POD-EFL

Today is the official start of TESOL’s Electronic Village Online (EVO2007) , which is an annual event of free workshops run by volunteers and open to educators from all over the globe. This is my third time as a session moderator - I keep coming back for more!

Proceedings kicked off grandly with a World Bridges webcast, which can be heard at http://webheadsinaction.org/

There are a total of active 13 sessions this year, in what promises to be a fun and lively 6 weeks (The sessions run until February 25th).

Personally, I’m involved in three of the sessions. The Digital Gaming & Language Learning one will be looking at all aspects of gaming and language learning, and includes an optional module focusing on Second Life, which promises to be very active, and we have started a wiki, where most of our collaborative efforts will end up. I’ll be moderating this with Nicholas Noakes, who is based in Hong Kong, and Rita Zeinstejer, in Argentina.

I’m also co-moderating the Open Webpublishing EVO session, but not until week 4. Before then, Bee (Barbara Dieu) and Patricia Glogowski will be leading the way, concentrating on blogs, wikis and other non-audio Web 2.0 tools for teachers. The last half of the session will concentrate on podcasting, and I’ll be co-moderating that with Nicholas Noakes and Scott Lockman.

Finally, I’m also going to be helping out with the Webcast Academy EVO, which will look at live, interactive webcasting. this is something I’m involved with at EFL Bridges, one of the World Bridges community sites. Jeff Lebow is at the helm of this session, with Vance Stevens, Lee Baber, and other Webcast Academy graduates and internees helping out. The Webheads in Action site will be one of the homes of this EVO, and there is also a Webcast Academy Yahoo Group too. These are just a few of the sessions that are going on - EVO is always a great meeting of minds and full of people who are very giving and willing to learn from each other - make the most of the opportunity if you think you have time. I’m sure you won’t regret it.

Via Joe Dale’s wonderful blog, comes news of two Foreign Language podcasts from a school in Aberdeen, Scotland that have been designed to help students with homework: Bienvenue and Hallo (in French and German respectively).

The advice given about how to use podcasts to help learn vocabulary includes:

• using the audio as a pronunciation model for for vocabulary they have already come across
• to revise vocabulary by writing down meanings in the pauses between words or phrases
• as a subliminal learning tool (just by listening to the podcast, students will start processing the language)

In another post on Joe’s blog, he reproduces feedback from a pupil of another Scottish school’s podcasting project (this time a primary school):
‘In French it is fun using the iPods. We get to listen to the French from the computer and do worksheets.This is more fun than doing work in class. French is my best thing at school.’

Thanks to Alan Levine’s Cogdogblog for this tip:

PodPress is a plug-in for generating iTunes ready feeds from WordPress. I haven’t tried it out yet as I’ve just started to get back into using this blog, but it has a built in player and the first impression is good.

I have been looking at an RSS reader called Netvibes with the view to use it in a class situation. Netvibes differs from Bloglines in that it displays the RSS feeds, and other widgets such as weather, flickr photos, del.icio.us tags, etc. in the form of a desktop or noticeboard.

I think it is far more user-friendly than Bloglines, and am about ready to introduce it to one group of students to see how they get on with it.
Here is the way I envision using it with students:

i) Set up one account for a class and arrange the page to display links to resources you want the students to be able to read (blogs, newspapers, other sites) and listen to (links to podcasts).

ii) You have to login to Netvibes to be able to use it. I have tried logging into the same account simultaneously and it works. So, you can have one class login. I would ask the students to use this from home - it could be used as a class online noticeboard, and the students could be encouraged to listen to podcasts, read blogs, and also leave notes for people using this system.

this is to test the audio player plug-in