this message:
BRITISH COUNCIL YOUNG LEARNERS MADRID
BRITISH COUNCIL YOUNG LEARNERS BARCELONA
SET UP A PODCASTING SITE
The following are links to two examples for young learners: you will notice they are both made with blogger, the tool you are using for the project and in which you are reading this message:
BRITISH COUNCIL YOUNG LEARNERS MADRID
BRITISH COUNCIL YOUNG LEARNERS BARCELONA
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Links to online resources
There are some good one stop resource banks of online activities out there, some provided by the MEC, others by individual teachers and/or schools. Check out some of the links below that may be of interest.
Both of the following are MEC initiatives you may or may not know about. They both offer high quality flash-based interaction.
There are a group of sites clustered around Angeles 365 with some good links. Click on the following image for the index.
The link below takes you to the infants section.
The Fantastic Preschool project, created by the English department of Primaria del Colegio Hispania (Cartagena) and led by Maria Jesus Rodriguez Arenas is a growing site with some interesting links for very young learners.
The Colegio Retamar has assembled a compendium of links to activities and resources and arranged them into the three primary cycles: they say "Click on a topic. Find amazing facts, jokes, and links to all your favourite games, quizzes, songs, stories and websites."
Both of the following are MEC initiatives you may or may not know about. They both offer high quality flash-based interaction.
There are a group of sites clustered around Angeles 365 with some good links. Click on the following image for the index.
The link below takes you to the infants section.
The Fantastic Preschool project, created by the English department of Primaria del Colegio Hispania (Cartagena) and led by Maria Jesus Rodriguez Arenas is a growing site with some interesting links for very young learners.
The Colegio Retamar has assembled a compendium of links to activities and resources and arranged them into the three primary cycles: they say "Click on a topic. Find amazing facts, jokes, and links to all your favourite games, quizzes, songs, stories and websites."
Online worksheet generators
There are lots of sites that offer an online worksheet generation service. You follow a set of instructions and input data, and the site outputs a document you can download and save.
Puzzlemaker
Based at the Discovery education site, you can make many types of activity; word search, crosswords, mazes and so on. It is easy and quick to use and the results are offered in a printable format.
ESL-Kids
Has an excellent worksheet wizard that includes some attractive graphics
ESL Worksheet wizard
This dedicated ESL website offers some wizards for activity types specifically targeted at language teachers; sorting into categories, scrambled word, matching pairs
Tools for educators
Offers a massive variety of different exercise types for download and printing; dice, bingo, board games using a flashcard clipart library, dominoes, tracings, certificates.
Teach-nology worksheets
Teach-nology offers a wide range of pre-made worksheets for download and some tools for creating your own.
Worksheet works
This site has lots of worksheets in many subject areas, including some useful and attractive material for English Language teaching.
TeacherDirect
Offers a wordsearch creation tool.
Schoolhouse Tech
Offer commercial software (competitively priced from just $49) They also have a free wordsearch puzzle generator
Classroom materials maker
This site specialises in online creation of the sort of documents useful for teachers on an every day basis for organising their teaching: schedulers, planners, reports, lesson plans, teacher-learner contracts etc
Teacher's pet
This versatile plug-in for Word is a free download that you can use to create puzzles, exercises, quizzes and other worksheets on your PC.
And finally, a couple of links to sites that generate online quizzes: curriculum webs and edict.
Puzzlemaker
Based at the Discovery education site, you can make many types of activity; word search, crosswords, mazes and so on. It is easy and quick to use and the results are offered in a printable format.
ESL-Kids
Has an excellent worksheet wizard that includes some attractive graphics
ESL Worksheet wizard
This dedicated ESL website offers some wizards for activity types specifically targeted at language teachers; sorting into categories, scrambled word, matching pairs
Tools for educators
Offers a massive variety of different exercise types for download and printing; dice, bingo, board games using a flashcard clipart library, dominoes, tracings, certificates.
Teach-nology worksheets
Teach-nology offers a wide range of pre-made worksheets for download and some tools for creating your own.
Worksheet works
This site has lots of worksheets in many subject areas, including some useful and attractive material for English Language teaching.
TeacherDirect
Offers a wordsearch creation tool.
Schoolhouse Tech
Offer commercial software (competitively priced from just $49) They also have a free wordsearch puzzle generator
Classroom materials maker
This site specialises in online creation of the sort of documents useful for teachers on an every day basis for organising their teaching: schedulers, planners, reports, lesson plans, teacher-learner contracts etc
Teacher's pet
This versatile plug-in for Word is a free download that you can use to create puzzles, exercises, quizzes and other worksheets on your PC.
