After
the podcast project, this week we have been introduced to the Wiki projects. As a
class we have a Wiki page called “My Favorite Book”. We, as students, each have
our own page with the name of our favorite books. This is the first time I have created a Wiki page. I guess it will not be the last one, since
I enjoyed writing my Wiki page very much.
Creating
a Wiki page is fairly easy, it takes just a few minutes to create it, as the name wiki-wiki suggests, meaning quick in Hawaiian. The only thing one needs is to sign up for free with a user
name and password. Then, s/he will have the authority to create, edit or even delete an entry on Wiki pages. Since thousands of people contribute to the Wiki pages, it
is possible to find answers for almost anything. Yet, because of the exact same
reason the reliability of the answers should be questioned and crosschecked to get the maximum benefit.
I really have hard time when I am asked two things:
My favorite book and my favorite cartoon character. Being a bookworm, it is
really hard for me to choose a single one from all of the great books I have
read so far. My all time favorite is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald
Dahl. Yet, for this project I decided to describe another book.
Here
is my Wiki page with one of my favorite books. Enjoy!
This week we, my partner
Buse and I, prepared a podcast using Vocaroo – Online voice recorder. First, we chose
our characters: Cinderella and Lady Tremaine, also known as the Wicked
Stepmother. Then, we wrote the chant –which you can find below- and finally
sang and recorded it. Our main purpose in doing so was to create an example for
our students who will also experience writing and singing chants.
Before we explain the task, we will
introduce the class chants along with other types of poems. In the task we
created, we want the students to express their own ideas, feelings and opinions
using new vocabulary. We chose chants instead of a paragraph since they will be
required to write paragraphs in many occasions for the rest of their lives! In
addition, they will need to find words which rhyme and use at least three
antonym pairs, as we did in the example (question-answer, always-never, and
black and white), while writing their chants.
In the task we prepared, we ask the
students to decide on their favorite cartoon character, take a photo with
her/him if possible (if not, a photo with the toy of the character is also fine
or acceptable), imagine the character’s past and write a chant with 5-6 lines about
a specific instance of that past. Afterwards, each student will sing it, record
it and send the photo and the chant to us via e-mail. We are thinking about bringing
all of them together and creating a totally different story, so they will be
able to listen to each other’ stories as well. Our students do not know this
little surprise we are planning yet. For now, we are looking forward to listening
to their podcasts!
While preparing this task, we kept
in mind the difficulties of creating a podcast. Although we did not face any,
the students may have some technical problems such as connection, microphone,
or recording problems. Fortunately, we have a computer lab at school so if the
students cannot succeed at home, they can always try at school or ask for help.
On the other hand, creating a podcast, they will listen to themselves, check
out the pronunciation of the new vocabulary, pay attention to the word choice,
and become confident about the way they sound after listening our example!
We hope our students will enjoy
doing this task as much as we did and create lovely podcasts!
Welcome to Ahu's ELT World! In
this blog, I will be posting various technological tools which may help both
teachers and students in their English classes.
I hope you will enjoy my blog
posts. I will appreciate any comments. Thank you for visiting and please check
back soon for updates!
