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Hello everyone! This is my first post in nearly two weeks. My apologies for that - my life is a little upside down at the moment. Along with my usually large load of lesson planning, I’ve got several big projects on the go (remind me to say no to some next time!) and to top all of it off, I’ve moved house, which, by the time the whole process is done will have taken way too long! My husband is moving back to Melbourne for work, and I’m staying here in Warrnambool until the end of the year. So, to make life a little less lonely I have moved in with my very good friend and colleague, Bec. The cat and I are settling in well

I am heading to Melbourne and back twice in the next week so no rest just yet. But will endeavour to write some technoLOTE posts! I’ve got to keep up with my own IWB Challenge… Hopefully next week there will be some ’still’ time for me!

I’ll write again soon!

Here we got for the next installment as part of the IWB Challenge. this week has been a little bit insane and I’ve barely been in the classroom. Monday was my only full day this week (with a strike day, China program meeting day and project planning day) and so I have not spent much time with the SMART Board. I still have got two things to report on though, so let’s get to it:

1. As I mentioned last week, I introduced my students to Google Earth via the SMART Board. On Tuesday afternoon I had grade 2 and seeing as half of them (there are only 12 in the class - fabulous) got to have a go at ’spinning to world’ last week, the other half wanted to have their turn. So, that’s what we did, and here is a video of some of our tour. We started off at our school which you can see if you look closely enough The kids love getting up close to the earth and they love ‘throwing it’ as you can see them doing here:

So far we have just been feeling our way around Google Earth and even though we have checked out some key places in China, we haven’t really used it as an integral part of a learning activity, so I’m keeping it in mind to do that.

2. The second way I used the board this week was not by getting the kids to produce something, but by using the SMART Recorder to make two videos to introduce the characters for ‘you’ and ‘me’ to the students. I have put these videos on the Video Lessons page of technoChinese, our class blog and the kids can watch them, and then create a recording of their own so I can see their attempt at writing characters. Some of my students watched these videos on the SMART Board itself, while others watched on the PCs in the classroom. SMART Notebook software is installed on all of the computers in my room, so my students could create their recordings without having to use the SMART Board itself. Here is one of the videos I made. Watch here to learn how to read and write the Chinese character for ‘you.’

Next week I’d really like to use SMART Video Player to its full potential and create some interactive activities that promote deeper thinking about Chinese characters. I want to model these activities and then get the students to create their own interactive lessons for other classes.

Related posts:

Weekly Whiteboard Workout 2

Wednesday Whiteboard Workout

SMART Board Ideas Videos

The Great IWB Challenge - it’s on!

Me, a SMART Board, and some language teaching - a commitment

Tags: googleearth, IWB, SMART recorder, SMARTBoard

Yes, you read it correctly. technoChinese Eurovision is on its way. I have joined the Alternative Eurovision Song Contest for Schools which is a fabulous idea and now and ning network created by the one and only Jo Rhys-Jones. Jo also runs the Talkabout Primay MFL ning which is a great network to be part of.

For the Alternative Eurovision contest a new task is set each week and each participating class represents a different country - we’ve chosen China - and submits their completed task. Whatever the tasks are, I’m sure there will lots of music, singing and daggy costumes involved. I have never really paid much attention to Eurovision before, but I do know what it is, and this could all get very very very silly - which I think is brilliant! Can’t wait to see what the first task will be.

Tags: eurovision, jo rhys-jones, Ning

Here are two short videos that I made yesterday (recorded with a digital camera) that show how I use my iPod with its voice recorder in my class as a tool for recording students spoken work. Well, I really should say how my students use my iPod with its recorder, because even though I changed the display language to Chinese, they still want to get their hands all over it.

The voice recorder I bought to go with the iPod is an XtremeMac Micromemo for around $60.

This first one is me giving a brief explanation of how it works:

and this second one is of one of my students using it to record himself saying ‘My name is…’ in Chinese.

The great thing is that once the students have completed their recordings, I have it on my iPod and can listen to it later (or on the spot with the built in speaker) and quickly put the recordings onto my computer without having to save it to the right network drive and having trouble with saving. All that can be dealt with after class, making it a really easy and tidy way to grab a recording quickly in class.

My trusty iPod and its fabulous accessory which has quickly become one of my favourites as a language teacher, also accompanies me each Friday lunch time as I head out on yard duty to ask the kids the Friday Vox Pop question of the week.

Related posts:

iPod, mLearn, oCool!

iGo, uGo, weGo - Mogopop your iPod and 5 other mLearning ideas

Tags: ipod, voice