Crowdsourcing Idioms

I am doing research into idioms for a forthcoming book chapter related to my Connecting Online 2012 presentation, that I had been scheduled to do on March 3rd. I am required to write 6,000 words and I am almost half way there. I didn't realise that 6,000 is quite a big amount to write and I haven't had to write so much since my university days, which is a long time ago. It's a huge challenge for me and I am prepared to do my best. I am grateful to Dr Nellie Deutsch, my former tutor and mentor on Moodle For Teachers and WikiEducator courses, for allowing me to work on this collaborative writing project which will be published online next month. One of my goals for this year was to write an e-book, so this is definitely an excellent start.

My chapter is based around my Teaching Idioms with Web 2.0 Tools presentation, which was originally premiered in Brighton 2011. The book chapter will support my presentation and will include some brand new lesson activities and ideas, which I have been working on the past few days.

I love teaching idioms and my students have always enjoyed learning them, too. I hope this chapter will provide further insight into how idioms can be taught effectively.

Looking through my folders, during my research on idioms just now, I found I had created an Xtranormal animation on Idioms a while back, and I include the tweet below. If you click on the image, it will take you to my Xtranormal page and you can view all the animations I have created. Be warned. They are very simple, but I hope they manage to convey whatever vocabulary I am trying to put across to my students!

I have published an Idiomatic Love Story and you can view it online at Slideshare/JanetBianchini or you can simply click on the image of the book below.

In the chapter, I would like to write a few sentences about how some British idioms have completely different meanings in other languages, or make no sense at all. I had read about the power of "crowdsourcing" on Nicky Hockley's fab blog, e-Moderation Station, entitled, "Sourcing the Crowd." So, I decided to do a bit of crowdsourcing myself, for the first time, and this is what I tweeted to my PLN yesterday:



In British English if you were to say "Victoria is full of beans today", it wouldn't mean that she had just eaten lots of beans and so was literally full of beans. No, the meaning would be that Victoria is very lively today, on the ball, very energetic.

http://www.free-stockphotos.com/download-free-coffee-mug-full-of-beans-images/

So my question to my fellow bloggers and readers is this: how would this idiom translate in your language?

Please do add your comments in the Comments' Box as this will help me in my research. Thank you in advance!!

The previous day I had done another bit of crowdsourcing as follows:


Sandy Millin responded within a very short time and gave an excellent reply as follows:

Evelyn Izquierdo my lovely tutor on the EVO Podcasting 2012 course also replied to my tweet and this is her super response:


Thank you both, Sandy and Eve for taking the time to add your thoughts!

I would be thrilled if anybody else could add their comments to my two questions, either here, or via Twitter. I will then be able to summarise the ideas in my book chapter.

My deadline is March 15th, so please do write in before then. Many thanks!!

NB
Below you can view a new idiomatic movie I have just created with Dvolver.

In the movie, Frederick is trying his best to woo Isabella back. I have deliberately chosen this movie to be in silent mode. There is a selection of music that you can choose to embellish your movie and make it more jazzy.

Introductions and Icebreakers

You can click Wallwisher above to add your sticky, or for bigger image of Wallwisher, click here to add your stickies! Many thanks in advance.

Over the next 2 weeks I will be teaching 23 primary and secondary school EFL teachers in 2 groups at the Lake School of English, instead of writing about teaching! I love writing my blog, but it's time to get back to the chalkface, figuratively speaking. So, I've decided to experiment with my lesson planning here, where else? It will be a diary of events and also my learning journal.

One of my favourite icebreakers involves using stickies. I write down a combination of 5 numbers/names/years on the board, related to me eg

• 3
• 1979
• Daphne
• 18
• 30

Students have to guess what these numbers/years/names refer to.

Students then write down 5 things related to them on a coloured stickie. They stick the stickie on themselves, and then walk around viewing as many other bits of information from the other students and trying to guess the significance of the numbers / names they see. It's a fun way of getting to know each other.

Web 2.0 Introductions and Icebreakers
I have experimented with creating introductions using Web 2.0 tools like the following. Please do write a comment about any other tools you have exploited when meeting a class for the first time. How was the new tool received? Any useful tips?

Xtranormal
True or False information about your teacher. Students have to guess which facts are true.

