Welcome to Issue 5!
Welcome to the fifth issue of Edtech News, a free monthly newsletter bringing you the latest in new technology for teaching English. Each month we look at the latest online resources for teachers and students, and introduce you to useful ICT tips and tricks. We also feature a multi-level interactive whiteboard activity in each issue. We hope you enjoy reading and if you have any comments please get in touch at tecnologica@britanico.cl. To read past issues, visit our archives.
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In this issue:
- Solve an online interactive Flash mystery in Mystery Mansion
- Teacher development resource:
British Council teachers' site
- Top tech tips:
desktop video recording software
- The IWB activity series: Nº 5 - Say What You See
Techno Defoe is back to answer your questions
We've chosen one example of the many interactive online mysteries out there to give you an insight into how they work, and how you might use them with students. The majority of mysteries, like this Mystery Mansion, are created with Flash, so once you've downloaded them onscreen, you don't need to wait for a new page to load each time you click on the screen.
The basic idea is that you are trapped in a certain location and must solve puzzles and find objects to help you escape. The objects may be well hidden on the screen so you need to click in many different places to uncover them, and the riddles and puzzles can be quite challenging, so teamwork is a definite help!
The mysteries can be used in class if you have a data projector and computer, or an interactive whiteboard, making sure that the class all give directions to the student controlling the mouse or whiteboard, or can be done in pairs or small groups in a computer laboratory, or even set as homework. The instructions and riddles are all in English so it can be useful to pre-teach some key vocabulary, or guide students to a useful online dictionary to help out. It can be very effective for practising preposition use, as can clearly be seen in the image above, and for functional language of suggestion and speculation in solving the riddles and deciding the next move. If you have time to solve the mystery yourself in advance, you can even print screenshots of the riddles to handout to students in preparation for the activity (or even send them to students' e-mails using the Jing screencapture software introduced below!).
There are all manner of applications of these interactive and engaging mysteries. When you've solved the Mystery Mansion, why not check out the Crimson Room and Escape the Car?! Good luck!
The Teaching English site from the British Council in conjunction with the BBC is a great place to develop your teaching knowledge and skills and also to get lesson planning ideas and resources. The site is organised around four themes: Try - a resource centre with acitivities, lesson plans and tips; Think - articles on teaching theory and practice, and an alphabetised knowledege database; Talk - a section with forums, blogs, video discussions and polls; and Transform - information on conferences, books, teacher development tools and courses
There's loads of information and useful teacher development content on the site and it's free and easy to set up an account - and even your own blog on the site. One of our favourite things on the site is the links to topical news stories and reports from the world of English teaching, such as the current question 'Is txtng killin Nglish @ skool?'.
There's also a link this month to the online content of the IATEFL conference in Harrogate, in the north of England, with some excellent discussions and video content as mentioned in a previous EDTECH News issue.
Have you ever needed to explain to someone in another location how to do a simple process on a computer and wished you could just point to their screen or guide their mouse and click for them? A new, free download from Jing lets you do just this, and much more besides.
Once you've downloaded the software, it sits hidden at the top of your screen, ready to spring into action when you need to take a screenshot of what you're doing, or to record up to five minutes of your desktop activity to guide someone else through an activity.
It's really easy to use and when you've recorded your video, or taken your screenshot, you have the option of saving it to your computer or uploading it directly to a website. You then get a link to your own video hosted online which you can share with whoever you like.
As a simple example, watch the video of me typing this sentence here!!
Pretty useful, if not the most exciting video clip in the world, we think you'll agree!
- Say What You See (IWB activity series Nº5)
In this month's interactive whiteboard activity we'll be using the Mimio Notebook software which comes with Mimio interactive whiteboards to show you how to create an activity in which students identify objects to reveal a mystery personality. This team activity allows the teacher to review or introduce target language and to develop the functional skills of speculation and deduction in a competitive and engaging way.
Click on the image to watch the video guide on creating and using this interactive activity.
And finally, Techno Defoe is back to answer another reader's query!
Hi! I'm Techno Defoe, EdTech News' resident tech expert, and I'm here to answer your questions. Whatever you need - website suggestions, help with computer software, advice on using technology in the classroom - I am here to help. Drop me a line at tecnologica@britanico.cl and I'll answer in the next newsletter.
This month, Stan Jarratt from Las Condes writes:
Dear Techno Defoe,
Who or what is a Moodle?
TD says:
Thanks for your question, Stan. 
is one example of a Virtual Learning Environment (sometimes called a Course Management System (CMS) or a Learning Management System (LMS)). It is basically an online platform on which students can interact with each other and their course tutor, and respond to tutor-uploaded content in discussion forums, through quizzes or through voice-recording applications among others. It is very popular, partly due to the fact that it is an open-source platform, which means that it is free to install, providing you have a server to host it on, and the technical know-how to set it up. Many institutions use Moodle in combination with other resources as part of distance or blended learning programmes to encourage collaborative work on tasks by students. You can read more about its potential and how it works here.
See you next time everybody, and remember: technology is not the enemy!
We hope you’ve enjoyed the fifth issue of EdTech News. Watch this space for
the next issue, coming in May.
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