Pinterest

Here comes my blog post about the popular community Pinterest. You can access Pinterest on the web site: http://pinterest.com/ and by Android app or iPhone/iPad app. It´s free and easy to use but you need to create an account before you start pinning.

What is Pinterest? You create virtual bulletin boards on Pinterest by sharing content from the Internet to people across the world. You can create boards about any topic like English grammar, English rhymes, English listening activities etc by saving them on your Pinterest profile. You can later on access your content on any computer with Internet connection. The whole idea with Pinterest is that you pin web sites and interesting links. Then, you share the links that you pin with other Pinterest users. The users can also repin your pins if they like them and you can follow other users by subscribing to their boards.

You don´t need to share pins with the whole world. You can instead create collaborative boards and invite only pupils from your class. Then you can share documents and work together on different projects. The invited members can comment the content in a collaborative board and inspire each other.

Why use Pinterest as teachers? It´s a good way to collect and organize ideas that you get from the Internet. Here you can find inspiration and get ideas for classroom activities. You´ll find stencils and printables and you can also get inspired by other teachers from other countries and develop your own teaching skills.

What should you think about when you use Pinterest? It´s important to read the Pinterest terms before you use the site as a teacher. The must safe thing is to only pin content you´ve created and it´s important that you ask yourself the question who owes the content that you are publishing. Don´t forget to also check for the PIN IT symbol on private blogs and websites. Many publishers have added these buttons to their sites to make the readers know that it´s okay to pin their pages to Pinterest. Read more about copy right law with Pinterest here: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/03/13/dont-get-stuck-by-pinterest-lawyers-warn/

I personally use Pinterest every day as a way to prepare for my lessons. I personally think it´s a good way to save files instead of having to print them out ore bookmarking them. The fact that Pinterest is a visual community also makes it easy for the user to directly find a specific link.

Here are some interesting web sites about Pinterest that can be interesting for you:

·         http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=oJzD4vF5dFA

·         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jwmu45Z0DA&feature=related

·         http://www.classroomjr.com/3-creative-ways-teachers-can-use-pinterest/#jqoQp3WXX744elwB.99 

·         http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2012/02/05/37-ways-teachers-should-use-pinterest/

Happy pinning!

/Lisa Edvinsson

...or in Forrest Gump's way...

Listen to how Forrest Gump explain how to elect a president.

Electing a president in plain English

Soon there will be an election in USA for a new president (or will Obama hopefully win again?). Anyway, I used this (updated) link four years ago...

Here is the link.

How to Post on the Course Blog

This is how to make a post on the course blog:

1. You need to make sure that you've logged on to Blogger as the person who has the permission to make posts (i.e. using the ID you used when you accepted the invitation to become an author).

2. Then when you access the blog, you'll see a link (in small, light-blue letters) at the top of the page called 'New Post'. Click on that link and you'll see a text box that looks like this:

I'm in the 'Compose' function right now, but if you wanted to do fancy things with html, you'd click on the 'Edit HTML' tab instead. 'Compose' works fine for most of the things you might want to do.

3. You can either write directly into the text box, or copy and paste your text from, say, a Word document.

The tools in the bar at the top of the text box are fairly standard - you use them to change the formatting of your text after it's in the text box.

4. You'll notice too that I've included a picture in the middle of the text (that's the screenshot of what a post looks like). One of the tools at the top of the Compose page looks like a picture in a frame. Click on that and you'll go through the process of uploading and publishing your graphic to the blog.

5. Blogger saves your draft text automatically at fairly short intervals (the Save Now button goes dark when everything's been saved). When you're ready, though, you could click on the Preview button for a last check on what it looks like … and then you click Publish Post when you're ready.

6. If you notice something you want to change even after you've posted your Blog Post, as an author you can access all the posts on a blog when you log on. If you click on the 'Posts' option, you'll see them all, and then you'll see a sub-menu under each post name, if you hold your cursor over the title of the post. One of the options there is 'Edit'. There is an easier way to do it, though. If you click on the little pen at the bottom of your post in the blog, you come straight back to this Edit page. When you've finished editing, just click on the orange 'Update' button at the top of the page.

