Month: March 2009

Showa ELC, or English Language and Communication, is our unofficial department website for students and community building. I’ll be posting any further tools for students over there, and tools for teachers here. I’ll be maintaining that web site too, so keep a look out for new stuff there. Set up your News Reader to get both this site and that one. You won’t be sorry.

This ends the 100 Tools in 100 Days. I’ll continue posting ideas and tools here, but add other topics like Japan, social life, economics and politics as well. I hope you have enjoyed these tools and will use some of them. I certainly will.

Some of you will end up making web pages for your students. This will liven up any message you have to send to them, such as a warning about a deadline or important information they need to see. It is called a screed. Try it, it only takes about 30 seconds to make one, then just save it to your computer and use it like any regular picture.

This is supposed to be a Japanese IQ test, given to all students in Japan. The online version is like a game. I would guess many fail it, but the best thing about it is they could discuss between themselves in small groups, how to get everyone across the river. There are many rules (reading practice) and this would create lots of discussion about hypotheticals.

I’ve recommended Twitter already, in Tool #53, but here is a long list of ideas about how to use twitter for learning and teaching.

Twitter is very, very popular these days. It is gaining in popularity in Japan. You post short messages about what you are doing thinking or discovering, and people follow you, they can read these posts. It is easy to set up a class like this and get feedback on your lectures, but there are many more ways to use this tool.