And finally, a couple of links to sites that generate online quizzes: curriculum webs and edict.
Spelling activities
One of the great things about the web these days is the possibility for you, the teacher, or your learners, to input information which is then processed and output as a custom activity.
Imagine you have been teaching vocabulary based around a topic and it's time to go to the computer room. The following activities allow your students to practice the words online.
Look cover
This is a variation of the traditional spelling revision game. You can ask your students to input their own word lists, perhaps copying them from a worksheet or from the board. They then have a few seconds to look at each word, before it is covered. They then practice typing the words, and check them by comparing what they have typed to the model. The interface is very clean neat, simple and the basic activity is highly adaptable.
Spelling city
This site gives you the option to input words and then choose whether the machine is going to teach the words via flashcards, test your knowledge, or reassemble the words into a game. It is all very engaging and attractive. The site spells and pronounces the words you input, providing good pronunciation and listening practice too. Go ahead and try putting in a list of 5 animals and then explore the different options.
And check out the fantastic spin and spell A pronouncing picture dictionary with spelling practice included.
Imagine you have been teaching vocabulary based around a topic and it's time to go to the computer room. The following activities allow your students to practice the words online.
Look cover
This is a variation of the traditional spelling revision game. You can ask your students to input their own word lists, perhaps copying them from a worksheet or from the board. They then have a few seconds to look at each word, before it is covered. They then practice typing the words, and check them by comparing what they have typed to the model. The interface is very clean neat, simple and the basic activity is highly adaptable.
Spelling city
This site gives you the option to input words and then choose whether the machine is going to teach the words via flashcards, test your knowledge, or reassemble the words into a game. It is all very engaging and attractive. The site spells and pronounces the words you input, providing good pronunciation and listening practice too. Go ahead and try putting in a list of 5 animals and then explore the different options.
And check out the fantastic spin and spell A pronouncing picture dictionary with spelling practice included.
Oxford University Press online activities
Here are some links to online activities for primary age learners offered by the Oxford University Press:
Click on the images to visit the sites.
Top class has games and activities for younger learners.
The new 6-level primary course with lessons based around exciting "Surprise" packages to capture students' imagination. Starter to Pre-Intermediate
A versatile and innovative five-level course which encourages children to develop as learners and to use their English in the classroom context. Beginner to Elementary
A six-level course that gives children more vocabulary, more reading, and more lessons than other primary courses. Your pupils will definitely learn more!
Polly, Jack, Quizzy and Ziggy invite your students to take part in a range of practice activities and games.
Ruby, Spike, Tina, Rodney and Otto invite you to take part in a range of practice activities and games.
Bulldog and friends invite you to take part in a wide range of practice activities and games.
Lots of games and activities based around the Galaxy title.
More fun and games for young learners.
All of the OUP student pages are collected here
Click on the images to visit the sites.
Top class has games and activities for younger learners.
The new 6-level primary course with lessons based around exciting "Surprise" packages to capture students' imagination. Starter to Pre-Intermediate
A versatile and innovative five-level course which encourages children to develop as learners and to use their English in the classroom context. Beginner to Elementary
A six-level course that gives children more vocabulary, more reading, and more lessons than other primary courses. Your pupils will definitely learn more!
Polly, Jack, Quizzy and Ziggy invite your students to take part in a range of practice activities and games.
Ruby, Spike, Tina, Rodney and Otto invite you to take part in a range of practice activities and games.
Bulldog and friends invite you to take part in a wide range of practice activities and games.
Lots of games and activities based around the Galaxy title.
More fun and games for young learners.
All of the OUP student pages are collected here
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Professional Development
The internetcan help you to stay up to date professionally. Sites designed for the international English teaching community provide information about books and materials, online and offline resources, jobs, training opportunities and so on.
On line newsletters and magazines are also great places to find and subscribe to mailing lists, discussion groups and bulletin boards.
Many sites offer regular e-mail services, posting lesson plans and resource materials directly to your inbox - materials that you can store and catalogue on your own hard drive.
The British Council runs a number of excellent EFL websites, all of which offer teachers the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the profession, join discussion groups and find training and development opportunities:
BRITISH COUNCIL TRAINING
BRITISH COUNCIL RESOURCES
BRITISH COUNCIL THINK
BRITISH COUNCIL YOUNG LEARNERS
A link to the UK Guardian TEFL section:
EDUCATION GUARDIAN TEFL
Some sites (professional associations and high quality magazines) may involve paying a subscription fee in order to gain full access to all the materials available:
TESOL HOMEPAGE
THE EL GAZETTE
IATEFL
IATEFL (YOUNG LEARNERS SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP)
ET PROFESSIONAL
ESL MAGAZINE
Bulletin Boards and Mailing Lists are great places to get tips. Check out the examples below:
ESL NEWS MESSAGE BOARDS
DEVELOPING TEACHER
ELT Academic Research can be carried out at:
ITESL JOURNAL
Or via the:
GOOGLE ACADEMIC SEARCH
Your Own Discussion Groups or Forums
We will look at how you can configure your own discussion groups - both for teachers and learner project work, at:
GOOGLE GROUPS
Once I have your e-mail addresses, I will make you members of a group by invitation . We can develop discussions and try to answer questions there between sessions.
