A 2005 mini course

SYLLABUS FOR  Real English Online – VideoWebheads Workshop

1. Let people know who you are in preparation for forming work groups.
2. Get familiar with the many features of Yahoo Groups, our interface.

• 1. Write a short introduction, describing your teaching situation, your students (ages and grade levels), and how you think using video will help them. POST your intro in a message to the group.

• 2. Upload a photo of yourself and/or your students to the PHOTOS area of our group.

• 3. If you have a Webpage, put the URL in the REO LINKS folder for Personal Websites. And/or if you have a favorite Webpage relating to the use of video, please put that into the appropriate folder in the LINKS area. (Send a message announcing your pages to the group, if you like.)

• 4. You are welcome to browse the REO message archive to see what past discussions have been about.  Feel free to POST messages to the group at large. Group members will be very helpful to you.

• 5. Set your mailing preferences by clicking on the "Edit My Membership" link on the front page.  Many people reduce the mail flow by using "Daily Digest" so that the day's postings arrive in one message.

• 6. Check the CALENDAR to see what is coming up in the next few weeks.

 Week 2 - February 21^st - 27^th, 2005 - Work Groups & Using the Real English Websites

1. Familiarize yourself with the Real English video sites. 
2. Get equipped with the RealOne Player.
3. Sign on to Tapped In in order to participate in our chats. (Get a free virtual office, too!)
4. Get the Yahoo Messenger application and install it. (This is our backup for chat!)   
5. If you are going to make interactive execises for a video, get a headstart by downloading and installing Hot Potatoes.

• 1. Browse through the introductory messages from the people in our course. Decide whose classes, students, and interests might be compatible with yours and invite them to join you in an online working subgroup.  Meantime . . .

• 2. Go to Mike's personal site to see the new Real English videos for 2005 (http://michaelmarzio.free.fr/). Download the videos you want to use. Later, these videos will be on the main site at  http://www.real-english.com/. We will make an announcement which you can't miss as soon as the transfer is completed.

• 3. If you also want to see the entire collection of Real English video in order to choose video clip(s) for your projects, please write to Mike Marzio directly at mike@realenglish.com to get a password in order to access all the videos for the 43 lessons, and all the exercises for the first 12 lessons. 

         Note that this address is different from our Yahoo Group address http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Real_English_Online/

• 4. If you don't have RealOne Media Player already, download and install it--link through the RE site or go to:

• 4. Browse through the videos and try to decide which you might use with your class. Try out a video and its accompanying Hot Potatoes exercises.  Ready for more?  Download HotPot, which we will start using next week:   http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/

• 5. Write a short Message to our group telling about which exercises you have viewed, how they might be used with your students, and what changes you'd like to see.

 

  Week 3 - February 28^th - March 6^th, 2005 - Using Hot Potatoes Part 1

1. Obtain and start using Hot Potatoes authoring program.
2. Begin sharing with your work group.
3. Spread the wealth of information by reporting back to the mini-course members.

• 1. Sign up at the University of Victoria website to obtain a shareware copy of Hot Potatoes  to use with your own class:

• 2. Install HotPot and try it out by creating a short exercise or two. The objective here is to base your interactive exercise on a video. We are making the entire collection of Real English video available for this purpose, but you can base your exercise on any video you want (it is up to you to look into copyright issues if any are involved with such video, and to "convert" its normal use to ESL use). The unique combination of video and interactivity is our main concern here. Hot Potatoes is a good tool because it is flexible and can implement most any activities you have in mind. There are hundreds of ways to ask and answer questions about a video, especially Real English videos which often show the emotions and body language involved in communication, in addition to whatever is said. You can design for your own students or try to make exercises for students of all ages from all horizons.

• 3. Share your exercise first with your work group. You may then want to assign each other different aspects of HotPot to try out. Share the results with each other and with the larger group. Ask for help. A lot of us know Hot Potatoes pretty well.

• 4. Upload the file with your exercise(s) to your Website, or to our group's folder so that we can all try it out.

• 5. Write comments/responses to others' exercises:  What did you like? What might you use with your own classes?

 

Hot Potatoes is easy too learn but it sometimes takes a lot of practice to "get it right". This second week of Hot Potatoes practice will depend completely on you, and how far you want to go.

Should you make a simple multiple choice exercise to check the students general understanding of a video? Perhaps. Should the students have to type in order to answer questions, or perhaps type what they hear?  Do you want to extract the vocabulary from a video, and make a crossword puzzle? Do you want to concentrate on verbs used in a video, and include a reading and grammar section?  What about matching exercises, with dragging and dropping? Hot Potatoes can do all this and a lot more. By the end of this workshop, we hope you continue to figure out how best to use this tool!

End of Week 4 - Live Chat with Mike and Elizabeth in Tapped In.

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1. Organize and solidify your work group by collaborating on a Web presence and holding a chat.
2. Explore other video resources on the Internet.
3. Become familiar with Webquest activities.