Don't forget to add your name to your Blog Post!

Learn English Kids!

I have found the site Learn English kids on the Internet. You can find the site here :


http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/


I think this is a page that you can use a lot when you are teaching English to young kids . The site is built up to be used for second language acquisition and teaching. It´s a good site for teachers, students and parents to work with. To be able to use all of the functions on the website you have to start a charge free account on the site. It is also good if you have a flash player installed on the computer; it is often pre- programmed on new computers. As a teacher it can benefit the teaching if you have a Clever board or a projector in the classroom so you in a easy way can show the students how the page or task works. After starting an account it´s just to surf out and use all the good exercises.


On the site there are five headlines games, listen & watch, read & write, make and speak & spell. Under every headline there are hundreds of exercises to listen to or do. For many for the exercises there are discussion questions or examples of how you can work more with the exercise.
Under the headline games you can find good games that help the child to develop their language. One example is a game there the child shall label the furniture in the bedroom. Under listen & watch you find example of kids that tells stories, different songs, movies and so on. Read & write headline collect the exercises that help the children to develop their reading and writing skills. An example of a task called "your turn". In this task the child get a question and shall answer it in writing. A story maker is an example of what you can find under the headline make, it´s an easy tool to make a short story. This is a good tool for enlargement of the vocabulary. Under the headline Speak & spell you can follow Sam and Pam and training pronunciation through songs, games and action.

As a teacher there are many possibilities to use the tasks on the website. The tasks are not connected to the syllabus or the curriculum but most of the exercises match the Swedish syllabus in some way. One way you can work with the site is to give an exercise as homework to the students. You can find good exercises about furniture´s were the students are supposed to know the name and were the furniture goes. This is also a good site to listen to authentic English but you have to listen to the video before showing it for the children so you can prepare the children in advance so they understand the words in the text.


Something that is important to think about before you start to use the site is way you use the exercise, dose it fit your purpose? It´s a good site but it is easy to get carried away of all good exercises. Remember it have to be in a meaningful content for the students.


A problem with the site is that it can be hard to find an exercise again. There are not possibilities to make an exercise a favourite, so to find the same Halloween exercise the next year can be very hard. So if you find an exercise that you like try to save it on your hard drive or print it out!


//Maria Skanbäck

Starfall-a website to use to younger children

www.starfall.com is an American website with a lot of different things to do. It has got 4 levels, ABCs, Learn to read, It´s fun to read and I´m reading. There are printed materials , online stories, games, drama, dialougs and songs. It is to be used from kindergarten to grade 2 but also for struggling readers. In Sweden I suppose it is meant for children in pre-school and grade 1-3. This website reminds me a bit of a of the Swedish programme called "Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter" which made a lot of children learn to read during the 1970s.

The starfall reading programme seems to be funny and easy to use. The children can do the reading exercises on the computer on their own, together with other children or with the teacher. There are lessons and samples to use which are made for kindergarten but some of them could be useful in the lower grades in a Swedish school.
You get precise information of what grammar the task includes.

Most tasks are free but there are also more to do if you are a member but this will cost. I think there are enough tasks that are free, there´s no need to become a member. The pupils can listen to voices (other children) who give the information about the tasks and they can read short texts, write words, make drama, make finger dolls for the drama and much more.

There are also a printout function where you can get a lot of exercises to do. These printed materials are effective tools for learning and as I can see it, it can be used to check what the children have learnt. You can download and print out simple books to make. It´s the same books as you can read on the computer monitor.

There are also some tasks in maths too. You learn the numbers 1-100 for example and you learn to write the numbers in letters.

What the website do is to learn English to children as we learn young Swedish learners Swedish.

If you miss anything, you can buy things in the starfall-store but then you must be a member.

Titti Eriksson