The idea of Edutalk Radio is twofold, first to live stream random selections of the existing bank of audio collected on the Edutalk site and secondly to offer educators the opportunity to call or Skype into a live phone in and chat about topics of their choice.
The topic of discussion last Thursday was educational podcasting and Stephen Reid from A Higher Place kicked off proceedings brilliantly by calling in on his smartphone live from his train carriage using a 3G connection while David and John endeavoured to patch the audio through into the live stream!
As you will hear, it did work and Stephen was able to share his expertise with the hosts and of course the listeners. He talked about the key messages he likes to convey to teachers when training them on the power of podcasting and how he tries to dispell their misconceptions through practical examples. I loved the way he added how pupils just go for it in his experience and don't seem to share the same concerns.
My section was recorded through Skype too and you can hear the difference in audio quality between the iPhone's microphone and my Samson CO3U below.
Pioneers of educational podcasting in Scotland, John and David have been experimenting with the power of audio in and out of the classroom for the past six years with projects such as Radio Sandaig and Booruch. In 2009, they came up with the idea of encouraging delegates attending the Scottish Learning Festival to reflect on the event by using their mobile devices to send audio feedback to a Posterous blog. SLFtalk was born.
As John explains in this short interview I recorded with him at the time, he was pleased with this first attempt of gathering the voices of educators together in the same place and the seamless way Posterous coped with the task. Using social media platforms like Twitter certainly helped to spread the word as well as specially-produced SLFtalk cards with detailed instructions we gave out over the two days.
Buoyed by this initial success and Edublog award nomination, David and John launched Edutalk, an extension of the SLFtalk idea and a further opportunity for teachers, pupils and educational professionals to capture their thoughts on a mobile device and share them with a wider audience 24/7.
To help build up a bank of user generated content, the duo challenged people to post a new recording everyday and this certainly got the ball rolling.
Not content to sit on their laurels, David and John then decided to start up Edutalkr, an online panel discussion featuring specialists in their fields such as Professor Stephen Heppell and other learning enthusiasts wishing to debate the educational issues of the day from their mobile phones, landlines or SkypeOut.
In August 2010, the TESS published the article Audio explorers right on track which catalogued the progress of the project to date and acknowledged its impact in its first year.
A month later, the team presented their findings at the Scottish Learning Festival in the session Edutalk - Mobile audio publishing by educators. I was lucky enough to be there in person and to record proceedings including the iPadio + Skype conference call test involving willing volunteers scattered around the exhibition hall!
Last month, I had the fantastic opportunity of delivering a talk at The American Association of Teachers of French convention in Montreal and championing the trailblazing efforts of MFL colleagues from the UK about their use of new technologies to enhance language learning and improve continuing professional development. I firmly believe we are leading the way in this area and it was a pleasure to convey this message to like-minded colleagues across the pond.
As you can see, I chose to video my presentation as well as slidecast and podcast it this time. I hope I have catered to your preferred learning style and you find the information useful! All the links I refer to are included below as well as on this Posterous blog I set up so delegates could access the resources and download the PowerPoint immediately following the presentation if they wanted to.
I was delighted with the audience’s response both during and after the talk and I was made to feel very welcome. One kind soul left this comment which made the whole transatlantic trip worthwhile in itself!
“Your workshop alone was worth the whole conference! I received so many ideas, not just for my classroom, but also for my AATF chapter. Now if I could only invent a way to make more time......” (Robin Jacobi July 2011)
Here is the formal written feedback I received later too, once back in Blighty which in the main is equally positive. (Go fullscreen to read properly).
Before the conference started, I took the opportunity to go on a visit to the Eastern Townships or ‘Les cantons de l’est’ with other delegates from the conference. We visited the vineyard L’Orpailleur, tasted some of the wine and had a lovely lunch. Santé!
We also had a look in some of the antique shops in Dunham in the afternoon and stopped off for another food break before making our way back to the hotel.
On the evening of the first day of the conference, a group of us visited Château Ramezay, one of the only remaining 18th century buildings left in Old Montreal. As part of the entertainment, our two québécois guides re-enacted three different court scenes from the period and asked for ‘volunteers’ from the audience to take part.
Being one of the only males in the room, I was lucky enough to be ‘volunteered’ to play the role of bailiff l’huissier (a word I will never forget!) and to read from a script at designated moments. For comic effect however, the guides were deliberately speaking very quickly and using antiquated French on occasion making it difficult to follow the thread, leading to great confusion and hilarity! A very memorable moment! (Unfortunately no photo graphic evidence exists of said event).
Earlier in the week, I went to Quebec City too and reminisced about my first visit to la belle province in the early nineties when I was a language assistant, thanks to the British Council programme (long may it continue). Here is a short film I made of that blistering hot day including a québécois speciality Poutine! Hope you like it.
Check out too this tripline presentation which chronicles my every movement in a visually appealing way!
My pool partner is my former flatmate Stéphane who I’ve kept in contact with for all these years through Skype, Facebook and emails. We’ve also met up face to face a couple of times when I’ve had the chance to return to Montreal and St Jean sur Richelieu where he lives.
Attending a foreign language convention in another country was a fascinating experience in many ways. For example, I was surprised to hear many of the delegates speaking in French with each other around the hotel and during the excursions despite English being their mother tongue in the main. It was clear that this was one of the convention’s convention and although it took a little getting used to I found it really refreshing once I’d become accustomed to the idea!
Talking to some of the delegates, it seems in the US, that it is more common for language departments to be smaller compared to the UK and schools may only have one teacher offering a particular language in their faculty. Therefore, I presume for many, meeting other French teachers in this way was a great opportunity to practise. Please let me know if I’m talking rubbish!
Thank you to the AATF for accepting my proposal to speak and for welcoming me to their convention. I hope this is just the beginning of a beautiful friendship, starting with Facebook!
As a follow up to my participation in last month's innovative ICT Day at Medina High School on the Isle of Wight, I spent last Monday afternoon with the MFL department looking at ways they could use a class set of iPod Touches to engage their pupils and enhance language learning.
To give some structure to the training, I created a new page on the Posterous blog I set up to publish the podcasts we made during the two workshops in June.
Referring to Sharon Tonner's wonderful explanations on her I-C-T wiki, I demonstrated how easy it was to make different types of QR code with the site Sparqcode and within minutes we had created one linking to a URL and the other to some text. The advantage of the latter being that it will work offline as well as on. To read the codes, I recommended the free app I-nigma which works instantaneously when pointed in the right direction.
