Day 9 - May 29, 2008

Good Morning,

   It was fun making video contact yesterday.  I also enjoyed listening to your talk shows very much.  Today, if you'd like, we can invite more teachers from around the world to 'ooVoo' in and say hello.  If not, that's OK - we have plenty of other things to work on.

A few new resources.  A number of you having mentioned in your writings and audio that listening is one of the most important (and challenging) aspects of learning English.  Beloware some sites that might be of use:

• ESL Listening Lab
• Elllo.org
• Yolango.com  an example (this site might cause a connection problem)  Screencast demonstration here
• Dotsub.com  -  do-it-yourself video translations
• Chinswing - Example
• VoiceThread leaving text, audio, and/or voice comments on presentations

Audio Recordings  - as I mentioned, I loved listening to your talk shows.  I would like you to record more.  

• In groups of 3 or 4 people, please record your reflections on the entire VNU-SNHU TEFL program.  You can discuss the most valuable aspects of each course, suggestions for how the program might be improved, and ideas about how the program will affect your teaching.
• I think it might be useful to publish Vietnamese langauge recordings about using CALL.  This would allow you to share things you've learning with Vietnamese colleagues who might not have such strong English skills.
• Presentation audio.  If you have prepared a Powerpoint presentation (for an SNHU class or other purspose) record yourself giving that presention.  We can combine the audio with the presentation to create a 'slidecast'.
• If there are any other topics you would like to discuss, feel free to do so and publish the audio on EFL537.com

Specific Topic Q & A
  Sadly, with such limited time, we won't have enough time to cover all tools, topics & skills.  If there is anyting specific that you would like to learn more about, please let me know.  We can hopefully learn something about it today and tomorrow.

Finally, there are still plenty of course assignments to work on.

• Reading Reflections - VNUEFL537 Reading list
• Delicious Bookmarks - del.icio.us guide  - Make sure you have the Delicious extension installed  on your browser and write appropriate titles and keywords for bookmarks . For each EFL537 related link, you need to include the tag 'efl537' as shown here.  Many sites to look through here and here. 
• Materials Archive - save documents, presentations, media, and webpages to your USB drive (see Day 3, part 4 for a list of sites with a lot of downloadable content)
• Personal Website - work on your Edublog or Wordpress site
• Use Audacity to record and post more mp3 audio files.  While I have enjoyed listening to your songs, I would also enjoy listening to small group discussions about how you might use CALL  resources and skills in your teaching. 
• Hot Potatoes  - try creating activities or quizzes that you would use in your classes.