Link to Teaching English Resources.

This link provides  information about a number of resources that can support teaching English. http://www.teachthought.com/learning/50-incredibly-useful-links-for-ell-educators/

Curation and sharing of information

Scoopit is an excellent tool for searching the internet and finding websites that are related to particular topics. You can create a topic for your own scoops and you can also follow other peoples scoops. Using automated searching, the site will check a selected range of sites and automatically identify articles.sites that may be of interest.

Examples:

http://www.scoop.it/t/teaching-and-learning-by-karenpinney
http://www.scoop.it/t/flipped-classroom-by-karenpinney

Screencasting is the recording of a computer screen (with voice over) as a video that can be shared and made available on the internet. There are lots of free and paid for tools you can use - a few are listed below.  

Screenr Screenr is very simple web based software that enables users to record their computer screen with voice over which can then be saved and shared with others.

Screencast-o-MaticScreen recording software Screencast-o-Matic enables users to record their computer screen and upload the recording to the internet. You can add captions to the video, share it, upload it to YouTube or save the video as an MP4, AVI, or flash video.

CamStudio (Windows) – Free Windows only, open-source, screencasting software. It is easy to use, good if you just want a quick recording from your screen

Productivity: Evernote

There are a lot of different online tools that can be used to support everyday tasks. 

Evernote developers, on their website say, "When we launched Evernote into public beta in June of 2008, we had two crazy goals: create an external brain that makes everyone smarter, and build a hundred year startup. Hard to believe that it’s been five years since that day!" 

Evernote enables users to save documents, internet sites, text, tweets, voice recordings etc in one place. This tool enables users to create notebooks (file areas) that information can be stored in and to tag the files saved for later searching and retrieval. Notebooks can be shared with others electronically. There are both free and premium versions of this tool and apps for mobile use too.

Scoop.it

Scoop.it lets you identify a topic you are intereste in and will search the internet for related information. It allows you to scoop what you find interesting into your personalised informationsite which you can share. Great for creating topic related 'newspapers' online.

Educaplay

Educaplay enables you to create Multimedia Teaching Activities You can create lots of different teaching activities (riddles, crosswords, wordsearch, jumbled sentences, matching, quizzes and more) and does not need any specific software apart from a web browser with flash plugin.

Evernote

I confess that I have not visited and updated this blog for a while and one of the reasons for this is my discovery of Evernote. This is a tool that can be used to store any information and group related ideas in notebooks or relate adn search for them using tags. Whatebver you want to record, you can do it using this tool. Evernote can be downloaded to a PC onto a smartphone or used on the web. This makes it even more useful - you can access your work wherever you are. You can even share your notebooks with interested others if you want.

Screen Toaster - Screen Capture

I have previously mentioned tools for screen capture. Screen Toaster is yet another tool that can record what is on your screen with audio voice over. This tool is entirely online and easy to use. The site permits users to record then store the video (webcast) online either publically or with access via a URL. There is also the offer to download the video as a .mov or .swf file or to upload to YouTube or ScreenToaster.

Screen Capture - Jing

I have mentioned screen capture tools in the past but JING is another free alternative. Easy to use, you need to download the software to your computer and register for an account then set an area of your screen that you want to capture and record your screen. Once finished you can upload this to the Jing server and you will be sent a URL to access the video at any time.

Wikis

This weeks blog is about Wikis. A wiki is a website that facilitates the creation and editing of linked webppages. These are often used by groups of people for collaborative work.

There is a wealth of wiki software available and I do not propose to say which is the best merely to an example and highlight some uses for these.

One popular and easy to use site which provides wikis is Wetpaint.com which is free to use. Although advertisements are placed on wetpaint wikis, these can be removed from education sites. Wetpaint has links to some sample wikis for education which can provide examples of how these can be used. I particularly liked the Knowledge Media which has some interesting links.

Interactive resources

Classtools.net was created and is maintained by Russel Tarr, Head of History at the International School in Toulouse. This site provides free, customisable templates which users can edit to create educational games and activities and then these can then be embedded into blogs and websites.

Click here for full screen version

Screencast.com (resource hosting)

Alongside the need to create teaching resources, there is also the requriement for file storage that can be used to access these resources on demand. Screencast.com offers this facility. Created by TechSmith, Screencast.com provides free online hosting for screencasts, videos, images and documents. Users can control how, when and to whom their content is distributed. Definitely worth trying if you have limited storage space. A free account provides 2GB storage and 2GB monthly bandwidth or if you want more from it there is the option to pay $9.95 for 25 GB and 200GB monthly bandwidth.

Fastone Capture (Screen Capture and more)

Some time ago I discused Snippy which allows you to take a snapshot of a selected part of the screen. Fastone Capture is an alternative (freeware) screen capture programme. In addition to copying the screen this software enables the user to further edit it by adding lines, arrows, shapes and text, captions, pictures, croping, rotating and to zooming in and out. This is particularly worth exploring if you may need to produce documentation based on screen views.

Flowgram - interactive presentations

Flowgram combines the functionality of screencasts and slide presentations with an interactive experience for the user.

It allows users to mix video, audio, text, presentations, photos, and web pages and then to add voice recording and annotation. These views are presented in a similar way to a slideshow presentation except that viewers can interact with any of the pages by clicking on links, and playing and pausing videos.

Snippy & Screen Prints

Copying the image from your screen can be done by using the Print Screen key on the keyboard and you can then paste the screen image into a document.

However if you just want a small part of the screen to be copied, you can use Snippy. Snippy is a small programme which youc an save to your computer. By clicking on the snippy icon in the toolbar you start the programme which enables you to draw with your mouse around the section of the screen you want to copy. This is copied to the clipboard and can be pasted into a document.

Task Management Tools Online

Remember the Milk is an online task management tool which helps you to manage and keep track of your tasks quickly and easily. I have come across this many times as a recommended site over the last few months and finally decided to add it to this blog. A free hosted service which offers fee based upgrades to additional services, Remember the Milk enables you to manage and organise tasks, recieve reminders to you email, SMS or Instant Messanger, locate tasks on a map, share to do lists and much more. If you do not have these facilities on your mobile phone or PDA, this is worth checking out.

Survey Monkey

If you wish to conduct surveys (either for student feedback or as part of classes) SurveyMonkey is a really good survey site. You can design your own survey, selecting from a range of question types, and make it available online for people to complete by emailng a link or adding a link to your website. It will then summarise your results and enable you to analyse them in a number of ways.

This site offers a free basic service but you can upgrade for additional features.

Online File Storage

If you are like me, you are likely to find yourself working from more than one computer location and so accessing files at these different locations requires the use of a disk or memory stick. However, it is possible to store your files online so these can be accessed from anywhere with internet access. Kevin Purdy offers a good list of possible online storage sites with a feature comparison chart on the Lifehacker site.

Screen Video

CamStudio software can be downloaded free and will enable you to create a video of activity on your computer screen with audio. I have used this to demonstrate how software can be used to analyse data to support some of my teaching but there are many uses for this screen capture software.

How Stuff Works

A great site for inquisitive minds is "How Stuff Works". You can use this website to learn how pretty much anything works with straightforward explanations and videos to help you understand. If you cannot understand or need a clear way to explain something to others it is worth looking it up on this site.