We then discussed how we could employ QR codes in language lessons.
e.g. For a URL QR code
To launch an mp3 file
To play a video
To visit an authentic website and answer some comprehension exercises
My favourite idea was to give students cards with QR codes on them linking to a text response whereby they would have to find their partner who had the answer to their question or the same information as them. Preparing the exercise wouldn't be too time-consuming as you could use the Teachers Pet toolbar to make picture flashcards in a few clicks or copy and paste multiple QR codes into a Word document, print it off on to card and cut them up from there.
Alternatively, you could just use Russell Tarr's wonderful QR Treasure Hunt Generator! which simplifies the process even more by creating the necessary QR codes for each question along with an answer sheet. Moreover, your devices don't have to be online for this to work and you need to input a minimum of five questions and answers. Try out his bookmarklet too which can generate a QR code of the web page you are on or any highlighted text on that page! The QR codes can then be copied and pasted into a document, printed off and cut up as previously suggested. The beauty of the text ones is that they don't need a connected device to work. Just think of the exciting exercises this could generate in MFL and yes QR codes can deal with accents!
Have a look too at QR code voting with Qwikvotes! The idea is a teacher sets the question, students scan generated QR code of their choice and then teacher clicks on show results.
For QR codes which link to URLs, another way of saving time would be to create a customised URL using the link shortening service Snipurl. This would mean you could use the same QR code, but change the URL it launches each time.
By clicking on the Manage Snips tab and Edit, you can see that you can change the Long URL and hit the Save Changes button without changing the shortened form. In this way, you can create a range of customised links with different nicknames e.g medinamfl1, medinamfl2 etc and generate QR codes for each one. These QR codes will not need to change because they will always link to the same customised URL. However, by changing the Long URL, the link that opens as a result can be different and so could be regularly updated for different purposes.
If you add a Private Key to your customised link, you will need to enter it and click Fetch my URL before being able to access the desired web page. To avoid this extra step, but keep your snipping private, you can add your Private Key after your link e.g. http://sn.im/medinamfl-medina
Both methods will ensure your snippings will not appear in the public timeline so it's up to you to choose which you prefer. Unfortunately, this will not work with text QR Codes only URL ones.
There are various apps which allow you to generate a QR code directly from your iPod Touch. Easy QR is my favourite as it is free and has a very simple clean interface. Using the text option, you can create QR codes for texts as well as URLs and save them as images in your Camera Roll so they can be scanned later.
One idea would be to make a QR code from a long piece of text and display the image on the board. Pupils could scan it in and then complete a Google Form also accessed via a QR code to show they had understood the contents. To finish, you could display the results on the board and go over the answers. Alternatively, pupils could generate their own QR codes and do a pair or group work activity which you would traditionally complete on paper.
To inspire us with further possibilities we checked out the wonderful 40 interesting ways of using QR codes in education to see which ideas lent themselves well to MFL. Vicky Davis's post QR Code Classroom Implementation Guide is also full of good advice and recommends Kaywa and FireFox add-on Mobile Barcoder for generating QR codes. The latter works straight from the bottom right corner of the browser which could be useful when presenting on an interactive whiteboard and asking students to scan from their devices.
Use Russel Tarr’s bookmarklet to create giant URL QR codes in one click on the interactive whiteboard so students can quickly scan them and transfer the content on to their handheld device. See this process in action in this clip from Ollie Bray published in 2008. To create a text QR code, highlight the text in question first before clicking the bookmarklet.
Give students QR codes which link to revision PowerPoint presentations you’ve published on Slideshare so they can watch them on their mobile devices. You could embed a YouTube clip containing supplementary material which runs on one of the slides. This would work fine unless you wanted to make a Slidecast by synchronising an mp3 file with your presentation in which case, you could add a QR code on the slide in question and ask students to pause, watch the clip and then press play again. The QR code linking to the SlideShare version of a class presentation could be added to the last slide as a matter of course.
To enhance a departmental portfolio of levelled pieces of work, use QR codes to launch audio or video clips as evidence of speaking. Likewise, add QR codes to your prospectus linking to impressive multimedia outcomes highlighting the strengths of the school.
Use Sparqcode to generate a set of QR codes linking to Google Maps for a lesson on directions. Give pupils written or spoken instructions for where they need to go via a text or URL QR code and ask them to label the final destination they reach having followed the instructions.
Give pupils a QR code which launches the email client on their handheld device as a way of simplifying the process of handing in work or sending you the URL of a web based project they’ve completed. This could be the email they need to publish resources on to a class Posterous site although they could use the dedicated app for this as well.
Create a text QR code for the login details needed to access a site or resource so they are always kept in the device’s history. In the same way, use a QR code to access the school’s wifi system!
Stick a URL QR code linking to work carried out in an ICT suite as proof of outcomes in pupils’ exercise books.
Create a QR code of an RSS feed to make it easier for students to subscribe to blogs and podcasts.
Use Snap.vu or BWScan to find out how many times a QR code has been scanned and by how many unique visitors. Choose the former if you want to clear results and receive email notifications. Choose the latter for more detailed analytics
For ILILC 2012, I’ve been reflecting on the possibilities of integrating QR codes into procedures and so far have come up with the following:
Create a QR code which links to a mobile friendly WebDoc full of multimedia goodness. Thanks to Shelly Terrell for the inspiration for this idea. This could be incorporated into a blog badge or added to any paper literature about the conference.
Put a QR code next to speaker’s bios in the conference programme which link to their respective blogs.
Create a multimedia QR code quiz to be completed between presentations at the MFL Show and Tell. Pub Quiz for the 21st century?
Here is an example Free Text poll to show you how it works with the iPod Touch or any other handheld device connected to the web.
click Save new poll.
On the right hand side, untick the box next to Text messages from and make sure there is a tick in the box by Web devices on.
Make a note of the number you need to use for your web response and go to http://pollev.com to submit it with your answer.
Return to the page where the answers to your poll are displayed to see your response.
Please note you can carry out a poll without being registered and your answers will be deleted after two weeks. Once the poll is finished though you can choose to click the Stop Poll button. You can also download a PowerPoint slide which contains the poll too and include it in a presentation.
Next we looked at recording audio on the iPod Touch. There are many apps which allow you to do this including the default Voice Memos app. One issue is the format the audio records in (m4a, AIFF, mp3, caf etc) and the second is how to transfer it off the device, if it needs editing and publishing.
