Youglish for ESL Pronunciation

 

I know that some students  learning English will use google and type "How to say" and then type the word.  It works but it does not give context.  If you are teaching ESL or ELL you might show this site to your students.  It actually shows real people on youtube using the word.  Also if you are Canadian you can use the drop down menu and select Canada or whatever accent you want.   To see the site click here,   hopefully after checking out my amazon.ca ads below.   If you are Canadian and making any amazon.ca purchase please click on my links below first as I will get a small commission on anything you buy even if it is something else.   Thanks.  This post may contain affiliate links that earns me  a commission at no extra cost to you.  Buy your Christmas gifts soon and check out the pre Black Friday ads below.

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QRcodemonkey

We have all seen those funny little 2 dimensional bar codes like this one called QR codes.

This one should bring you to this page.  QR is an acronym for Quick Response.  QR codes are a convenient way to store URLs  better known as web addresses. Most students have phones that have a QR reader app built into their camera.  If not they can get one for free by clicking here for an Iphone app. Now these QR codes can  easily be made by a student or teacher.    I will suggest some sites in a moment.  What I would like to discuss is how they can be used in an educational setting.

As a teacher

1) If you put your assignments on line you can give your students a sticky with the QR code on them and they can put that in their agenda.  If you have a classroom blog, wiki or website post a QR code for it on your bulletin board.

2) If you want a quick way for the students to view a video but do not have a smart board or projector in your room you can post a QR code on a bulletin board and the students can watch it on their phones.

3) Some teachers augment their texts books by putting stickies in the right spots to lead them to appropriate websites or videos.

4) On research assignments you may want to put a QR code on it to get students to reputable starting points other than Google or Wikipedia.  Maybe a database such as Elibrary Canada.  See Mr. H for help with the database.

5) You could have a QR Scavenger Hunt as explained by the following history link.

6) If your students are doing digital projects and you would like to showcase them on a bulletin board in the hallway or just in your classroom, you can post a QR code directed to each students work.

7) On math work sheets you can add QR codes to video tutorials from Khan Academy or other sites to help students out.

8) There are many more things that can be done with QR codes.  Play around.

As a student

1)  A QR code can bridge the physical assignment you turn in or posted on the black board with the virtual work you have done.  Maybe you shot a video  and posted it on youtube or you made a glog (see glogster.com) to go along with your project to document it.  Place a QR next to your work and students and teachers can share in your digital work.   In the past my daughter  finished her science fair project and she added a QR code to show how she used some software to make a graph.

Here is a closeup of the QR code

2) If students are doing a video for class, students can review other students work if they are posted around the class.  Rather than just watching a video the whole class.  Students can preview the work in progress and make constructive criticism.

3) If students have their art work posted in the hall, maybe a QR code linking a Youtube video of the student discussing their artwork.

To make a QR code.

There are many QR code generators.  If you would like to make the Scavenger/Treasure Hunt as noted in 5 above you can go here.  If you would like to make basic QR codes for a URL such as YouTube or your own blog then use  QRMonkey by clicking  here.  You can use other QR code makers such as Kawaya by clicking here.  You may want to change the colour of the QR codes from black and white to another colour so that you have your codes colour coded for courses.  This can be done on QRstuff.com in step 3.  Just move the cross hair around the colour palette to select a different foreground colour.

If you would like to personalize any of your QR codes you can go here and add any photo you have on your computer to the QR code.  As an example the QR code at the top of this page has a picture of my kids on their first day of school.  I did for a new arrival in the library that gives a "title peek" of the book.

You can do this by  going to visualead or clicking here.

TeachEngineering

 

From their website, "TeachEngineering is here to make it easy, accessible and FREE for all educators to bring engineering into their classroom."  If you are teaching math or science and want some hands on ideas this might be a site for you.  To see the website click here.  They also have a youtube page that you can see by clicking here.

snackvids - transcribe a youtube video

From this website you can type in a key word and the url of the video and it will search for that key word in the video for you.  You can also have it make a searchable transcript of the whole video too.  To see the site click here.  See the video below from Richard Byrne about using this site.

 

SafeShare

I posted this last year and back in 2016 but I think this is a post that you need to see if you use Youtube in your classroom and hate when another video starts at the end that might be inappropriate or the video suggestions on the right hand side might be distracting to your students.  Read my previous post below.

I was at a PD session on Friday and our VP showed a Youtube video.  At the end it put up a next video that was entirely inappropriate for what we were doing.  If this has happened before to you here is your solution.  I posted about SafeShare.tv on November 18 2016 but here it is again for you.  Remember the search box in the top left corner is your friend for previously posted material.  Safeshare will remove all Youtube ads and suggested videos which might not be appropriate for your students.  Just put the Youtube or Vimeo URL into the box and click the Generate Safeview button.  Your video will now show up on a SafeShare page that will ask you if you want to put a description of the video.  That is up to you.  Maybe you might want to put some questions there.  Hit the submit button.  You can now copy the new URL code at the bottom and use that to show the video to your class.    To see  what an old Youtube video of my son looks like on SafeShare click here.

SafeShare.tv

I was at a PD session on Friday and our VP showed a Youtube video.  At the end it put up a next video that was entirely inappropriate for what we were doing.  If this has happened before to you here is your solution.  I posted about SafeShare.tv on November 18 2016 but here it is again for you.  Remember the search box in the top left corner is your friend for previously posted material.  Safeshare will remove all Youtube ads and suggested videos which might not be appropriate for your students.  Just put the Youtube or Vimeo URL into the box and click the Generate Safeview button.  Your video will now show up on a SafeShare page that will ask you if you want to put a description of the video.  That is up to you.  Maybe you might want to put some questions there.  Hit the submit button.  You can now copy the new URL code at the bottom and use that to show the video to your class.    To see  what an old Youtube video of my son looks like on SafeShare click here.

Viewpure

If you show youtube videos in your class but hate the comments, sidebars and other distracting material then you might want to use viewpure.  Just pop in the URL and hit the Purify button and you will get your video on a white background.  To see the website click here.

Introductory and Concluding Paragraphs

If you teach English you might want to check out Laura's blog.  It is fabulous.  To see it click here.  She also has a Youtube channel that you can see by clicking here.  She has a Teachers Pay Teachers page that has free stuff too.  You can see this by clicking here.  She has a  free slideshow (if you have a TPT account which is free) on Introductory and Concluding paragraphs with a youtube video for each.  Click here and here. 

Text2VoiceOver

From their website, "You have this awesome video and need a to add voice to it? This is your place. Using the Google Chrome technology we can generate voiceovers from text in 15 different voices and 13 languages!  With our easy to use editor, use a Youtube video or your own to mark the times when the voiceover should happen. Time the duration of each text block. Merge with the video and get it ready to publish !. Supporting up to 15 voices and 13 languages, the ultimate tool to make semi-automatics voiceovers for your videos!"  To see the video tutorial, look at the video embedded below.  To see their website click here.

SafeShare.Tv

Safeshare will remove all Youtube ads and suggested videos which might not be appropriate for your students.  Just put the Youtube or Vimeo URL into the box and click the Generate Safeview button.  Your video will now show up on a SafeShare page that will ask you if you want to put a description of the video.  That is up to you.  Maybe you might want to put some questions there.  Hit the submit button.  You can now copy the new URL code at the bottom and use that to show the video to your class.    To see  what an old Youtube video of my son looks like on SafeShare click here.