Teacher Reboot Camp:Guest Post

I have had the great pleasure of writing a guest post on Shelly Terrell's awesome "Teacher Reboot Camp" blog. I was delighted when I was invited by Shelly via Twitter a few weeks ago. I immediately knew what I wanted to do. I was in the middle of creating another Powerpoint presentation, one on Phrasal Verbs. I decided it would be a good theme to expand for a more in-depth post. I wrote my article directly onto Teacher Reboot Camp and did all the research whilst writing the draft there. I will confess now that it's all up and running fine, I was a bit afraid of accidentally deleting stuff, as I did in "Gone with the Wind". It's one thing to mess up one's own links, but to do so on someone else's blog, was absolutely unthinkable and not really an option to consider. I have asked Shelly's kind permission to present my guest post in full on my blog. The embeds and animations are now all in one easily accessible site for me to re-use and show to teachers and students in the future.

An Xtranormal Kind of Introduction

Teaching phrasal verbs is my favourite activity of all! Why is this so? Well, in my experience, I have found that students generally don’t like studying them because they find them “too difficult, miss!” I set out from elementary level to train my students not to be afraid of them, but to look forward to showing off their newly acquired knowledge of them. To stand out from the crowd. To use phrasals in a natural way. In the correct context. How do I do this? I will explain.

I encourage them to chill out during the lessons if I see they look a bit stressed out. I ask them to come up with ways of using new phrasals both in class and outside of class. I encourage them to ask each other this question as a natural starter “Have you come across this word? Do you know what it means?”, if for example, they don’t know the meaning of a word. Instead of asking me all the time, students are encouraged to ask each other first, always using this phrasal verb until it becomes instinctive for them and of course, second nature. On a Monday morning my first question is inevitably “What did you get up to over the weekend?” Students then ask each other in pairs and dialogue ensues following this prompt. Another question would be “Did you get through the weekend homework?” I make sure that these questions are all in context and provide opportunities for practice.

Slideshare

Below is an example of a Powerpoint presentation converted to Slideshare. I have created this in order to maximise opportunities for student discussion. This would either be used as an introduction to this set of verbs, or as a review and recycling activity. I have introduced 18 phrasal verbs with some follow-up activities at the end. I have experimented with whole pictures as background for added interest.

Fun With Phrasal Verbs

Bookr

Bookr by Pim Pam Pum is a nice tool for exploiting images to enhance your phrasal verbs lessons. You can easily create a “book” in minutes by selecting pictures, according to the theme you want to explore, and then simply dragging them into the pages of the book. You can write a short sentence on each page. The example below is one I created especially for this post to demonstrate how it can be used.

Dvolver

This is a great site for dialogue exploitation. The animations are easy to create with a set group of characters. There is a choice of background music which adds to the special effects. There is no sound for the characters.

Go!Animate

This is another cool site for creating animations. Go!Animate can be used by students to recycle phrasal verbs learned or indeed, any item of vocabulary that needs to be reviewed.

GoAnimate.com: Getting Down to Phrasals by Janet Bianchini

Create your own at GoAnimate.com.

The ZimmerTwins

I registered on the ZimmerTwins site for the purpose of researching for this post. I was surprised at how intuitive and easy it was to create my very first animation. I have a feeling that students will love this tool!

Have a look at Phrasals in the Jungle!

ToonDo

I love ToonDo because it’s easy to create cartoons for any topic you like. Students enjoy creating small dialogues or comic strips. Here’s one I created which has a phrasal verbs theme. The cartoons can be easily embedded into your class / student blogs or posted via email.

Create your own Toon!

PhotoPeach

The last on my list of favourite e-tools to make teaching and learning phrasal verbs fun is PhotoPeach. I was able to create a simple quiz using my own photos. You have to select a synonym out of the 3 options given for the verb in the picture. I hope you enjoy it!

Test your Phrasals! on PhotoPeach

Challenge

I hope I have inspired you to use some of these cool sites with your students. You can adapt them to suit whatever theme you are working with. Why don’t you try one of these out for your next class? I am sure your students would enjoy creating short animations and dialogues or short books or indeed quizzes to test each other on new vocabulary or structures they have learned with you.

Have you had experience with any of these tools? If so, I would love to hear from you to learn how you and your class got on with them!

I would like to thank Shelly for giving me this wonderful opportunity to write for her Cool Sites series. It’s a great honour for me to be here.

1989 - The Berlin Wall

A lot has been written about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the liberation of the former GDR on that momentous night in November 1989. I wasn't there to share the jubilation of my GDR friends that evening. I could only imagine the sheer joy, exultation and huge emotion of them all.


BBC News has an interesting and interactive article called "Where is the Wall Now? Well, a small part of the wall is in one of my unopened boxes! Our friend Orv was in Berlin on that historic night and he brought us home a piece of history.