John Johnston is an expert in this field and has recommended two apps to me. The first is iTalk recorder which is free, allows you to rename your files on the device and lets you sync your recordings with your PC with the free iTalk Sync program. It records audio as AIFF files which means they can be edited in Audacity and converted to mp3 using the Lame encoder.
The second app is VR+ Voice which costs £1.19 on the app store and records directly as mp3. You can also transfer the files wirelessly from the device to a computer using a URL. Listen to John singing its praises here as well as Wifi Photo Transfer which works in the same way, but for images.
I demoed iTalk and showed how to download files from the iPod Touch. They were suitably impressed!
To finish the session we talked about file management using DropBox and touched upon the digital storytelling apps SonicPics and Our Story. The latter looks particularly good and was designed by the Open University to promote reading.
Check out as well my MFLedapps blog which features links and video clips of many apps I feel could be useful in enhancing language learning. I've used tags on the right hand side to specify in which skill area they could be particularly effective, if they are free or not and if they are for the iPod or iPad. A good place to find educational apps is on Twitter. Search for edapps and you're bound to find some gems!
I'll be very interested to hear how the MFL department at Medina get on with the iPods next academic year and see what impact they have on the pupils' learning. I hope they keep in Touch ;-)
For my session at this year’s CILT Primary Languages Show, No Brainer blogging for Beginners, I had two main objectives. Firstly, to show just how easy it is nowadays to create multimedia content and publish it on a class blog and secondly, to highlight the learning benefits of giving pupils a real audience for their work. To prove my point, I showcased the free blogging platform Posterous and with help from the obliging audience set up a blog and uploaded files there and then on to it.
To get the ball rolling, I asked one of the delegates to send an email to [email protected] with an example text about the PLS. While waiting for the confirmation message to arrive in my inbox, I shot a short video clip on my Flip Video HD camera with Carole Nicholl, transferred the movie file to my computer and attached it to the same email address. As this was attaching, Huguette Hopkinson kindly agreed to be recorded using Audacity and a USB microphone describing the weather. Next, I showed how to levelate the file to balance the audio levels and export as mp3 by which point, the video had successfully attached and the confirmation email had appeared. Please note you can attach up to 100MB per email and the upload limit per blog is 1GB.
I opened the message and clicked Click to view your new post which took us to the newly created blog and the inaugural post written by Andrew which had been beautifully formatted for us. The next step was to click the link Save your Site in the bottom right of the screen and choose a password and username. The username is the site’s address and therefore needs careful consideration. That done, I clicked Start Posting!, entered my password and clicked Submit to login to the Manage section of the blog.
Before showing the audience how to enable moderation and password protect the blog, I wanted to check the video file had uploaded by clicking on the My Posterous link in Manage and show how it could be downloaded if required. I then returned to my email account, uploaded the audio file I’d just produced and sent it to [email protected] as before.
Configuring the blog
Now it was time to look in detail at how to configure the blog to make it an appropriate environment for pupil use. To do this, I clicked on the People tab in the Manage section and described how to add pupils as contributors by clicking the green Add People button, block pasting in their school email addresses in the box provided and selecting Contributors from the dropdown menu marked as Subscribers. By adding pupils as contributors means that they can send in their homework via email, but can’t change anyone else’s or any of the blog’s settings. It also means that contributors are sent an email notification either for each new posting instantly or as a daily digest which could be a great prompt for those who still needed to submit theirs!
Alternatively, you could publish pupils’ work yourself and not add anyone as a contributor. If a pupil is added as a Contributor, they receive an email telling them what email they need to use to submit work e.g. [email protected] in this example. They are also told the password if the blog is password protected. When they publish a post they need to put their name in the post title or body text to identify who they are as their name won’t appear otherwise. They could put their first name plus the first initial of their second name or use a an alias where the teacher has a spreadsheet with pupils’ real names plus their nicknames so he or she can easily identify contributors.
Changing settings
Next I clicked on Settings and ran through the different options there. First, I clicked on Edit next to NAME YOUR SITE and changed the suggested name of Joe’s Posterous to Our Primary Languages Blog. I also added a subheading on how the blog should be used underneath and left the blog address the same as I didn’t want the links I had already made to no longer work. Finally I pressed Save Settings and Settings again
Next we dealt with whether to make the blog public or password-protect it and I showed how to do the latter by ticking a box and adding a password.
Then I moved on to explaining how to choose a theme from the templates on offer. To do that, I clicked Edit Theme and showed all the example templates by clicking See more, chose Helvetica and clicked Save, I’m done! To apply the changes, I clicked OK and to check it had worked, I clicked the My Posterous link. To my delight, Carol’s video was now properly embedded and we could play it, along with Huguette’s audio!
At this point, I emphasised the ease in which I had published multimedia content on to the blog and the potential excitement the pupils would have by seeing their work available so soon after it was completed.
Moderation
After that, I went through the important issue of dealing with comments and choosing the best option for your own situation. I described the different possible scenarios, moderating comments, password protecting the blog etc and left it up to delegates to decide what would work best for them.
If you choose only logged in users can comment then that means the administrator not the pupils can leave a comment which could be useful if the teacher wants to use commenting as a way of marking. If you select anyone can comment you would either need to tick the Moderate comments box or password-protect the site to avoid the potential of any inappropriate comments going public. You could set a homework where pupils have to comment on each other’s work and enable moderation during this time to encourage peer assessment using the formula of two stars and a wish.
When someone does leave a comment, they must write a name in the form provided, but they don’t have to put an email address. All contributors will then be notified that a comment has been left. If moderation is turned on, the administrator will be informed via email that a comment has been left and then he or she can log in, click the Moderate now link and select either Reject all, Approve all, Reject or Approve.
To moderate posts, select Anyone can post, I will moderate instead of Contributors can post from the dropdown menu and click Save Settings. Next send an email to [email protected] as in this example. Login and in Manage, click Edit next to your post. If you are happy with the contents and don’t need to edit anything, click the Update button bottom right which will publish the post to your blog.
Wes Fryer in this screencast advocates the latter, but clearly it is up to you how you want to set up your own class blog or blogs.
If you are running many blogs at the same time, moderation could be very time-consuming and you would always be able to edit or delete any post which was published as the administrator.
Having covered the delicate issue of moderating comments and posts, I showed the audience how they could allow their pupils to download the published resources if they wanted by clicking on the dropdown menu and how to select the relevant time zone too.