On line newsletters and magazines are also great places to find and subscribe to mailing lists, discussion groups and bulletin boards.
Many sites offer regular e-mail services, posting lesson plans and resource materials directly to your inbox - materials that you can store and catalogue on your own hard drive.
The British Council runs a number of excellent EFL websites, all of which offer teachers the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the profession, join discussion groups and find training and development opportunities:
BRITISH COUNCIL TRAINING
BRITISH COUNCIL RESOURCES
BRITISH COUNCIL THINK
BRITISH COUNCIL YOUNG LEARNERS
A link to the UK Guardian TEFL section:
EDUCATION GUARDIAN TEFL
Some sites (professional associations and high quality magazines) may involve paying a subscription fee in order to gain full access to all the materials available:
TESOL HOMEPAGE
THE EL GAZETTE
IATEFL
IATEFL (YOUNG LEARNERS SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP)
ET PROFESSIONAL
ESL MAGAZINE
Bulletin Boards and Mailing Lists are great places to get tips. Check out the examples below:
ESL NEWS MESSAGE BOARDS
DEVELOPING TEACHER
ELT Academic Research can be carried out at:
ITESL JOURNAL
Or via the:
GOOGLE ACADEMIC SEARCH
Your Own Discussion Groups or Forums
We will look at how you can configure your own discussion groups - both for teachers and learner project work, at:
GOOGLE GROUPS
Once I have your e-mail addresses, I will make you members of a group by invitation . We can develop discussions and try to answer questions there between sessions.
Powerpoint & Slideshare Slideshows
Below is a link to an excellent site for learning PowerPoint - good for both teachers and learners:
POWERPOINT TUTORIAL
Check out this simple SlideShare Presentation:
POWERPOINT TUTORIAL
Check out this simple SlideShare Presentation:
Fruit
View more presentations from Crok.
This was created in Powerpoint, published on Slideshare and embedded into the blog. This way you can make attractive slideshows. some ideas are:
- TEACHER BLOG: Create a photo-story with your digital camera, make a Powerpoint, upload to Slideshare and display it on the blog. (This could include a record of a field trip or school concert, a display of children´s drawings, a seasonal project etc)
- LEARNER BLOG: Take photos to represent a story, write captions in Powerpoint and upload it to Slideshare. (You could also use internet photos and create topic-based projects: "My favourite things" - "Animals" - "Dinosaurs" - "Space" etc)
- VOCABULARY: Powerpoint can make attractive flashcards using your photos or photos from the web. A flashcard slideshow can help your learners to revise the words.
- SIMPLE AUDIO-VISUAL STORIES: Slideshare allows you to narrate your Powerpoint, so you can add an extra dimension to your slideshow presentation with audio narration.
- REMEMBER: Many presentations already available on Slideshare are shared publically, so you can search the site and embed work of interest by other contributors.
Course documentation
Here you have links to the documentation for the first session:
Course programme
Search skills
Introduction to blogging
Course programme
Search skills
Introduction to blogging
Welcome!
This page is an example of just how quick and easy it is nowadays to create and maintain a public web space without having to understand servers, html coding or anything particularly technical. This page is a blog, or weblog, created at a site called blogger in less than half an hour, completely free of charge.
During the course, you will set up your own blog, add pictures and text, links and so on, offering opportunities for your students and/or colleagues to contribute to web based discussion groups and other web based communicative activities.
We will also use this page as a launching pad to reach essential links for sections of the course, and for you to begin the research for your projects.
Of course, as you can see, you are also free to submit comments and observations on the material that appears on this page.
Welcome aboard and hope you enjoy the course!
David
During the course, you will set up your own blog, add pictures and text, links and so on, offering opportunities for your students and/or colleagues to contribute to web based discussion groups and other web based communicative activities.
We will also use this page as a launching pad to reach essential links for sections of the course, and for you to begin the research for your projects.
Of course, as you can see, you are also free to submit comments and observations on the material that appears on this page.
Welcome aboard and hope you enjoy the course!
David
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Top 10 Google Tips
Instead of just typing in a phrase and going through page after page of results, there are a number of ways to make your Google searches more efficient.
