Jonathan Jarvis is the newest in a very short line of people that can do good information visualization. This field works on representing information with graphics and video. Try his short explanation about the credit crisis. To use it in class you will have to pre-teach a lot of the financial vocabulary, or use it in a business class. It is one of the most clear explanations of the financial crisis we are in now I have ever seen.
Tool #53 was Twitter, a micro-blogging web service that most people use with their telephones. It limits posts to 140 characters, so things are kept to a sentence or two. People share things they find, or ideas.
But recently, people are using twitter to get feedback during their speeches. Speaking about Presenting shows 8 tips about hso to use twitter effectively in a presentation, lecture or class.
National Public Radio in the US is a treasure trove of great audio entertainment, and there are many different podcasts I use in class. This one, for upper intermediate, or advanced students, discusses language points like grammar and politeness, all in a funny way (humor is the hardest things for langauge learners to get.
This particular podcast, called WayWord Radio, features 2 people discussing language. They have a great time. This particular episode talks about Family Words, words that some families develop. Even though they are not real words, it is nice way for students to begin to try inventing new words in English. This skill helps people organize vocabulary.
The Internet, especially over at YouTube, is a crazy place. Over at You should have seen this we can find 99 of the most interesting, most popular, strangest video clips on the web. Charlie bit me, for example, is a short video of a little boy getting bitten by his baby brother. It is the most popular video on YouTube. Seen millions of times. Discuss why it is so popular.
This Word List Generator was developed for elementary school teachers using a government grant. It is a free way to create, using the basic 2000 words in English, words that have the same spelling structures.
My students rarely ask me how to spell things, and that is not natural. Mostly because they haven’t developed listening to be able to decode someone spelling out a word. Mostly that is because they haven’t studied common spelling features aurally, only in written form. I use these lists for spelling practice first semester of the first year.