Finally, I added a profile picture to the blog by clicking the Edit button next to Site Profile in Settings and clicked the Enable Site Profile button. I browsed for an image which could be your school logo for example, selected it and clicked Open. I then clicked Save Settings as before.
Moving on
With all the necessary changes made, it was then just a question of adding more content and so I took some photos, put them in a zipped folder and posted them as an attachment so they would appear as a slideshow. While the images were uploading, I showed how easy it was to embed a Word document into the blog and suggested how teachers could use Posterous as a way of helping pupils revise for homework tasks with embedded audio and text support.
Unfortunately the images did not upload in time, but if they had have done, I would have hovered over the Posterous link in the top right of the screen and clicked Slideshow which would have shown off the images nicely. Nevermind. Not bad for 55 minutes work ;-)
Going further
Before the session ended, I evangelised about the inspirational work of MFL teacher Jen Turner who has been using Posterous as a class blogging tool by adding all her pupils at Stowmarket High School in Suffolk as contributors. This means that they have been able to email in their multimedia homework including video clips and audio files created on their mobile phones and have everything published all in the same place.
Jen has produced a wonderful guide which explains how she has created a password-protected blog for each year group (9-13) and language (French or German) and a public departmental ‘mother blog’ which links them all together all from the same account.
Pupils can publish work by using their school email address and access the blog they have been assigned to with the same generic password. That means no-one can publish anything unless they have been registered by Jen nor look at a blog without the password. She however, as the administrator can post to multiple blogs at the same time by adding different email addresses in her message.
Pupil voice
As Posterous supports a variety of file types and embeds them automatically, it is simple for pupils to submit multimedia work from whichever mobile device they have. This could include amr, m4a or 3gp files which normally would need to be converted first. Have a look at this post Posterousing the Learner Voice by James Clay which suggests how Posterous can be used to facilitate Pupil Voice.
Anyone who has their email registered as a contributor will be notified when someone posts on their blog and will be able to see what they have written. This could be a good reminder for those who haven’t handed in their own work and a good model for them to adapt. If a pupil copies another pupil’s work, it is easy to see who published theirs first by looking at the order they appear on the blog.
Setting and receiving homework
Jen sets homework via her different blogs now which has dramatically saved on departmental photocopying and is helpful if a pupil is absent when it was set. They need to login in of course to find out what the homework is and this obliges them to look at the blog. Other benefits are that parents can see the class’ work and feel more involved in their child’s learning. They can also check their child has done the homework set. If pupils want to have a hard copy of their work they can print it off and stick it in their books or not use the blog at all and hand in their exercise book instead if they prefer.
As the administrator, it is also possible to send a private or draft post to your blog without having to notify contributors. To do this, I'd email [email protected]or [email protected] and I would notice a padlock icon or the word draft next to my post in the Manage screen. Emailing private or draft posts is a useful way of collecting ideas you can finish off later on your computer.
The difference between a draft post and a private post is that the latter can still be accessed on a public or password-protected blog via a secret URL, but will not appear in the main blog's listings unless it is published.
Organising content and tagging
Notifications do not contain the email address of the contributor and therefore pupils need to sign their work with their name/username and form so the teacher can easily identify who they are. They can also use tags in the subject line e.g. exampletitle ((tag: nameofpupil)) which will then appear on the right of the blog under Tags as nameofpupil (1). This means anyone who has access to the blog can see immediately how many contributions each person has made. Contributors can add multiple tags, by using commas e.g. exampletitle ((tag: Yr9Gr, nameofpupil, hw, date)). By clicking on a tag, all the posts tagged with that keyword will appear. Tags are a useful way of organising the content on a blog and make it easier to find older posts. The administrator can also change or edit the tags for each post by logging into the Posterous site and clicking Edit next to each post.
Future plans
Jen is planning to create a password-protected blog for each of her language classes next year and this should make it easier to organise content and make them more focussed. Like this year, links for these blogs will be available as separate pages on the mother blog which will also contain MFL related news and revision tips. To add a page to a Posterous blog, click the Pages tab in the Manage screen and click the Page button next to Navigation. Add your content including hyperlinks as necessary and click Save when you’re done.
Have a look at the excellent help section or these How do I tutorials if any of the things you're trying to do don't seem to work they way they should or for new ideas on how to get the most out of Posterous
To publish a YouTube clip, Slideshare presentation, Flickr set or Google Map, put its URL in the main body of your email and this will automatically embed it into the post when you send it.
If you are logged in and you hover over the title of a post, you’ll notice three links appear Edit, Delete and Tag which allow you to customise further or start again.
If you have an email signature and you don’t want it to appear, finish your post with #end and Posterous will ignore any text found after that.
If you create a Gmail account to post from the button in the Manage section will say Post by Gmail. Clicking on it will open your Gmail account with the email you need to send content to your Posterous blog. Fab timesaver!
Give complete control over your site to other colleagues in your department or school by adding them as Administrators too so they can also approve comments, edit contributor's posts or invite more subscribers.
Create an open departmental Twitter account and set up autoposting from the mother blog to it. Please note this will only work from a public blog not a private password-protected one, but would be another way of promoting content to the wider community. Login to your Twitter account. Click the Autopost tab in the Manage screen and click Add a service. Click the Twitter link and then the Link button. Give permission for Posterous to access your Twitter account and you’re done. The title of every new post will be automatically tweeted and include a link to the main post on your mother blog. Easy!
If you paste the full url of an mp3 file into a Posterous post it appears with the default player.
Click on the blue HTML icon when editing a post and paste in the embed code from a variety of web 2.0 tools such as Wallwisher, VoiceThread and Voki to display them on the blog
Add links to your sidebar (This could include an iTunes subscribe link for your podcast - see below for details)
Add instructions to the mother blog on how to submit work e.g. Don’t forget to send your work to for example [email protected] and how to add tags such as ((tag: nameofpupil))
Tell pupils to put the email they use to send their homework in their contacts / Address book
Tell pupils they can comment on posts by replying to the notification email they receive when a new post is published (if comments are enabled).
Use the mother blog to showcase the best examples of work from the password-protected blogs
To hear more reasons why users are switching to Posterous, have a listen to social media entrepreneur Phil Campbell who highlights the power and simplicity of the free tool.
who gives some useful tips about cross-posting and transfering content from a mobile device. He also emphasises how using Posterous is so much easier than a Virtual Learning Environment for most teachers.
