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Creating Vocabulary Activities 2011

Page history last edited by ElizabethHS 13 years, 4 months ago

Return to the EVO Call for Participation

Creating Vocabulary Activities

Hands-on workshops and discussions

Session Description

This session will introduce instructors to simple tools and techniques used by their educational-technology-savvy peers to produce professional, functional and recyclable resources for teaching vocabulary. Each of these exercises has been used extensively in classes across the globe. Participants will be given the opportunity to share their experience with these tools. This collaboration takes place online. Would you like to join us?

Objectives

Participants will:

use various tools for creating learning materials
interact through e-mail, text chat, forums, wikis and Elluminate
contribute to wikis, and post works related to their own contexts
reflect on ways of applying those tools to their teaching
participate in optional weekly chats held to discuss content and pre-defined topics

Target audience

Any educator interested in creating or optimizing media for improving their vocabulary instructional materials; particularly teachers who have small budgets, since most of these resources are free.

Teachers interested in using communication tools in their teaching, be it exclusively online or blended with face-to-face teaching.

Level: Must have basic computer skills, including MSWord and surfing the Internet.

Requirements: Must have an e-mail account and Internet access. A headset, or microphone and computer speakers (may be built in), is required.

Sponsoring TESOL entity

Materials Writers IS

Weekly content

Week 1

Getting to know one another. Introduction.

Participants will meet moderators and each other, complete an exploratory survey, and discuss needs and expectations, and their own materials development requirements. The concept of vocabulary teaching with examples is introduced and discussed. Moderators will introduce the concept of planning a mixed media presentation of vocabulary activities, with examples, and host discussion of what makes a solid vocabulary activity. The process of development will be visualized for participants through a series of steps, covering principles derived from cognitive science and the Western rhetorical tradition: timed repetition, chunking, associating, imagining, locating, energizing and clarifying.

Week 2

Finding the words (Starting off production)

This week, we introduce in detail the issue of creating target word lists with definitions and pronunciations, the relevant mnemonic considerations, and some Web 2.0 tools useful for this task. A tentative list:

Amazon (www.amazon.com)
Lextutor (http://www.lextutor.ca/freq/eng)
Scholastic Word Wizard's “Minidictionary” (http://wordwizard.scholastic.com/minidictionary/)
Quizlet.com (http://quizlet.com/)
Forvo (http://www.forvo.com/languages/en/)
SortMyList (http://sortmylist.com/)
Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/#)

Participants will be offered a choice of formal tasks designed to demonstrate the capabilities of each tool. They will discuss their present or prior experiences with these tools, share similar tools they have found to be helpful, and brainstorm additional specific uses for each.

Week 3

Making multimedia

In this week, we introduce and discuss the usefulness of multimedia in the presentation of vocabulary items, and explore available sources online. A tentative list of online tools to be introduced and examined:

Voki (http://www.voki.com/) - sound and animation.

Microsoft Office's online clip art library (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/FX101321031033.aspx) – images.

The Mind is a Metaphor (http://www.metaphorized.net/) (http://metaphors.lib.virginia.edu/) - illustrations for abstract terms.

BitStrips (http://www.bitstrips.com/landing) – comic strip presentations.

Xtranormal (http://www.xtranormal.com/) - animations.

VoiceThread (http://voicethread.com/) - images, sound, text, slideshows.

dafont (http://www.dafont.com/) - memorable typefaces.

Concordancers – usage examples.

Week 4

Creating excercises

This week, the moderators introduce a range of new Web 2.0 tools, useful for creating vocabulary exercises of varying types, targeting various pedagogical principles. A tentative list:

Classtools.net (http://classtools.net/ )

Spelling City (http://www.spellingcity.com)

VLC Clozemaker (http://www.edict.com.hk/clozemaker/)

JogLabs (http://www.joglab.com/default.aspx)

Gogofrog (http://www.gogofrog.com/)

Wrap-up discussion

Suggestions will be made and swapped for linking exercises in a pedagogically sound sequence, and vehicles will be examined for linking exercises to make them readily accessible to students. A tentative list of software tools to be introduced and examined:

Blinkweb (http://business.blinkweb.com/)- web page creator.

Google MyMaps (http://maps.google.com/help/maps/mymaps/create.html) – custom map creator.

Mind42 (http://mind42.com/) - mindmap creator.

Smart.fm (http://smart.fm/) - timed exercises.

WriteBoard (http://writeboard.com/) - wiki creator.

EVO evaluation survey will be taken.

Communication Tools

(under current consideration)

Communications media used: TappedIn, DimDim, Moodle chat, Moodle messaging, Moodle forums, Elluminate

Coordinators

John Allan is a certified teacher who has been writing, presenting and developing in the area of educational technology for the past 20 years. He has worked in all sectors and in four countries in this capacity. His current project socialesl.com is an attempt to share his experience.

Stephen Roney, a professional editor as well as an ESL teacher, has been writing and presenting on the attributes of the Internet as a toolkit for materials design for ESP. (www.burningschoolhouse.blogspot.com)

Join this session

To join this session:

From January 3 to 9:

Go to: Our Moodle Instructions wiki

Follow the directions there.

Note: When you register for the group, you will have to be approved by the moderator. In order to reduce the possibility of "unwanted" members (such as spammers), please be sure to explain who you are and why you want to enroll in the session. This message will only be seen by the session moderator.