Week 3 in Classdigitools

Photo on Flickr by emilybean

It is week 3 in all my workshops. I have a brand new Podcasting blog and I am really, really busy in Webtools. My Webtools forums are bustling with activity and I am having the fun of my life. Meanwhile in Classdigitools we are doing sites for listening comprehension.

Since it is already the second part of the week, I will do all my Classdigitools tasks here in one place:

Tasks 1 and 2 - Find a listening resource that we could use in class. Review the resource.

I am between terms and there are no classes at my school, but I did this task with my Advanced class in mind. Here is what I have found:

Time 10 questions is, in their own words: "A selection of reader-submitted questions on TIME.com serves as the basis for a candid interview with each newsmaker." It is really good for adult learners. The questions are often provocative and I really like the journalist. One way to use the site would be to let the students choose a clip, listen to the interview and report about it in class. As I was "in a hurry, preparing for my class", I chose the video:

I don't think I have to explain why I chose this video, but if you insist - I love the man. And so do my students, as most of them are girls. Apart from that, both the questions and the answers are very interesting. I would have the students write the questions down as they listen. They are not implicitly asked, so the task is not that easy. After that I would let them discuss Sting's answers.

Task 3 was to combine the site found first with one more site offered in the wiki and to combine them into a lesson plan. I will not write a full lesson plan, I'll just think out loud here.

The second site I chose is TED. Most of us have watched TED videos and I think they are a wonderful listening resource for adult students.

This is what I chose:

Discussing this video would probably take one whole class, but since I am going to combine the two together, this is what I would do:

After watching the video where Sir Ken Robinson is discussing education and creativity, I would ask the students to find similarities between his talk and Sting's interview. Are they talking about similar things? How would Sting rate in Sir Ken's school? What sort of school do we need for people like Sting?

I would ask them to come up with ten questions to ask Sir Ken Robinson. Then I would ask the students to write 10 questions to interview each other.

As a follow-up, I would ask the students to find interesting TED talks and to present them in the next task.

Task 3 - Listening List

I will not go into the complexities of this task. Let me just tell you that I need to come up with a list of 12 things I could do with these 2 resources. I have already mentioned the first four.

1. Watch a 10 Questions video and write down the questions asked.

2. Come up with 10 questions for the TED speaker.

3. Find the connection between the two speakers.

4. Interview each other, using the 10 questions format.

5. If you had to give a TED speech, what would it be about?

6. Prepare a short speech on something you feel passionate about.

7. Write a letter to the TED speaker, telling him/her what you think about his/her speech.

8. Which famous person would you interview for the 10 questions site? Write 10 questions for them.

9. Write a new set of questions for the person interviewed in the clip. What do you think their answers would be like?

10 If the people from the two videos met, what would they talk about? Would they like each other?

11. Write 10 questions for your teacher and interview her (ouch).

12. Write an elevator pitch for one of the videos. Why should people watch it?

I could go on, but I believe I have just completed my tasks for this week.

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