Traveloteacher

Yesterday evening this tweet  grabbed my attention and it brought me to an amazing lesson which I did in my class today. The author is Ian James , a teacher with fantastic ideas and great lesson plans. What would you do.... if you came across these videos? is a lesson on 2nd conditional in a completely different and very real kind of way. And it came as if on cue, because I've just finished the conditionals with my students. What's more, I'm their classroom  teacher (something of an advisor or home room teacher) and we've been discussing bullying and violent behaviour among teenagers quite a lot lately and the video that we saw this morning triggered an interesting discussion on teen dating violence - during which they used 2nd conditional without noticing that they were actually practising a grammatical concept. Following Ian's suggestion, my students will watch one of these thought-provoking videos at home and next time they'll role-play different ...

Last week I had a great privilege to attend the 2nd ISTEK ELT conference in Istanbul. Upon coming back I wanted to write a blog post about it, but then I thought Prezi might be a bit more convenient for me to say what it was like. ISTEK ELT Conference on Prezi

Quite a few members of my PLN spent the last weekend at a conference in Paris. I couldn't be there with them, (I strongly believe the time will come when I too will go to a conference and meet my PLN:-) but now I'm enjoying reading their reflections on their very special tweet-ups and the fabulous TESOL conference. One of the brilliant presenters and speakers at the conference was David Crystal. This weekend, imagine that, I had a fantastic opportunity to hear David Crystal give two talks at the 10th OUP Conference in Zagreb: Advanced Conversational English: fact and fiction and The perils of being a linguist. David Crystal held his audience of about 400 (or maybe even 500) teachers enthralled for over two hours. David Crystal didn't use power point. He didn't need it. His speech was powerful without it.

I just received an e-mail from a student of mine with a link to the Map of Online Communities . He writes: "First of all, I know how interested you are in many creative and interactive internet sites and perhaps you just might use any of 'countries' in your future projects with your future classes or even us, but what really caught my eye was a country named Ning. That brought back the memories. Best ones, of course!" This is what makes teaching with tech worthwhile.

This is the second year that I'm blogging with my students. Last year I introduced my 17-year olds to blogging the moment I learned how to do it. Or at least I thought I knew how to blog with students. This year, I started out thoroughly prepared. Well aware of last year's weaknesses and strengths, I clearly defined the goals and strategies. I put together a clear and meaningful Power Point presentation. I thought long and hard about possible threats. And was convinced there would be nothing to catch me off guard. How wrong I was! There's always been something I took for granted and expected my students to know. But it turns out that most of them don't go beyond the basics of Facebook and MSN. And when it comes to blogging they rely entirely on me. Maybe it's time I said "Go figure it out yourself!" Next year I'll do it differently.

Problems with English

Yesterday we celebrated the European Day Of Languages with our students. First the teachers collected several frequently used proverbs and tanslated them into the languages taught at our school. The teaching procedures differed from class to class. Some teachers asked their students to match the proverbs with their definitions, others wanted their students to match the first half of a proverb with its ending. I was lucky enough to sign up for the computer lab so that when I said a proverb in Croatian, my students had to search the Internet to find its English and German translations. I divided the class into two teams, which added a competitive feel to the activity. The list of proverbs can be found on Google Docs. Feel free to edit it.

Recently I came across some wonderful introductory lesson ideas shared by Seth and Karenne on their blogs. They suggest activities in which teachers share some information about themselves to motivate their students to ask questions and to get to know each other. However, as most of these activities are computer-based, I can't use them with my students. I don't have a computer in the classroom, unfortunately. So I have to make do with what I have. One of my favourite icebreakers that works well with large classes and students who have just met for the first time, is in fact similar to Seth's writing facts on the white board, except that I don't do facts, but photos, and to a certain extent to Karenne's Power Point presentation, except that I don't create a presentation but a poster. For my Who am I? activity, I created a poster divided into four parts, each depicting a different topic: or: Each of the parts contains photos only, so that students have to ask q...

The other day I stumbled upon this hilarious video about English language learners who have problems with different aspects of English. As I thought this could be a great beginning-of-the-year activity, I searched the Internet for the tapescript. However, not only did I find the tapescript but also a great activity sheet with all the explanations of expressions, proverbs and colloquial words and phrases. There are also some tips on how to use this video with pre-intermediate, intermediate or advanced students of English. I found this activity sheet on Multimedia English Classroom , a fantastic site for English language learners and teachers, where you will find a plethora of fabulous ELT materials which can be used in the classroom. Another idea is to compare the American sketch with the (original) British version.

