My students enjoyed Dvolver website

Here are two of my students 'dialogues:

http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-907579

http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-907652

They are 9 th graders .
 The assignment was :
Create a dialogue between two characters . They are two friends who are exchanging their opinion about the new school year , their new friends and the new school .

 Write questions in English  (at least four )

They loved doing this mini movie and were very proud of what they had done

But I have a problem : How to correct them ?
I do not have access to what they wrote and going through the 26 of them individually is too time consuming .
If you have ideas , I would be very grateful !

Week 3 and its load of new weblinks !

Week 3 already!
Just before starting to write my report today I read David Garcia 's blog . David seems overwhelmed by the huge quantity of ideas , web links etc..we receive every week .
I also have the same feeling specially on Monday when I discover the infinite number of links we are given access to and we have to work on .
I do hope we will have the possibility to go over all these links after the end of the course to study them more thoroughly .
We need to "digest" the enormous quantity of information.

Anyway , It is Tuesday and I have already opened my delicious account , I have put some links , I have read some articles about CALL and I went through a number of websites to teach oral skills such as www.esl.about.com where I found a quiz on national stereotype that I am going to use with one of my classes.
But I also found proverbs board games in www.esl-galaxy.com and my TOP , number one site for the week : vocaroo in the classroom . I love it ! so easy !

The more I go on the internet , the more I want to go and stay longer each time ....It seems as if you are attracted to it and I start understanding the teenagers who are addicted to it.
However my job and my private life help me to control the time spent on the computer but it is the first time in my life that I am sitting in front of my computer for such a  long time !
Am I becoming a geek ?

This week starts with an avalanche of websites to look at , documents to read . I am very impressed by the quantity and the quality of the information we are given. I have already participated in" improve your teaching "courses in England or in France but I have never received so many well-thought advice ,efficient  ideas ,and varied information as we are offered in this course .

It is also the first time for me to follow an E.course , I mean being taught through the internet . I guess it is one of the reason why we are given access to so many documents ,which is good and overwhelming at the same time !Yet, I miss the one to one real contact with teachers or our supervisor ( Even if Sean is always present and active through mails). I sometimes would like to have the opportunity to exchange , to discuss "live"and  not  thanks to the mails .

 

Anyway ,I am very interested in having the opportunity to follow this course and I learn something new everyday . A new site , a new teaching approach reading the blogs of my colleagues . We have so many different conditions of teaching !

I really enjoy reading your blogs and I talk about what I discovered with my colleagues in my school . I am sharing what I learned with them . It opens us to new ideas , new teaching approaches.

 

Let 's go back to my aims for the week now: I looked at a few  websites to search infos about Ellis Island.

As I explained in nicenet , I am going to work with a class of 12th graders who are preparing their "baccalaureat" : the end of high school diploma in France .

We are working on "mythical places" in the USA .

I went on different websites : American memory (too long to find complete infos , not clear enough for me ) then I went on library and archival exhibitions on the net which led me to ellis island .org and then ellis island timeline which I found very useful , well organised and clear

and finally wikipedia : ellis island (wikipedia is one of my favourite site !)

Some students will have to read these two pages and sum up the content to present it to the rest of the class.

A second group will watch a video on you tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hlHGDw14JZ8

and will have to share what they heard with the first group and then we will start a debate on immigration in the US nowadays .

I may ask them to open a blog each to put complementary infos they will find on the net so they will be able to share their knowledge on the subject . It would be a sort of copycat of what we are doing with our blogs.

I may also ask them to present their mythical place in the US: a place they have heard of or admire. 

They will use videos , power point , photos etc....and will make an oral presentation to the class.

As you must have understood , my students need to have learn a lot of facts about the American culture an history for their exam so instead of using the book only we will use new tools (I guess new for me but certainly not for them !)

I have been browsing "the documents"we have been given , I mean the blogs , websites etc...and I have found two interesting websites I would like to share with you :

  1- Demunca website :http://dvmunca.blogspot.com/
where you can find http://www.dvolver.com/live/home.html , for students to make their own film and which seems very interesting for teenage students .
I have decided to try it with my 9th grade pupils next week and I will let you know how it worked out.

  2-Julia Koifman' s blog in which she tells us about using" you tube" to help students like poetry . It seems very interesting .

I know it is the right way to take but it requires a lot of questionning , re-assessing  my way of teaching since the pupils are more and more demanding and very quickly bored and uninterested in what is presented to them .

Learning the technique , discovering the new tools , adapting my teaching ....a real revolution for me but I know it is the route to take .
Thank you for your help!

I am so happy I managed to create this blog !
It is a total discovery for me even if it seems ridiculous !
I had heard about blogs before but had never used one or even create one !!
I am still wondering how I could use it with my students as it is so new for me . I am thinking about it .
New horizons seem to appear ahead ....to be continued

hello to my new colleagues from Toulouse , France