Either/or.
Google normally searches for pages that contain all the words you type in the search box, but if you want pages that have one term or another (or both), use OR: english OR primary OR resources
Quote marks.
If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes. ["efl grammar worksheets"] will only find that exact phrase. [efl "grammar worksheets"] will find pages that contain the word efl and the exact phrase "grammar worksheets".
Not.
If you don't want a term or phrase, use the "-" symbol. [-grammar worksheets printables] will return pages that contain "worksheets" and "printables" but that don't contain "grammar".
Wildcard.
The "*" symbol is a wildcard. This is useful if you're trying to find the lyrics to a song, but can't remember the exact lyrics. [can't * me love lyrics] will return the Beatles song you're looking for. It's also useful for finding stuff only in certain domains, such as
educational information: ["esl methodology" research *.edu].
Definitions.
Use the "define:" operator to get a quick definition. [define:morphosyntax] will give you a whole host of definitions from different sources, with links.
Site-specific.
Use the "site:" to search only within a certain website. [site:eltpamplona.blogspot.com activities] will search for the term "activities" only within this blog.
Music.
"music:" returns content related to music only.
File types.
If you just want to search for .PDF files, or Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets, for example, use "filetype:"
Location of term.
By default, Google searches for your term throughout a web page. But if you just want it to search certain locations, you can use operators such as "inurl:", "intitle:", "intext:" Those search for a term only within the URL, the title and the body text.
Life beyond Google...
Here are some links to sites that offer an interesting twist on web searching: the sites are less well-known, but can save a lot of time if you are searching for specific resources:
Software search
This engine allows you to search for useful software, mostly freeware and shareware.
Categorized search
Yoozila filters the results into social, video, blog, news and other categories.
PDF Search
A specialist seach engine that looks for downloadable pdf files
Sound Search
A site that specialises in finding sound effects freely available on the web
Image globe
This is an innovative and interesting image search engine
Multiple Search Engine
Sputtr promises to search multiple search engines simultaneously
MultiSearch
Ms Freckles is another multi search utility with an attractive interface.
Encyclopaedia Style Search
Factbites offers what it claims is a more "human" approach to searching.
Software search
This engine allows you to search for useful software, mostly freeware and shareware.
Categorized search
Yoozila filters the results into social, video, blog, news and other categories.
PDF Search
A specialist seach engine that looks for downloadable pdf files
Sound Search
A site that specialises in finding sound effects freely available on the web
Image globe
This is an innovative and interesting image search engine
Multiple Search Engine
Sputtr promises to search multiple search engines simultaneously
MultiSearch
Ms Freckles is another multi search utility with an attractive interface.
Encyclopaedia Style Search
Factbites offers what it claims is a more "human" approach to searching.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Music Links
Here are a set of links to children's music pages. Most of these sites offer lyrics and music in midi format. Midi uses the computer's music synthesizer to play the songs. In midi format, songs are always "karaoke" - the synthesizer cannot emulate the human voice.
This can work as an advantage rather than a drawback, as the children can sing the song without interference from the original singer.
Unfortunately, Midi files will not play on a CD player if you copy them directly to CD without changing the file format. (You will still need a computer in your classroom to play the music.)
You can, however, change the format. To transfer Midi to CD, you have various options. One is to connect the audio out of your computer to the audio in of your CD player, and record the track in real time. Another option is to convert the midi file to a CD format (wma/wav etc) and then burn the new file to CD.
Many computers nowadays have a recording device, so you can play and record the file simultaneously over the internet.
LINKS
There is some useful methodological advice on using songs at the British Council.
You can use MIDI SEARCH to help you locate song files.
LINK SITES
Many internet sites dedicate a lot of space to links to other sites. These links are often organised and classified in directory style. As we discussed in the session on searching, using this type of site with pre-evaluated links can be useful for busy teachers who do not want to spend time getting Google to work for them.
A few examples are given below.
A few examples are given below.
ABOUT DOT COM
THE HOLIDAY ZONE
INTERNET TESL JOURNAL
ESL HQ
TESOL MAX
ESL CAFE LINKS
RONG CHANG
ESL DESK
USING ENGLISH
Again, tracking down these link compendium sites is a matter of refining and focusing your search skills. For the results above, I used the following search:
"ESL Links" children
You could try a lot of variations:
"EFL links" children
"EFL links" "young learners"
"ESOL links" kids
When you find a good links site, remember to bookmark it, and then bookmark the individual sites you find when navigating from the links site. Very quickly, you will find that you have a good number of high quality, reliable sites available to help you with preparing and supplementing classroom activity.
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