Sonja, my dear friend, fellow worker, blogger and mojamatura.net admin, just published my new Learn English With Songs exercise: Somethin' Stupid by R. Williams and N. Kidman. In the song all the prepostions are missing. My AEI web skills course is now in its fifth week. Last week we discussed reading and writing skill-building. As always, we were given a list of websites to explore. Can you imagine how thrilled I was to see that on the list there was Breaking News English whose author is Sean Banville, one of the most prolific ELT material writers and someone who I know - although not in person, but virtually! Sean's website was highly praised by my course mates.

School might be over, but certainly not for me. I have just embarked upon a new learning adventure at the American English Institute at the University of Oregon. Together with 30 like-minded teachers from all over the world I'm taking part in a 10-week online training course "Building Teaching Skills Through The Interactive Web". We all have the same goal - to learn how to teach with tech.

Shakira: Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)

Fancy a Robbie Williams ESL Video Listening quiz? Robbie Williams: Morning Sun

What I like about Twitter is that it connects me with people who are on the same wave-length as me and who can't wait to let their imagination go wild with ideas, projects, activities, wikis.. and yes, skype chatting. Eva and I tried to connect our classes via Skype several months ago, but for different reasons I wasn't able to use the computer lab at the arranged time. About a month later we gave it another try, but this time I managed to be at the right place at the wrong time (time zones have always given me a headache!). But then came trecha srecha as we say in Croatian ('e' is pronounced as in pet), or the luck of the third adventure. On June 1, Brazil and Spain came to my classroom. Ana Maria , Guido and I successfully connected our classes via Skype. It was a bit chaotic, but absolutely amazing for all the teachers and students. Here you can read Ana Maria's post about the chat and watch the video she kindly recorded.

My Google Reader brought me a very interesting post by Patrick McGrath from Teaching & Learning @ Mohonasen entitled Definitely Read This If You Teach High School English about a site that I think deserves to be bookmarked. The site is called 60secondRecap and aims to make the great works of literature accessible, relevant, and, frankly, irresistible to today’s teens. How, you may wonder, when today's teens spend most (or should I say all?) of their free (and should I say study?) time on their computers? Through 60 second videos! I think this is a wonderful way to bring the great works of literature a little bit closer to students, in a way they're familiar with. What's more, the videos are so brilliantly made that I dare hope they could motivate students to read 'real' books! For now, there are about 30 novels and for each of them there are 6 - 10 videos. If you sign up you can request a recap of a novel of your own choice. Isn't that great? There's a...

Mika: Rain

Bombay TV is a fun site where students can add subtitles or their own voice to video clips from Bollywood movies. I wanted to use it in the classroom ever since Russell Stannard first tweeted about it and showed us how to make a Bollywood movie on his fantastic site Teacher Training Videos . I introduced it to my students last week: publicite graphique These are the clips they made: Martina: campagne marketing viral paris Josipa: graphiste logo

I like being tagged. It makes me feel I belong. Today I was linked into the It's Worth Taking a Look at this Blog project and I'm flattered to be part of this fab community of blogging teachers. I was tagged by Janet Bianchini , who I admire greatly and whose ashcloud motorbike adventure I followed with great interest. Now my task is to insert the above picture into my blog with a link to the blog where I was nominated, compile a list of ten blogs that I find worth reading and tell the bloggers about their award. What a pleasant task, indeed! So take a look at these fabulous blogs: you blog by Monika Hardy The PLN Staff Lounge by Sue Lyon-Jones jamiekeddie.com by Jamie Keddie Life Long Learning by Valentina Dodge Technology Tidbits, Thoughts of a Cyber Hero by David Kapuler Webb's Wide World by Jan Webb The Spelling Blog by Johanna Stirling David Rogers: Geography. Learning. Teaching by David Rogers Netend by Marta Mrozik Turkish TEFL by Nick Jaworski You can find more fab...

Here are just a few zimmer twins videos created yesterday. Oh, what fun it was! I'll write more about it soon (sounds familiar, doesn't it? Ken? Karenne?) Anyway, have fun with the stories below and don't be harsh on their mistakes...

I pledged to go paperless on Thursday. I told my students not to bring books to their English class. I signed up for the IT lab on time - and the room is mine for the whole day! I have a PLN. And I'm ready for my first ever paperless day. This is how we're going to celebrate the Earth Day. Warm-up: After a brief discussion on why we celebrate the Earth Day, students follow this link and do the What's your Earth Day IQ ? Presentation: A reading exercise on the Earth Day by ESL Holiday Lessons: Earth Day . Two video listening quizzes: Sustainable energy projects in Africa and Sustainable Fishing in Bali by Free English Lessons Online. Practice: What can I do? Students make a Zimmertwins movie. Peer evaluation (informal) and reflection.