Freedom
I remember crying buckets the day I first crossed from East Berlin into West Berlin. I almost felt guilty in a way that I had the freedom to go to the west ,whereas my GDR friends were obliged to stay within the walled perimeter, at risk of death. I met a former DDR border guard who explained that he was trained to shoot to kill if he saw anyone attempting to cross the border from east to west. They lived in a state of constant fear and surveillance. Those days are happily in the past now.

My life behind "The Iron Curtain"

One of the best teaching experiences in my whole life took place from 1981-1982 in the former GDR in the city of Dresden. I taught EFL at The Technical University of Dresden. I had just done my PGCE in EFL and I was offered the golden opportunity of seeing what life was really like in a Communist country during the end of the "Cold War" in the early 1980's. It was to be a fantastic learning curve for me. Please click here if you would like to read more about this experience.


My Trabant

I will never forget one of the professors in the English department at the Technical University of Dresden telling me he had no car. It would take 7 years' solid wages to buy a car such as a Trabant or Skoda. A car was indeed a luxury in those days. Imagine my excitement when I had the chance to buy a Trabant a few years ago in Oxford. Browsing through a charity shop I couldn't believe my eyes when I spotted a perfect miniature version. I snapped it up at the bargain price of £1. It was found in one of my box openings by coincidence a little while back and it has taken pride of place on the mantelpiece.

Pure nostalgia
I have kept everything from my 1981-82 GDR days. Books, postcards, letters, pay slips, bank statements, social security book, night club entrance tickets, a few stamps, posters, ephemera of everyday life. I knew then that I was living in an historical period. My physical memories reside on my bookshelf and in a box marked simply "DDR". My spiritual and innermost memories lie deep within my heart, never to be forgotten.

My East German Hat


I came across an original East German winter guard's hat for the princely sum of £5. It must have been a young boy's as it was a small size and fitted me perfectly. I bought it in England and wore it for about 2 years until the day I mislaid it in a shop. I was extremely upset. That hat had kept my head warm on freezing cold daily bike rides to work and back during the winter months. In addition, a piece of history had vanished into the proverbial thin air. At least, I still have a lovely picture of Joe wearing my hat.

I haven't been back to Dresden since 1982. Twenty seven years is an awful long time!

Links to 1989
Bits 'n'Bobs, Show 'n' Tell: Breach of the Berlin Wall
Free Technology for Teachers: After the Fall
BBC News and The Night the Wall Fell
The English Blog has also posted some great resources on this topic. In particular I like the collection of amazing photos as found in the Boston Picture.

Uno

One year has passed since I started writing my blog. A lot has happened since then. A new universe I didn't really know existed prior to November 9th has opened up. It has changed my life irrevocably. I really was living in the Dark Ages before technology entered my life. My innate fear of wiping out whole systems, of unpredictable computers, of losing data was put to the test. My anxiety about going "public" was great.

Thank You


I would just like to take this opportunity to say a very big Thank You to everyone who has helped me on my way to becoming the blogger I am today. All my mentors, fellow educators, friends, colleagues, family, have all played a part in giving me the encouragement to carry on.
A big thanks also goes to all the staff at the Consultants-e who started me off gently on the journey to becoming a blogger. The 2-week e-course was pedagogically sound and exactly what was necessary for a technologically-challenged person like me, who needed an expert guiding hand. The path was paved for the Future, which has now become the Present.

My very own Virtual Classroom
The sense of being in control of my own destiny in terms of my learning journey has given me enormous satisfaction. I have become a "digital" citizen or a "netizen". I am a student in my own specially created classroom "without walls". The educators I have personally selected to surround me have all opened a huge portal of information, which is certainly keeping me involved, engaged and motivated. Five key words are vital in empowering myself to do what I am doing via my blog.

• Sharing
• Motivation
• Involvement
• Learning
• Engagement

My Favourite Postings through the Year
I have selected a few postings which reflect my journey on this great blogging adventure.

The Google-isation of our Lives

The Call of the Wild- Literally!

Kalinago English Blog Carnival - My Advice Post for Noobie Bloggers

Some of My Fave Tools

Slang Xtranormal Video

Animoto: A Year in The Life of Janet's Abruzzo Edublog



Twitter V Blogging in 140 characters
I like Twitter as a flowing, dynamic, 24/7, express learning tool.
I like blogging as a more reflective, in-depth, personal learning tool.

