My Favourite Moments From Last Term

Here are some things that are highlights for me from last term:

I love these videos because it shows students having a go on their own, and I’m always really proud to see that. In the first one, Jesse and Eddie are happily listening to a Chinese lesson on the iPod and they are practicing it together. They are using the hand signs that I teach them in class to help them remember the words. I haven’t told them they have to use the hand signs, so they are choosing to use them. Fantastic!

In this second video, you will see a short play that some Grade 6 students made. All I did was give them my little Flip Video and tell them to show me what they know about greetings in Chinese. I was so very impressed with the results! (And so were a group of teachers in Melbourne who I showed this video to). It’s amazing how creative kids can be when you give them something they’re engaged in and let them make up the rest themselves!

I really love the energy of the kids in this video. This group of Grade 2s are so excited to be using the little Flip Video that they are even jumping up and down about it – well, Jakob is! this video is especially great because there are a couple of fairly reluctant learners in this small group and you can see that all of them are totally into it – I love the big grin of the Jesse in the last bit of the video as he is looking over Josh’s shoulder at the Flip.

I am really happy with these next ones because they are of an activity that worked really well in class, for me and for many students. These videos are of the audio wordfind and translation activity that we have done on the SMART Board a few times.

There are lots of other great moments from class that I’ve got on video but I can’t put them all here right now. I have favourite moments in class all the time! I’d love to hear about a few of yours.

Moblogging with Utterz…

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Tag Galaxy

Just reading through a few blog posts in my reader and came across one from Marg that she had posted on the Grade 6 blog. In the post she wrote about Tag Galaxy, and so I had to try it. You simply enter a tag, it connects to Flickr and grabs photos with that tag, then it creates a globe for you which you can then rotate. Here is a picture of one that I made (I just took a screen shot and edited it in Irfanview then uploaded it here to my blog) and short video of another one I made to show you how it rotates:

taggalaxyexample

You can also click on individual images to make them bigger:

and then again to make them even bigger and be able to read the description from Flickr:

I just think this is fabulous! A great visual for students – you could use it to discuss the relationships of images to each other, as a way to get them to express their interests to you. Tag Galaxies are great visuals for projects, blog posts and anything really!

I’d love to hear your ideas for using this – especially in a languages classroom!