Tagged: englishcentral

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“Functional” Videos

Language functions are a great way to focus student learning on communication. Showing students and having students study examples of language in use, language used to actually do and accomplish and communicate is a great methodology. EnglishCentral now has many videos focused on all the...

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Kinetic Typography Generator

I’ve long been a fan of KT – Kinetic Typography, videos where the text is displayed in a “contextual” and visually appealing fashion. Find Here or many of my favs, all collected for teachers to use. This one is a beautiful example. Made with Adobe...

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All my “tech”books

I like the term “tech”books. I’ve been busy the last couple of years creating lots of free books for teachers, books meant to bypass the clutter of the textbook vultures out there. Kind of born of my angst against how textbook culture (and it is...

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Hitler Reacts to poor language teaching

I’ve previously blogged about the “Hitler Reacts” series of remixes. It’s a great activity for students and I finally got to making my own video remix, about textbooks. Here it is. Thoughts welcomed and I’ll comment more later and relate more about how I feel...

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Listening Practice Made Easy

Listening is a very under taught skill by almost every teacher. It really should be a focus and is such an important part of language learning. I’ve written a popular post offering a lot of suggestions on how to do this – however I can’t...

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“Listen In” to student audio

This week, EnglishCentral released their “Listen In” feature. Now, not only can students “speak” youtube videos, teachers can also listen in and provide assessment and feedback to their students. I’m not going to outline how to access this. Just register as a teacher, sign up...

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My Perfect Classroom

{ I originally published this in Barbara Sakamoto’s wonderful blog – Teaching Village. I revive it here because I think its message is pertinent and important. } “The problem with our profession is that there is too much teaching and not enough learning”. I said...

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Extensive Watching

The last few years, I’ve been very focused on the role and possibility of video in the classroom. Thus, my recent work developing Gif Lingua and EnglishCentral and my focus on the potential of a “Flipped Classroom“. I had an interesting skype discussion with Dan...

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The Video Teaching Revolution

My work over the years has brought me into thinking heavily about the role of video in language instruction.  I saw its power as a university T.A. – tramping around the campus showing heavy “reels” of film to mesmerized classes. I wouldn’t go so far...

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On and Off (line) materials

Part of my job as a materials developer and consultant involves thinking through the role, purpose and process of combining online and offline learning. How do you link what physically happens in the class with what is possible online? Where are the borders? How to...

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Teaching Online – some tips….

I’ve been doing lots of work with EnglishCentral – helping them develop strong teacher tools and support. Slow but sure! (and if you have used EnglishCentral as a teacher – fill out our survey and get an incredible coursebook for your few minutes of time!)...

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Using Technology to teach Speaking

I recorded my talk at the recent KOTESOL National Conference – Getting Students Speaking: Harnessing the Power of New Technologies. It’s a pretty comprehensive overview of online tools and technologies. Here’s the presentation of only the websites (click the images to go to that website)....