What about you? Which of these two tools do you prefer and why? (in up to 140 characters )

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

John Dewey

WikiEducator Update

In answer to the above question, created on Wordle, I certainly have! If you read on, you will find out why I have been staying up quite late recently.


I finished my WikiEducator L4C29 online course last week and I am now reviewing my notes from the excellent tutorials. I started off a bit hesitantly and I had a few doubts whether I would be ok with something new, but with the help and expert guidance of my tutors and moral support from my co-participants, I was able to work through the schedule and learn a lot of new things such as the special syntax which is a part of a wiki and templates for worksheets. I found out about Liquid Threads. I participated in a live WizIQ workshop and saw and heard my tutors and I actually said something "live". I felt a bit shy about doing this, I don't know why! I took part in discussions, commented on other participants User pages, made friends, read lots of interesting things written by the participants and generally tried to collaborate and share the learning process. I still have lots to learn and practise but it has been great fun and the support has been excellent. I am interested in doing the next Learning4Content -30th Online Workshop starting here in order to brush up my existing skills. I highly recommend the course. It has opened up a new dimension of learning and sharing for me and one which I would like to investigate further.


I was able to master Apprentice Level 1 after 2-3 hours, then I progressed to Apprentice Level 2, and finally I was thrilled when I achieved the status of WikiBuddy in my last week. I have a lot of reviewing to do now as it was quite a lot of information to take in. As an exchange for the free workshop I had to sign a contract which promised to share a worksheet or lesson plan with WikiEducator. I thereby got down to creating some tips for teaching idioms using Web 2.0 tools and set about creating entirely new activities to add to the free open resources for WikiEducator.

As I will be adding this to my User Page as a feedback to the course, I would like to present what I came up with in order to create the new worksheet. It was a fantastic opportunity to use my imagination and I had to work under pressure as I wanted to have most of the worksheet prepared within the course parameters.

Again, I worked very hard during the 10 days but I really enjoyed the challenge of being with people who all shared the same aspirations and objectives as me. All the participants were committed educators from around the world. My eyes opened up to a whole new universe of experts in technology, wiki masters, professors at leading universities, e-tutors, Heads of IT departments, writers, Web 2.0 specialists from around the globe. The huge talent and resources that lies within the WikiEducator community is absolutely astounding. Everyone has a common goal: to share, remix and reuse some content freely within an open educational context.

I created the following examples of idioms using freely available Web 2.0 tools such as www.pimpampum.net, www.fodey.com, www.xtranormal.com and www.makebeliefscomix.com. These tools can all be used in a variety of ways to teach all kinds of subjects. Your imagination is your key to open up a whole world of exciting possibilities!

My Bookr Idioms


My Newspaper Idioms


My Xtranormal Idioms



My Comix Idioms



If you would like to learn more about WikiEducator and build up your wiki skills, please click here for a link to the information and registration page for the next workshop, which begins on September 21st for 10 days. I am sure you will enjoy it!

An Xtranormal Introduction

I will be introducing myself to approximately 60 teachers over the next few weeks while doing Teacher Refresher courses in Oxford and so I thought it might be fun to try out an Xtranormal film as an introductory activity.

What I usually do is write up a few correct and some incorrect statements about myself on the board and then get students to guess which ones are true by asking me specific questions. I give all answers as if they are correct and so the students have to catch me out. Once they have found out the real facts, they have a few moments to repeat the activity for themselves. In small groups, they test each other on their information. The video below is just a different medium for exploiting the same idea.



For more ideas on how to use Xtranormal, especially with younger learners, please read Alex Case's really informative posting "Xtranormal.com & young EFL learners". It is full of useful ideas and tips on how to use this nifty little Web 2.0 tool.

Slang dialogue - 2

I have just been inspired to create another Xtranormal movie after watching Russel Stannard's excellent video tutorial. It was simple to create and fun to do.



I would use the above short video extract as a listening activity to introduce the following colloquial expressions, or as a vocabulary review activity:

BLING
OTT
DOSH
NO WAY!
COST A BOMB

Once the students know the meaning of the words I would ask them to make up their own mini dialogue using the above and then act it out in front of the class. An alternative would be to get students to create their own video film in small groups or pairs and then view them open class.
I am certain students would find this sort of activity challenging and great fun.

Have a go yourself and see what you can produce and then report back here, if you like. Good luck!

Xtranormal video tutorial

I have set myself a challenge. By the end of 2008, I'd like to have created a few dialogues using the Xtranormal programme and if it's possible, I'll post them on my blog. This video tutorial makes it seem quite easy to do. We'll see....!.