My Share: Internet Resources
Malcolm Swanson, Jose Cruz & Greg Holloway

• We had another great session of experienced teachers and expert computer users who are continually finding and testing what's new and applicable to language teaching out there on the net— and provided us with some succinct, accessible explanations.
• Swanson told us what kinds of classes he teaches and what sort of online resources he has found appropriate for each—and cautioned against trying to sign in a whole class at the same time to Google Docs— maximum ten per session is doable. It is free and easy to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real time with other users. Picnik can enhance and present your photos with just one click; Smart.fm is a researched new teaching approach that follows responses and graphs mistakes and successes into a learning curve; Howcast gives step by step instructions to do anything imaginable, similar to wikiHow; Survey Monkey will create and publish up to fifty online surveys for free, at a time; Animoto will make a show from photos—and video, up to 30 seconds for free; 280 Slides is like PowerPoint but easier; TypeWithMe is useful for online (student) collaboration, each in a different color; Audiopal tweaks your recorded voice or text message; VoiceThread is a multi-participatory multimedia slide; 50+Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story uses over fifty web services to help users put a story together. With Bill Pellowe's Mobile Audience Response System (MOARS), the students take quizzes and surveys using mobile web-based browsers.
• Cruz uses the internet outside of the classroom to find ‘real English' for reading and listening practice, because not everyone speaks like the voice actors on language CDs. His list includes Japan Today and Voice of America Special English as well as English Listening Lesson Library Online (ELLLO) -- supplemented with his own site, JapanLEO, which offers ELLLO's conversation transcripts completed with the deleted pause markers.
• Holloway accesses the web to download materials for his Junior High School students, as well as to find support for his views when arguing with colleagues. From his long list of useful sites, he uses the Time For Kids site for its personal narrative, news story and how-to article organizers, MES-English.com for writing practice with its word find and shadow words components and Puzzlemaker and Handouts Online for printout material. BBC Skillswise offers a huge bank of ESL materials to help teach grammar, spelling, reading, writing, listening and vocabulary in English; Tokyo Shoseki has a similar offering for Japanese learners.
  It was an extremely useful and highly informative evening of introductions to leading-edge technology that gave everyone something to take to class.

Link to meeting listing

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