Being able to publish with ease and do it regularly is a huge deal. A lot of the schools around us have signed for different content management systems. Teachers will log onto post content, but it can be really cumbersome, time-consuming and also limiting with what you can share.
Talking of iPadio, another way of sending audio to a Posterous blog would be to phlog it using a mobile phone or landline and set up cross-posting with the free phonecasting service.
There are two ways of subscribing to a Posterous blog via email and via RSS. If you already have a Posterous account, then you'll be asked for your email address and password, but if you don't, you shouldn't need to create one to subscribe for updates via email.
Subscribing via email
To subscribe via email, click on the link by the small Posterous icon on the right of the blog called Subscribe to this Posterous, Follow this site or Subscribe via email. You can then choose if you want to be notified instantly of the latest posts or receive a daily or weekly digest via your subscription. You can also unsubscribe by clicking on the same link and hitting the Unsubscribe button.
The email you receive when you subscribe will include the message You’re subscribed to (number of) sites. Here are the latest posts from your subscriptions. If you click on the number of sites link in this message, it will take you to a page which shows how many blogs you are subscribed to. You can view this page without being logged in, but please note this page only names public blogs not password-protected ones.
If you'd like to change how often you receive email updates or unsubscribe completely, click on the link above the first link you clicked in the email you received which allows you to do this.
To find out how many subscribers a blog has, click on the People tab in the Manage section. The number is in brackets next to the All Subscribers tab and the subscribers' email addresses are displayed in grey under their username. If necessary, you can remove a subscriber by clicking the X next to his or her name.
Another way to see all the sites you’re subscribed to is to click on the My Subscriptions link which is top right of the screen when you’re logged in or which appears when you hover over the Posterous icon on any Posterous blog. Here you can see the latest posts of all your subscriptions including those from password-protected blogs. If you click on the RSS for My Subscriptions link on the right of this page though, you will notice that your reading listonly displays posts from public blogs not private ones.
You can also click on the Manage subscriptions link to change how often you are notified of new posts from all the blogs you have subscribed to. This can be set to instantly, daily, weekly or never.
Subscribing via RSS
To subscribe via RSS I would recommend using Google Reader. Click on the link Subscribe via RSS on the right hand side of your blog. Copy the feed in the address bar. Open a Google Reader account. Click the Add a subscription button and paste in the link. This will work even if the blog is password-protected although please note that the feed addresses will be different.
e.g
http://plsblogexample.posterous.com/rss.xml (If the blog example is public)
http://plsblogexample.posterous.com/private/cb19c3cf4783d00ba5994d59053772cc/rss.xml (if the blog is password-protected
If you subscribe to a password protected blog in Google Reader, you can read text posts, watch YouTube clips, download images, by clicking on them to make their original size, right-clicking them and clicking Save Target As... and interestingly download PDF files, PowerPoints and Word documents even if the administrator has disabled downloading in the blog’s settings. You won’t however be able to watch embedded video or audio clips unless you click the link Watch on Posterous and enter the password first.
Creating a Bundle
It is also possible to create a combined feed of all your private feeds so they all appear in the same place in Google Reader. This is known as a Bundle and to make one, click on the link Browse for stuff on the left of your Reader and click on the Create a bundle button.
On the next page that comes up, untick the box next to Add to my Shared items as you want to keep the contents of these private feeds private. Add a bundle title and brief description in the boxes provided e.g Stowmarket MFL feed of feeds.
Drag each feed you want to add to the bundle from the left sidebar into the box labelled Drop a feed or folder here to add it to the bundle. When doing so you will notice a blue frame appears around the box each time you drop in a new feed. Click Save when you’re done.
Click Add a link to your website or blog to reveal the combined feed. Click the Subscribe button and view it in Reader link.
Having created a combined feed, you can now highlight items you want to showcase on the mother blog by clicking on the greyed out star icon to the left of each entry so it goes yellow. To then view all the items you have starred, click on the Starred items link top left of your Reader. Open a starred link and click the Permalink in the message. Enter the password to access the blog and click the Submit button. Hover over the Posterous icon top right and click Login. Enter the email address and password you used to register for your Posterous account and click Login. Hover over the Posterous icon again and click the Manage link. Click on the appropriate password-protected blog on the left of the Manage section and click the Edit button on the right next to the appropriate post you want to copy.
Click the HTML icon in the editing screen. Drag over the whole code, right-click and copy it. Click the Update button which will take you to the front end of the blog containing the post you want to showcase on the mother blog.
Click the Manage link again. Select the mother blog on the left hand side and click the Post by Web button. Click the HTML button again in your new post, paste in the code and add the same title as in the original. If you don’t want to publish the post there and then click the POST OPTIONS tab and tick the box next to Mark this post as private. Click the Publish button to take you to the front end. There you will be able to see the new post even if you marked it as private as you are logged in to your account. Those who just enter the password will not unless you make the post public. To check your post is private, hover over the Posterous icon top right and click the Manage link or click the Manage Site link top left. You’ll notice a padlock icon to the left of the post signifying that it is private and therefore can only be seen by the blog administrator.
You may prefer not to combine your feeds and keep them separate or to transfer posts to the mother blog using the bookmarklet described below. Of course, there are different options on how best to set up and organise your class blogs and you need to decide which method would work most effectively for your students and you.
Podcasting
In this video clip, Kenley Neufeld shows how to set up a shared class podcast and how to subscribe to it by hyperlinking the word iTunes with the link itpc://mat149.posterous.com/rss.xml. Please note this only works for audio files (not video files at the time of writing).
In our example, we would insert itpc://plsblogexample.posterous.com/rss.xml as a hyperlink if our blog was public or itpc://plsblogexample.posterous.com/private/cb19c3cf4783d00ba5994d59053772cc/rss.xml if it were private.
By using the Pages feature in the Manage section, you can add a link in the sidebar of your blog describing how to subscribe to your podcast in iTunes. To do this, click the Pages tab and click on the pencil next to Sites I Like. Type in Audio Podcast and click Save. Click the Page button. Put the title Subscribe in iTunes and in the body text write something like this:
There are two ways of subscribing in iTunes to the audio podcast on this blog.The easy way is just to click on this link. (NB. the inserted hyperlink is itpc://plsblogexample.posterous.com/private/cb19c3cf4783d00ba5994d59053772cc/rss.xml)
To add some useful links to your sidebar. Click the Pages tab again and click the Add a collection button. Add a Label in the box provided such as Links and click Save. Click the Link button and type in the URL of the first link you want to add and its Label. Click Save again and repeat the process for other links. Click My Posterous to see the changes.
