CALL & LG SKILLS BSU

Hello everybody!

Today I'm going to tell u about the ManyThings.org, which I used and actually use in my education, that's to say - in Belorussian State University. It also could be useful in ur studying process - no matter in school or university. 

This site is for people studying English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL). There are quizzes, word games, word puzzles, proverbs, slang expressions, anagrams, a random-sentence generator and other computer assisted language learning activities. TESL/TEFL teachers may want to recommend this site to their students.

Literature

The first time I asked for help to the site while I was preparing my homework for the American Literature. Here u can find a lot of American Stories and American History.

I was looking for the O. Henry "The Gift of the Magi". in addition to the text forn of the story, there was also a mp3. I've found it very convinient, because if I don't want to spend time reading the story, I can listen to it while walking.

mp3

The American History contsins 246 fifteen-minute programs and 5 four-minute programs.  That is about 62 hours of listening.

                 

                                    

                                                        Speech Practice

There is a great advantage, as for me. follow the link, choose the topic and listen to the native speaker pronunciation. It could be useful, for example, for 1st year students at the Practice of speaking and writing. The teacher hand out the texts to the student and they listen to the right english pronunciation. There is also a possibility to learn the prepared vocabulary b4 and to do the quiz after the listening.

Phonetics

It is also could be useful if u study or teach to American English Pronunciation. Minimal par practice, quizzes, Listen & Repeat videos: 'L' and 'R', 'R'-colored vowels, focusing on final consonants, vowels, consonant clusters - just follow the link.

QR-code

Hello!

QR codes in education

QR, or Quick Response codes, are two-dimensional barcodes that can be read using smartphones, tablets, laptops and dedicated QR reading devices. They link directly to articles, emails, websites, phone numbers, videos, social media pages and more. All you need is a camera on your device and a QR code scanning programme which can be downloaded online for free as an app. QR code readers like kaywa.com, mobile-barcodes.com or beetagg.com also give you the possibility to generate your own QR codes for free. And it only takes a few clicks!

QR technology provides a wealth of benefits for the techno-friendly teacher:

1) Inconspicuous as they may seem, QR codes can hold over 4000 characters of information. Instead of printing out a long web article to your students, QR codes could give them direct and instantaneous access to the same resource in class or at home. You save time and you save a tree simultaneously!

2) They are very easy to generate. To create a QR code, you only need to copy and paste the address of a web page into your QR generating software. Once you have produced your code, you can then transfer it to your teaching resource, or simply leave it on the interactive whiteboard for students to scan in class.

3) QR codes can be printed on virtually anything: paper, textile, walls, even on your skin as a tattoo for those teachers who are willing to show total commitment to their subject :D

Some schools use them in the reception area to provide extra information about school events to students, parents and visitors.

* A Japanese company, Ishinokoe, offers tombstones with QR codes. Visitors can access a mobile site with family information, photos, videos, a guestbook and more.

* For its 100th birthday, Audi assembled a 159 square metre code, made up of 130 staff members holding panels over their heads. They claim it’s the largest in the world.

https://quizlet.com/_2v2vwm

MOOC

MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses.  Although there has been access to free online courses on the Internet for years, the quality and quantity of courses has changed. Access to free courses has allowed students to obtain a level of education that many only could dream of in the past.  This has changed the face of education.

MOOCs: Top Sites for Free Education With Elite Universities

2. My edX is aimed to increase access to high-quality education for everyone, everywhere? enhance teaching and learning on campus and online, advance teaching and learning through research. 

It embraces different spheres beginning with the Art and Ethics, ending with Phisics and Science.  

It also contains programs of MicroMasters, Professional and XSeries Certificates.

1. Udemy Free Courses – Udemy is an example of a site allows anyone to build or take online courses. It's goal is to disrupt and democratize education by enabling anyone to learn from the world’s experts. The site has more than 100,000 students enrolled in its courses, including several, outside the Faculty Project, that charge fees.

F.e in Foreign laguages learning courses u can choose the level, form of studying and even the price. There're also free courses.

2. ITunesU Free Courses – Apple’s free app gives students access to all the materials for courses in a single place. Right in the app, they can play video or audio lectures. Read books and view presentations. 

I think, it's more convinient to those who have Apple products. It's also available on iPad and iPhone.

3. Stanford Free Courses -  From Quantum Mechanics to The Future of the Internet, Stanford offers a variety of free courses.  Stanford’s – Introduction to Artificial Intelligence was highly successful.

