Category Archives: freeware

All right, I have an OHP and now what? Part 1

freeware, ,

Exactly and now what?

Surprisingly , a publishing company has given  the English Department an overhead projector and given that we have to almost beg for our own  children’s books I can only describe it as an act of utter generosity. I should maybe have to explain that although education  is compulsory in Spain until you’re 16 ,books are not free; not even kept at the school and handed from student to student . So you can only guess at how much publishing companies earn out of textbooks.

Right , so now I have an overhead projector but… I don’t have  an Internet connection. The thing is that I have a funny video that fits like a glove with my next lesson and I want to display it using the OHP.

That’s where this little tool comes very handy. It’s called Savevid and it allows you to download videos from Youtube, Vimeo, Metacafe and some other popular sites  to your computer or USB . The only thing you need to do is paste the url of the video you want to download, choose from 5 formats  the one that suits you best and play it on your computer.

When your computer is loaded with Malware

freeware,

Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming (code, scripts, active content, and other software) designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, gain unauthorized access to system resources, and other abusive behavior. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.(source Wikipedia)

I’ve been using a programme called Malwarebytes Antimalware for about three years and it has never failed me. So if you are having problems with your computer, I highly recommend you download this free yet effective spyware and virus-removal tool.

Embedr: a nice way to create playlists

Audio, Create your own stuff, freeware, Resources

Time flies , doesn’t it? It’s already May and the end of the course is getting closer. Students and teachers are beginning to feel the pressure of time running out when we still have so many things to teach or learn.

So, to give my students a break I intend to take them to the computer room to do some listening on the Royal Wedding but…. I don’t want them to just go to  youtube and search for clips at random. And this is where this little tool comes handy.

It is called Embedr and it allows you to create your own playlist of videos and then embed them in your website or blog. This way, you won’t have to worry about students getting the wrong videos.

Lesson Plan: Films

Audio, freeware, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, , , , , , , , ,

Mixing traditional and modern teaching? What’s the right balance? That’s a hot issue and one I haven’t yet found the answer to but I feel that there’s nothing like the interaction between teachers and students or students among themselves.
In this lesson plan Focus on Films I’ve combined both traditional teaching and new technologies. I’ve even published one exercise Film Genres that I’d rather do with my students in class with them taking an active role in their learning process. You choose but what comes below  is how I  definitely plan to do it with my students.

I ‘ve prepared one set of blue strips of paper with the names of famous films and another set of green coloured strips with film genres. All in all I’ve written 10 strips of paper and then placed them on my table. Students will then come up to my table and do the matching exercise using blue-tack to stick the strips on the blackboard. I’m planning to revise  by showing them only the films and then only the genres.

On the other hand, there is another exercise in this lesson plan where, if I were a student, I’d definitely choose to do using a computer and I’m referring to the brainstorming exercise we normally do on the blackboard. Well,  I’ve had a lot of fun ( and also wasted a lot of time ) doing this brainstorming  about films with this little application called Simple Diagrams, which I highly recommend (mainly because it’s free)


It must have been sheer luck that I bumped into this cool site only last week, just when I was gathering material to use  in the FILMS lesson.


This site has been nominated as one of the 50 best sites in 2010 and it contains about 12.000 film snippets that can be searched by genre, director, props, setting…etc. Isn’t it just unbelievable that you can even choose Action  and under this category choose whether you want a clip with a cough or a bump or a cry? Isn’t it just as amazing that you can choose the clip by Mood; do you want something inspiring,creepy or maybe funny?

The whole lesson, designed for intermediate students, comes with Vocabulary, Reading, Listening and Writing exercises. Click HERE to do it

Fur.ly: URL Shortening

freeware, Resources,
Now that I’m working in a high school this little tool Fur.ly I’m going to show you is more necessary than ever.
I still like to take my students, from time to time ,to the Computers Room to do some interactive exercises or to see a video but especially with the younger ones some kind of guidance is necessary so they don’t end up visiting sites you have absolutely no intention of them visiting.
What this little tool does is to replace different url into one , so when you take your students to the lab they have no excuse to get lost in the web of webs. It’s a free service and requires no registration. You copy and paste all the links you want to share one by one and then click on “GO” , and what you get is one single url .
 

 

 

 

and this is what you get

 

Now, the image above shows what Fur.ly looks like. At the top you can see a small bar displaying how many sites you can visit , there are also navigating arrows and a drop down menu.

I’m sure that if you’re not a teacher and you’re reading this you can still find lots of possibilities to use Fur.ly when sharing sites with your friends