Adding a Twitter feed to your sidebar
To add a Twitter feed to your sidebar go to Twitter's widget creator and add the Twitter username of the feed you want to display e.g stowmarketmfl. Hit Enter to show the latest tweets. Please note this will not work if the account is protected. Click the Preferences tab and change the number of Tweets to say 7. Click the Appearance tab and click on the black box next to shell background. In the dialogue box which appears, click in the white box top right, enter the appropriate colour code and click Done. Repeat the same process for the other colour choices. Click the Dimensions tab when you've finished. For the Widget Dimensions, tick the box next to auto-width. Click the Finish & Grab Code button.
Copy the code from the box which then appears. Go to the Desktop, right click and select New/Text Document. Open the txt file, paste in the code and save it with a name such as Twitter_widget.
Now click on this link taken from the post Adding your Twitter feed to your Posterous sidebar and click the raw link. Copy and paste the html code into another txt document following the same procedure as before. Save this file with a name such as Twitter_widget2. Open Twitter_widget and copy the text then in Twitter-widget2 drag over the code directly underneath <!-- Paste twitter feed here --> starting with <script src down to </script> and paste the text from Twitter_widget over the top to replace it. Save Twitter_widget2 and close it.
Go to the Start Menu, Control Panel and Folder Options. Click the View tab and untick the box next to Hide extensions for known file types. Click Apply and OK.
Go to the Desktop again, right-click the txt file Twitter_widget2 you've just created and change the title from twitter_widget.txt to twitter_widget.html. Hit Enter. You will see the message If you change a file extension, the file may become unusable. Are you sure you want to change it? Click Yes. You will notice the icon of your file has now changed.
You now need to upload this html file to the web. In this example, we shall use Dropbox. Login, click the Files tab and click the folder marked Public.Click Upload. Choose files. Select the file twitter_widget2. Click Open and Start upload. Right click the file and select Copy public link from the menu on the right and click Copy to clipboard. Close the dialogue box.
In Posterous, click Settings in the Manage section and the Edit Theme button. Clicked Advanced on the left and Expand on the right. Scroll to about 3/4 of the way down the page until you see the code <div class="sidebarunit">. Highlight the code as far as </div> and replace it with:
As you can see, I've added the link to the uploaded Twitter widget in the code and changed the height and width values to 500px and 240px. Click Save, I'm done! and OK. Wait a moment and your blog's homepage will appear displaying the Twitter widget. Easy!
Using the bookmarklet
Another revelatory way of seamlessly embedding content is by using the Posterous bookmarklet straight from your browser. To add the bookmarklet, click on the link at the bottom of the Manage section or click on this link directly.
The instructions on how to install the bookmarklet are underneath the Share on Posterous button and how to guides are on the right hand side of the page. So for Internet Explorer, right click the button and choose Add to Favorites.
You will see the message You are adding a favourite that might not be safe. Do you want to continue? Click Yes and Add in the next dialogue box which appears.
Select Favorites Bar from the dropdown menu and click Add.
For Firefox, click and drag the button onto your Bookmark Bar. To check your Bookmark Bar is activated, right click anywhere in the blank space above the address bar and make sure there is a tick next to Bookmarks Toolbar.
Once installed, login to your Posterous account, then go to any webpage and click on the bookmarklet. A white panel will appear showing you a title and what examples of embedded content or excerpts are available for transfer.
If the page contains more than one item, you can click on the numbered arrows to navigate through the selection. You can also add a comment in the box provided. Please note though that the bookmarklet will only work if the user is logged into Posterous first.
If you want to post at a certain time, autopost or make your post private, click on the Advanced Options link and tick the appropriate box.
If you have a number of blogs running from the same account, click on the dropdown menu Which site do you want to post this to? and select the desired destination.
When you’re ready hit Post and click on the link See your post now. If you now hover over the title of your newly published post, you’ll notice three links appear Edit, Delete and Tag which allow you to customise further or start again.
As an example, if we click on the bookmarklet when viewing my recent celebratory post about ILILC, you can see that there are a number of excerpts that can be immediately transfered. These include a SlideShare, Animoto clip, an image, Go! Animate player and Blip.tv video clip.
Experimenting further I’ve found that the following sites work in the same way too:
Other tools such as Cover it Live, classtools games and Wallwisher couldn’t be embedded via the bookmarklet, but could be by clicking on the blue HTML button in the editing screen and pasting in the necessary code.
The advantage of using the bookmarklet to post content to your Posterous blog is it requires no understanding of how embed codes work, where to find them and how to adjust height and width values so they fit properly on a page. The bookmarklet does everything for you which potentially is a fantastic timesaver.
I can see this being useful for quickly transfering Web 2.0 projects into Posterous as well as creating comprehension exercises based on authentic texts, video clips, sound files etc culled from the web and adding appropriate questions in the bookmarklet’s comments field.
This would be so quick and easy to do, it could almost be done on the fly. Alternatively, pupils could email the teacher a direct link to their Animoto or Go! Animate 4 Schools presentations or better still post it on a wiki and then he or she could open it and use the bookmarklet to transfer the best examples to the blog from there.
Sending private posts and tagging them could also be a good way of building up a bank of useful excerpts for the teacher which he or she could then make public at the appropriate point in the year when that particular topic comes up. Respecting copyright is obviously an issue and although each excerptshows an attribution link at the bottom of the post when published, I would take careful heed of the advice given in this clip by Josh Galvan about only copying short gobbits of text and making sure the content is appropriate for the intended audience. Josh has made a number of detailed and comprehensive how to guides for Posterous and these can be found here.
Using Google Reader
You can also add Posterous as a Send to location in Google Reader giving you another way of publishing interesting links as soon as you come across them. To set this up, click on the Manage Subscriptions link bottom left and the Send to tab in the Settings page. Put a tick next to the Posterous icon and click the Back to Google Reader link. Click on on a link to open up a post and click on the grey downwards arrow next to Send to at the bottom of this post. Click the Posterous link which appears.
To avoid breaching copyright and publishing content without permission., click on the excerpt to reveal the HTML code underneath. Click in front of the word via and drag over the code preceding it. Delete the highlighted text and add the <div> tag.
e.g
Doing this makes the attribution clear and if readers click on the link they will be taken to the original article.
Click OK, when you're done and Post.
