Animoto

I've been a bit busy the past week or so as on top of the usual end of term assessment writing, marking and reports, I have been preparing for my first PD presentation. As part of the preparation for that presentation I have begun to use Animoto more in class and have prepared a short video to highlight what it is. Animoto is great for putting short videos together and even better if you grab an educator account as it allows you and your students to make longer videos with images, text and audio. Simple to use but effective. Students can include the target language in written or spoken form in their movies. Here's the one I prepared earlier ...

Motivational posters - Learn a Language

Over at Big Huge Labs (Flickr toys) they have some great tools to help spice up your photos; turn them into posters, calendars, even jigsaws. Anyway, I've been playing around with the 'Motivator' to help spice up the classroom and corridors around the language classrooms. The ulterior motive is of course to spark the student's interest in learning a language and help students to see its relevance.

It should be noted that I was able to produce these materials with funds provided by the Australian Government through the Languages Program.

So far it has worked pretty well and there's been a positive response from the students, especially to the tongue twisters we have put up. The picture here is one sample of what you can do. There are a couple more on my flickr page. Feel free to use them and create some more ...

Time Flying by ...

Breakfast conversation yesterday taught me something new. Commenting on the fact that the year seemed to be flying by and it was already March, I was informed of the following Japanese expression:

一月はいく、二月はにげる、三月はさる　(ichigatsu wa iku, nigatsu wa nigeru, sangatsu wa saru)

Literally this means: January goes, February flees & March departs (leaves). In Japanese the first sounds in each of the pairs of words (January / go, February / flee, March / depart) are the same, making it an easy expression to remember.

As a means to tracking each day and trying to get something out of them, I have been part of the Twitter365 group. A photo a day – most days, hence the picture for this post is February’s montage. Another great way of trying to make the most of your day is, for those with an iPod Touch or iPhone, download the app – Gratitude. Then, once a day, type in what you are grateful for. Helps keep things in perspective.

 

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