NTeQ Lesson plans

I have no clue what NTeQ stands for, but it is aimed at helping teachers integrate computer technology into their classrooms. It is run by Gary Morrison (big name in Educational Technology) and Deborah Lowther.

There are a ton of lesson plans here organized by grade and topic. I found some real gems in there, however, the biggest problem is that many are incomplete and nearly all of the Foreign Language ones (including ESL) are missing objectives...come on teachers!

That being said, many are really good and include what to do and what technologies to use. They are also not overly prescriptive. They provide general suggestions that you can play with if you'd like.

There are lots of lesson plan repositories on the Web. Have you found any that you like?

Wikis in the Classroom

Here is another fun and informative video by Cool Cat Teacher (http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com).

Using Skype with your students

This is a neat video on using Skype with your students. It's mostly advice for setting up and managing Skype in class, but it's great information. The size of the video is too small to see details unfortunately, but it should be useful anyway.



Dan

Students use IM-lingo in essays - CNN.com

There's a new one of these articles every once in a while. I keep posting them because they are great conversation starters with teachers, particularly language teachers.

I like to refer to this as "chatese", but IM-lingo is pretty good too. This dialect of English (at this point you might be able to refer to it as a pidgin at this point, I'd love to hear ideas on which it is) is widely "spoken" and could be considered a functional dialect for millions of text messaging (SMS) and instant messaging software.

This, however, frustrates some teachers to no end. They see it as a corruption of the language and yet a sign of sloth the permeates the younger generation.

I would respectfully disagree. I think that these same teachers forget their own (or at least others in their generation) use of non-standard forms of the language (primarily slang). These have always leaked into school assignments, much to the chagrin of teachers.

In all of these cases, teachers have eventually come to the conclusion that they can't convince students not to use the language, but they could teach them that there are appropriate times to use different language forms. For example, using "standard English" in a chat room will mark you as an outsider, with all the negative associations that accompany the designation. In the same vein, using chatese in academic, business, or other formal writing will mark the author as immature, naive, and even disrespectful.

I'll take your opinions if you'd like to post a comment.

Kids' Vid: Video Production for Students

This is an interesting site for those of you with no video production experience. Now, I'll warn you that this has nothing to do with video software and how to get videos on your computer. You'll have to get that somewhere else. However, it does have a lot of good advice on HOW to video and some hardware tips.

I think that this is a good resource for younger students and, possibly, even their teachers :)

75 ESL Teaching Ideas (I-TESL-J)

This is an interesting piece. Take it or leave it, there's a bunch of good ideas in this list.