Conclusion
I hope I've been able to achieve the two objectives I set out in the beginning of this post and proved how easy classroom blogging can be. Up until recently I've considered Posterous as a wonderful moblogging tool, but thanks to the pioneering work of teachers such as Jen Turner, Andrew Jeppesen, Wesley Fryer and Richard Byrne my eyes have been opened to whole new range of possibilities.
What I particularly like about Posterous as a classroom blogging tool is its ease of use. Anyone who can email can take part. Simple as. Of course, you can play around with RSS feeds, adding Twitter widgets and Posterous bookmarklets if you want, but if you don't have to to get going. Admittedly, setting up a blog or blogs will take a bit of time but once done, the rest should be a doddle.
Here’s a wishlist of certain features I feel would enhance the service even more for the classroom and beyond.
These include being able to:
embed individual audio or video players into other sites
embed a blog player including all audio or video posts
edit posts before uploading on iPhone/Android app and have landscape as well as portrait views
send a contributor a private comment which appears in the Manage section in a comments column
see the latest comments at a glance in a list in the Manage section.
edit comments, not just approve or reject them
see contributors' email addresses in the Manage section under posts or comments they have written
turn off email notification for contributors and moderate their posts
have a comments feed for a password protected or public blog
make video files and PDFs iTunes compatible for private or public feeds
embed html into the sidebar to allow you to add educational widgets
login as a contributor so you can use Post.ly, the bookmarklet and Send to feature in Google Reader to publish content, but not have access to the Manage section of the blog
If you'd like to have a look at the blog example I set up at the CILT PLS the address is plsblogexample.posterous.com and the password is CILTPLS. You'd be more than welcome.
Then after that, why not experiment with a departmental blog for showcasing your pupils' work and see how you find it? How hard can it be?
With Mimi's permission, I am also publishing a compilation of all the phlogs she and her students sent during the trip as well as the pictures they took while they were away.
It was fantastic to be able to find out from Mimi herself how she used technology to enhance her students' experience, allow them to express themselves and keep parents in the loop at the same time. It was also lovely to hear how influential the MFL Twitterati has been on Mimi's practice in the last year! Take a bow @josepicardo and @icpjones!
As I mentioned to Mimi in our interview, it seems to me that to take this type of moblogging to the next level, it would be a good idea to combine the power of iPadio with Twitterand a Posterous blog. This would allow you to cross-post any phlogs or tweets to the same place automatically as well as give you the option of uploading video or images via email if you could get access to free wifi en route or have a suitable data package set up.
Check out iPadio's YouTube channel for some useful guides on how to do this as well as overviews of Posterous such as this one or this one. Posterous has recently introduced comment moderation on their blogs too making the service arguably ideal for educational moblogging. You can also moderate your phlogs as well if you wish before publishing them live on the internet.
With the go ahead she needed, Katie began by getting her pupils to record their speaking assessments on Voki.com and filming each other saying phrases in Spanish. She is quoted as saying:
“Specifically for a foreign language, it’s a great way to both formally and informally access speaking abilities, which is really hard to do on a regular basis because of class sizes and lack of time.”
Buoyed by this success, Katie then chose to use the tool Poll Everywhere to help them practise their writing skills through text messaging and displaying the results on the interactive whiteboard. As she points out in our interview, this means that pupils can answer anonymously and therefore not feel singled out or embarrassed if they make a mistake. Katie intends to create multiple choice with Poll Everywhere too replicating a kind of classroom response system where she can immediately assess her students’ understanding and see what they need to work on.
"Being able to text in class is just something new and in a way rejuvenates us because it is not the usual 'take notes, then do homework,' like we do in the rest of our classes," 16-year-old Pulaski student Kevin Dunford said. "It's a new flavor."
Not content with simply exploring the potential of mobile phones in lesson time, Katie has been creating distance learning resources for her students to access in their own time outside of the school day. For example, Señora Titler has uploaded her own grammar PowerPoints to VoiceThread and added a voiceover recorded from her mobile.
Please note that the phone numbers Katie uses for Voki and VoiceThread are US numbers and so for those who don't live in the States, I would suggest you record with a microphone instead or upload mp3 files you've already created. However, don't despair as Poll Everywhere and Gabcast do have a range of international numbers you can ring, if you fancy trying out some of the ideas presented here! Gabcast has also recently received new sponsorship and is again free to use which is great news for fans of the phonecasting tool.
Thanks to Fred Boss for retrieving this from the video vaults at NCTE and giving me permission to publish it to the world. I'm delighted it's finally seeing the light of day!
receive email notification every time someone you are following phonecasts a new message
pre-moderate incoming phonecasts before they go live on your channel
download and re-upload your phonecasts to your channel
plot a sequence of phonecasts on Google Maps showing where each one was created
have access to iPadio's API meaning that if you are a coder you can customise it to work with other applications enabling new and exciting possibilities for the tool
Thanks to Mark for the update and for creating such a great tool which makes capturing audio so easy wherever you are and whenever you want!
Voice Band is an iPhone app which can convert your voice into ten different musical intruments and produce creative compositions in a matter of minutes. In this example, Rim Buntinas, founder and president of WaveMachine labs demonstrates how easy it is to put together a rock song based on a simple tune in no time at all.
For iPhone users, I could see this app being a fun and engaging way of producing original songs for revising language structures in and out of the classroom which for the not very musical amongst us, could be a particularly attractive proposition!
As long as you can carry a tune, your creativity can know no bounds! Cool!
My brief was in 750-1000 words to give a broad overview of the different types of resources and technologies available to language teachers including self-authoring tools, presentation software, blogging, podcasting, handheld learning and videoconferencing.
Here is the article. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Technology tops language learning
The types of technologies available to modern foreign teachers have significantly improved in recent years, resulting in the creation of many new learning opportunities both in and out of the classroom. For example, the internet now gives access to a rich resource of authentic information including foreign language video clips, train timetables, restaurant menus and podcasts. Hardware such as interactive whiteboards, laptops, digital cameras, microphones and video recorders are now common place in schools enabling pupils and staff to produce excellent outcomes when used effectively. Likewise, the spread of broadband connectivity has facilitated the ease of publishing pupils' work to a worldwide audience and given them a real purpose for using their language. Faster connection speeds have also made free videoconferencing with a webcam a possibility, raised intercultural understanding and helped to forge international links with native speakers in other schools. Similarly, the flexibility of digital resources and the willingness to share work online has allowed colleagues to recycle and tailor materials to best suit their pupils' individual needs.