4. Harvard Free Courses – From Computer Science to Shakespeare, students may now get a free Harvard education. Take a class for professional development, enrichment, and degree credit. 

Courses run in the fall, spring, or intensive January session. No application is required. 

U can choose the course out of next subjects:

Also I browsed some other sourses and found the suitable one ;)

1. Canvas makes teaching and learning easier for more than 18 million higher ed, K-12, and workforce users worldwide. 

It offers a great number of courses:

Instructure built Canvas with open, adaptable, reliable, native cloud technologies that empower learning in every context. 

WIKI in Education

Good Evening!

The topic of the today's post is WIKI in Education.

WIKI EXPERIENCE

• TEFLPedia — A great example of a professional teachers’ community that comes together by means of a wiki site.

It helps teachers to organize their lessons:

• Student Wiki Guide is ready-to-use student manual for Wikispaces.• Using Wikispaces At UMB (presentation)could be used as an introductory presentation of Wikispaces. More in-depth instruction and clear structure will help your students quickly get used to the new platform.

MULTIMEDIA WEB TOOLS

• Photofunia  → helps you easily manipulate photos to create beautiful collages, photo effects, stylizations and even short animations.

Great for preparing presentation materials.

• Bubbl.us is a free online brainstorming platform that allows embedding mind map widgets into your wiki site. Can be used as a presentation tool when explaining complex interconnected ideas and issues. 

•  ← Infogram is an interactive infographics builder, allowing you to easily visualize your data with interactive widgets.

• Online HTML Editor is a great tool to create more complex HTML pages than the ones available in the wiki editor. Please note that not all wiki platforms fully support HTML markup. Many of them have their own legacy wiki markup, which is mostly incompatible with HTML. Consult with your wiki platform for details or do a small test run before investing your time into building pages with this fantastic editor.

• Pixlr  → is the best online photo and image editing software out there. As powerful as Photoshop, it is free to use and extremely user-friendly. With most of its power concentrated in the remote server, it can suit all of your image editing needs for education, while being free and accessible to all students and teachers. Use it edit images for your wiki pages.

• Animoto  ← helps you create stunning video presentations that feature your photos, vides and text. 

Great for collages, project presentations and photo reports. 

• Haiku Deck  → is an iOS app that lest you create stunning presentations with powerful imagery and decent typography.

• Timetoast is an online timeline designer. Use it to create historical timelines for your class. Let your students design their own timelines for their projects.

• Pixton  ← is an online comic generator. Easily add sets, characters and words, and lay them out in an appealing comic strip. Perfect for visual storytelling.

For the next see my previous posts:

• Google docs offer a good way to remotely edit your documents before publishing them to a wiki site. With powerful collaboration tools, you could co-create your content with your colleagues. However, these tools can only be used as a supporting technology due to lack of any version control. You can also embed certain parts of your Google documents on a wiki site.

• Youtube and Youtube Editor together make a perfect couple of tools that fulfill all your video storage and editing needs for educational and personal use. Upload your videos to Youtube and edit them online in its own built-in editor for free, with no extra software required. 

• Prezi offers a new take on online presentations and keynotes. In a few easy steps, you build stunning dynamic presentations that catch your students’ eye and let you communicate complex ideas easily. Prezi’s effortless embedding lets you easily place your presentations into your wiki sites.

More:

• Richard Doyle, English Fifteen in 15 Weeks! is a fascinating ESP wiki-based project held at Penn State. • Gabrilovich, Evgeniy and Shaul Markovitch. 2006. Overcoming the Brittleness Bottleneck Using Wikipedia: Enhancing Text Categorization with Encyclopedic Knowledge. A fascinating insight into using Wikipedia in education the way it was supposed to be used.• Wikiversity, a Wikipedia-Like Learning Community is an example of a vivid and vibrant learning community operating with the help of wiki technology. • Briann Laugher, Teaching Responsible Use of Wikipedia is an inspiring and very instructive presentation on the ethics of wiki collaboration and the exact mechanisms of improving the wiki knowledge.• Henry Jenkins, Wikis in Professional Learning can be interesting for its cases in industrial use of wikis. Contains testimonials from industry professionals regarding the use of wikis in occupational and corporate training.• Vicky Davis, Wonderful world of Wikis — Vicky Davis offers a wide selection of beautiful wiki examples in education.