This workshop has been billed as a mini course for Video Activities and Exercises, but so far we have only spoken of exercises. Here is an example of a Real English "Video Chat Activity" organized by Dafne Gonzalez in April/May 2003. It was a resounding success as a "non-exercise" activity simply because the students were motivated, they watched Real English videos, and had numerous chats with teachers and other students before completing their written assignments.  

"Real English OnLine Activities. This is our VideoWebhead Page. The ongoing activities and projects outlined here are an extension of the Real English Online Yahoo! Group.

Our Project organized by Webhead Dafne Gonzalez, in April and May of 2003:

 Universidad Simon Bolivar                                                  English for Architecture ID3-125        

Video-Chat Unit with USB Students

Activities:

 Note: students should add our Yahoo identities
(Elizabeth = ehansonsmi, Mike= mmmarzio, Sus = susannenyrop, and mine= dafne_gonzalez) to their YMs.

1. Students watch video and complete exercises while filling in the worksheet (I will send this  later).  Time for this activity: 45-50 min.
2. Students in groups of 4-5 chat with Dafne  (in Spain), Elizabeth (in California), Sus in Denmark, and Mike (in France) to discuss grammar, vocabulary, content, or other items (20 min.). Have students save chatlogs and send to f2f (face to face) teacher by e-mail attachment.
3. Students share their experiences in the classroom (talk about video content, and chat) (10 min).
4. Assignment: students post a comment about the experience on my bulletin board.

Activities:

1. Students complete the Hot Potatoes activities and watch the video. Another worksheet will be provided for them to turn in after class (45-50 min).
2. Students, in groups, chat with Dafne, Elizabeth, Sus, and Mike (20 min). Have students save chatlog to be sent to f2f teacher via e-mail attachment.
3. Students, in groups, will write a narration (a story) about Jim and Robin, the couple we meet in the Unit 42 video. Who they are, their age, what they do, and they should invent the way they met, and what will happen to them in the future. We will show and discuss the Rubric for criteria to be met.
4. They should bring this story ready next class.

Activities:

1. Students will post the stories to our weblog  (15 min.)
2. Students will complete an online survey about the online video-chat unit (10 min).
3. Whole class discussion about experience with f2f teacher. Discuss the difference between the language in chats (use chatlogs) and the language in formal writing (narration). (20-25 min).

Dafne Gonzalez  April, 2003.

Hi Every1,

This is to let you know about a project Mike and I will be carrying out with a group of students in Venezuela.

I was contacted by a professor from Universidad Simon Bolivar, in Caracas, Venezuela, to introduce an online component to her f2f (face to face) course. Last year, I designed an online unit for three groups of students, and both the teachers and the students were so happy with it, that they want to repeat the experience.

I suggested a video-chat unit, and a webquest. Both ideas were accepted, and we will start with the video-chat. I have designed a unit where the video-chats will be the core motivating element to start a process-writing task. They will be followed by f2f discussions and peer-supported writing activities using my discussion board, and a weblog (a rubric will be used to assess the written pieces).

I am designing a worksheet for each video (2 will be used) which will serve two purposes. In the first place, for the teacher to have a document of the while-viewing process, and for us, as an evaluation of the HP exercises. Chatlogs will be used as written input for content, and form (noticing). We will be administering an online survey to assess the whole experience.

On April 28, Mike and I will meet these students for the first time. Wish us luck!

Dafne


The students involved in this project: from the course ID3-125 (English for Architecture ) - Language Department - Universidad Simon Bolivar, Caracas, Venezuela. These students have already taken 3 trimesters of General English, and this is their second trimester of English for Architecture). It is a 4-skill course."

Tasks for this week:

• 1. With your work group, begin building a Yahoo Group or Website for collaboration. The first thing you might do is upload your recently created HotPot exercises and together figure out an ordering scheme for them: How will students use the exercises and what will be the results they submit to the teacher? (More examples of Webpages from REO will be provided.)

• 2. Find and try out some of the other video resources on the Web. A number of sites are listed in the LINKS section of REO, but each working group should add a new resource to our list and to their Group or Webpage.

• 3. Visit the Webquest page:

• 4. You may want to have a live chat with your work group during this week to explore options and finalize design.

End of Week 5 - Chat with Elizabeth and Mike -- Let us know how your work group is doing and any problems you have encountered thus far. This is also an opportunity to explore Tapped In further and obtain a virtual office of your own, if you haven't done so already, and set up a time for live chat with students in other groups:

                  http://tappedin.org/tappedin/

You might want to link a TI office to your Website or YG.  be sure to open Yahoo Messenger as well, as a backup link.

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  Week 6 - March 21^st to 27^th 2005 - Wrapup

• 1. Share your (mostly) finished YG and/or Webpage with the our Yahoo group. If you have already started using projects with students, let us know how the activities are going and if you want outside input.

• 2. Write a brief summary statement about what you have learned in this group and what improvements could be made for next year.