17 Dec 2008

YAPPR - A new way to learn English


How many times have you tried to learn English or other languages with videos but you could not understand anything? Now, it is possible to improve your language with Yappr, a new free tool developed by Patrick Nee to learn languages in a funny way with entertaining videos which you can choose from different categories such as Christmas, comedy, music or cartoons. Therefore, if you are learning English, this site can be a very useful tool since it avoids the problem of not understanding because the videos have subtitles in English and Spanish. Besides, the videos are short and you can use them in the classroom to do other kind of activities.

Many students prefer watching interesting and funny videos to reading books because videos have sound and images. The advantage of this site is that with the subtitles, the videos can be understandable for beginners or intermediate students. Youtube videos are good for advanced learners but not for beginners of intermediate ones, since sometimes they do not have subtitles. Users can also upload their videos and even contribute with their translations to their own videos or to others ones. Besides, there are also games and a chat to talk to people from all over the world and practice English. What are you waiting for joining to it and sharing with your students and friends? There are fourteen languages available in Yappr, therefore you have no excuses to learn languages.

A similar website is Dot Sub. If you want to know more about Dot Sub you can read Nik Peachey's Blog, he has an interesting post about it with some ideas to use these videos in class.


8 Dec 2008

Lexipedia, where words have meaning and sound


If you teach Languages like English, Spanish, German, French, Dutch or Italian this is the educational tool you and your students need.

Lexipedia is a visual tool for learning languages, a mixture of a dictionary and thesaurus, which provides a visual net of semantic relationships and it is free. Besides when you introduce a word it doesn't give you only the meaning but you can also listen that word pronunciation. Therefore, what are you waiting for enriching your vocabulary?

6 Dec 2008

Are you ready to teach?


Are you ready to teach? Would you like to practise without any risk to your career? Then, you should know Virtual School.
Virtual School is a tool which presents environments where the teacher has to take decisions. There are not right or wrong answers but, be careful because your decisions can have consequences for the school environment.

The project has been developed by NCSL (National College for School Leadership) and BBC and I think it worths visiting it!
When you enter you have several options, I mean, you can choose between managing a primary school, a secondary school or a special one. But if you are a new user you only have one option, "New School". The school secretary will guide you through the school. The next step is choosing the virtual environment where you want to work. For starting the simulation you have to guide with the buttons which are above on the left side of the website (similar to a DVD player buttons). Are you ready?

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