For whole class teaching, presentation software can enhance the traditional use of an overhead projector or flashcards by introducing movement, animation and sound effects. Colour can be used to remind students of grammatical points, such as word type or gender. This is particularly effective as a visual prompt if used consistently in other presentations and wall displays around the classroom.
Teachers are able to increase the pace of their lessons by launching audio and movie clips quickly and easily without the need for separate hardware. In addition, any annotations made during the lesson can be saved and returned to later for revision purposes. The IWB software lets you drag and drop text cards or images around the screen and when combined with a wireless mouse and keyboard the board can be accessed remotely allowing pupils to play games or do text manipulation exercises from their seats, a particularly useful technique for the shyer ones.
Taking pupils to an ICT suite allows them to work more independently and practise interactive activities such as listening and reading comprehensions, matching, reordering and gap-filling exercises at their own pace. Traditionally dry exercises are transformed into something far more engaging and the immediate feedback allows pupils to monitor their own progress more easily and compare it with their peers. Students also tend to complete more activities in the available time than they would have done if they had been done on paper and the mechanical and repetitive nature of the tasks can give them the rigour they need to embed the content more deeply.
Some teachers like to create distance learning opportunities for their pupils to download and use for independent revision at home or on the move via an mp3 player or mobile phone. This could be publishing text, audio or video resources online on a departmental blog or the school's virtual learning environment (VLE). For example, students could use model questions and answers for speaking examinations which the pupils can listen to as many times as they like whenever and wherever they are.
Blogs give pupils and others the opportunity to leave comments as a form of electronic assessment for learning. Blogs also provide a showcase of pupils' work and raise the profile of the languages department within the school. Pupils are motivated to produce their own resources such as cartoons, photo-stories, podcasts or video projects using technology and find working with tools they are already familiar with engaging, particularly if they know that what they produce will be put online. By working in small collaborative groups in this way, pupils can peer assess each other's contributions and access higher order thinking skills in the process. This is particularly effective for gifted and talented pupils who like the nature of this type of open-ended activity.
Technology can play an important role on an educational visit to a foreign country too. For example, a teacher can keep parents informed of their child's whereabouts by sending regular updates to a blog from a mobile phone or laptop connected to the internet using free wifi or a USB mobile internet connection. Moblogging or mobile blogging as it is called can be very reassuring to parents and provide pupils with the opportunity to reflect on their experiences abroad.
It is important to consider that some language teachers may feel overwhelmed by the expectations put on them to improve their ICT skills to meet the demands of 21st century learning. This is a genuine concern and schools need to consider how they can help staff gain the training they need. There is help at hand, however, through the form of RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts, micro-blogging services and how to guides on video-sharing sites as well as commercial courses. One thing is certain though, technology and the internet are not going to suddenly go away and colleagues must now reflect on how they can develop their use of ICT to create greater learning opportunities for their pupils in the future. Hopefully, this article will provide some pointers to help them on their way.
Embedded in the article is a short video clip which I've included here as well along with a transcript and audio only version. I hope you find them useful. Thanks to Ten Alps Publishing for letting me upload the original as the quality is far better.
"Well, there's a huge variety of ICT available to language teachers from PowerPoint for whole class presentation to blogs and podcasts and more emerging technologies. I think that the main reason why language teachers should use ICT is to enhance learning and to build on traditional methodology. There's no point using ICT for the sake of using ICT. So for example, you can use PowerPoint to introduce vocabulary. You can use colour for background to reinforce gender for example have a blue background for masculine nouns, pink background for feminine nouns and a green background for plural nouns. You can use audio files which you can launch automatically from the PowerPoint. You can have movement. So the images can be animated or you can be having them coming in from the left or the right or moving around and that's much more engaging, I think compared to a static OHP you would have used traditionally. So it's using traditional methodology, but it's enhancing it using ICT.
Once you've done that, you can then take the pupils into an ICT suite and they can do interactive activities. There are various free applications as well as commercial applications that you can get hold of and you can author them yourself. You can add your own items, your vocab items or expressions and get the children to manipulate the language over and over again and reinforce it, by really giving the rigour that they need for language learning. I think that is very important and then you can be more creative as well. You can use Flip cameras or you can use video cameras in the classroom. You can use mp3 recorders so that you can record the audio of the children. You can video them. Obviously you need to have parental permission if you are going to publish that. You could then get your own school blog. You could publish that on the school blog to a worldwide audience, to a real audience and the pupils can find that very engaging.
At the moment, there's a small committed group of language teachers who are doing this sort of thing, who are publishing their resources to the World Wide Web and I think that with the new curriculum as it is at the moment, with the new KS3 curriculum for example and that the way that curricula are changing in general, that these are the sorts of things that we should be trying to do, forging international links, being creative and giving the pupils a real purposeful reason for language learning.
So, all in all I think that ICT has a huge amount to offer, but at the same time, it can be quite bewildering for some people who maybe don't feel very techno-savvy. They might sort of think, well how possibly do I actually put all of this into practice. Well my advice would be to start off small and to grow from there and to, if you like be part of a community and get support from other people from within your own department or within your own school.
And it all plays a part, doesn't it within the kind of digital arena, the sort of roll out of digital as described by the government.
Absolutely, I think that's a vital point. I think that in the 21st century, it's really important that teachers take on board these sorts of ideas and use blogs and podcasts and VLEs and wikis and all these other tools which are really important as well as more traditional ICT such as PowerPoint and word-processing and things like that in order to make sure that the pupils are not 'powering down' are not 'turning off', are using these sorts of tools which they are using in their own time. They are using social networking sites. They are communicating with each other via MSN etc and it's really important that we channel this creativity, educationally speaking in the classroom in order to tick all the boxes if you like of the new curricula that we are now seeing, that the government are promoting us to use.
As you say, some teachers can be kind of technophobic. The answer for them is to start small, not be overly ambitious?
Exactly, yeah definitely. Start small for example learning how to use PowerPoint for introducing vocabulary, introducing expressions, maybe set up a blog. You can get a blog up and running in a matter of minutes and more importantly speak to somebody else within the department or within the school to get some support. I think that you can get help and support from for example, video tutorials on places like YouTube and places like that which are great, but also having the sort of human factor, someone sitting next to you and showing you what to do and where to click and as I said starting off small and going from there. Also perhaps joining Twitter and meeting other language teachers who are on Twitter and being part of a community. I think that is very important."
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