Infonews n°333 from 11/05/2008
A new type of marketing
Serious games
Easy interactive games
More difficult interactive games
Play with Clifford
A song about Sea Stars
Texts for the Bac list
Newseum
English 4emails : Interactive exercises
Online Quizzes
Online interactive games to raise awareness
Learn Vocabulary with games
Discover "English Interactive"
Colloque Cyber-langues 2008
A new type of marketing
First, advertising meant showing a famous person saying that this product
is the best, then the teens became conscious that this was just about money
and to trap them into consuming, so a new anti-advertising type of advertisements
appeared, but this was soon detected and stopped working. Now big companies
like Sprite are trying to launch different actions : hiring kids to chat online
and recommend the products, teens parties are sponsorized to distribute samples,
and hip-hop events are organised.
You can also watch the full PBS Frontline program online:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/
To find the video about this new type of marketing, go to chapter 2, then choose "the
merchants of cool" and chapter 2 : "under the radar-marketing".
Serious games
What are "serious games"? here is an article about serious games
on Wikipedia, with lots of links to explore at the bottom of the page...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game
Listen to this presentation of the Serious game institute from the university
of Coventry, where the presenter deals with Second life, Virtual worlds and
serious games. Note also how this university is now geared towards entrepreneurship.
(for teachers)
http://dp-x.com/datpresenter/dpx.php?dpxuser=SGI
and explore other links on the site of the Serious game institute
http://www.seriousgamesinstitute.co.uk/
Easy interactive games
Discover those easy interactive games to learn the colors, numbers and shapes
and how to spell them. Exercises in three steps : discover, recognize, memorize.
Level A1. No sentences, just words and spelling. From a US site.
http://www.literacycenter.net/lessonview_en.htm#
More difficult interactive games
Level A1+, lots of math and spelling games, plus some others. From a British
site.
http://www.internet4classrooms.com/skills_4th_original.htm
Play with Clifford
For A1 students, here is a nice interactive site from Scholastic.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/index.htm
They can read and interact in a story : see for example Clifford's big dig
where they will learn some vocabulary and also "it looks + adj" which
is used repetitively in this story
http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/flash/story_2.htm
They can also play games : the sound matching game is especially interesting.
They must find objects beginning with the same sound as the example. Each word
is read when you pass your mouse over it. Students can listen, repeat and play.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/clifford1/flash/phonics/index.htm
A song about Sea Stars
"I'm a sea star", "I'm an invertebrate that can regenerate" :
discover facts about sea stars in English through this song created by the
Monterey Bay Aquarium. You can hear the music and the song and read the lyrics
on the same page. The music is a bit repetitive, but I found it nice.
http://www.mbayaq.org/lc/teachers_place/activity_popup_imaseastar.asp?bhcp=1
Texts for the Bac list
Each year, the students must prepare a list of the texts they have studied
in class for their oral exam. On eTeacNet, Florinda Fernandes recommends this
page created by our colleague Henry Quinson for those of his students who were
absent during a lesson : you can find the texts in .pdf format and a commentary
for some of the texts. A precious resource for students who decide to work
only at the last minute!
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/frat.st.paul/TextesBac.html
Newseum
Newseum website was created when the first Newseum in Arlington had to close
in 2002.
http://www.newseum.org/
it is a precious online resource, offering everyday access to 570 front pages
of newspapers from 52 countries. It is sometimes difficult to work from those
front pages, because they change everyday and are not always archived. But
you can browse the front pages by date (for 2007 and 2008) and in the archives,
you can find all the front pages of the days of important events, starting
from September 11th. Those pages are stable and you can sometimes even access
analysis of the front pages for a special day, so you can invite your students
to compare the titles and layouts on the day of an important event.
http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/archive.asp
BBC Learning English features an article about this topic, with the text, an
audio file and some vocabulary
http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/archive.asp
You can also read the follow up text about the inauguration of the Newseum
in Washington
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7342261.stm
You can use these resources in a teaching unit level A2 or above, where the
students will study several styles of newspapers and then produce their own.
Since writing a full newspaper can be too time consuming, you can suggest then
to only write a few articles and work as a group to create a front page for
their special day. I did it with my A2+ students and this kept them motivated
in May. They also discovered that they needed to use the tenses better, and
asked for exercises like those
http://www.tolearnenglish.com/cgi2/myexam/liaison.php?liaison=_passe_&id=9047&auteur=anonyme
English 4emails : Interactive exercises
A fun exercise where you have to choose the right words and put them in the
appropriate boxes to write a business email. For business students level B1.
http://go4english.co.uk/eia/read.php?unitid=1968
Students can also learn how to be polite in a formal business email (note that
a written production tasks the STT Pondichery bac exam was to write an email)
http://go4english.co.uk/eia/read.php?unitid=1934
You can find more exercises (matching, click on the words, etc) on these pages
and several other exercises of the same type on this page of interactive Flash
exercises from the British Council.
http://go4english.co.uk/eia/
Online Quizzes
Although some of the pages are full of advertisements, some of those quizzes
are interesting and can be used in class. You can invite the students to play
online or you can print the worksheet, you can also find all the answers and
explanations about the questions. And if the students choose to play online,
they will play "who wants to be a millionaire" style, with helps
and hints. Here are some quizzes I selected for you:
- Vocabulary level A1 (numbers, days of the week, names of animals, parts of
the body, etc.) : for primary school or special ed (SEGPA)
http://www.syvum.com/squizzes/french/
- Written comprehension level A2+ (a children's story to read and questions
about the meaning of words and the story)
http://www.syvum.com/stories/story1.html
-same type, simpler
http://www.syvum.com/cgi/online/serve.cgi/english/english1/prcomp1.tdf?0
- English proverbs and their meanings (level B1+)
http://www.syvum.com/proverbs/
- US states, geography and presidents
http://www.syvum.com/quiz/us/
- easy math puzzles and brainteasers (A1)
http://www.syvum.com/math/wordproblems/level1.html
- history games : identify famous people ( from ancient Greece and England,
world leaders, Nobel prize winners and US presidents)
http://www.syvum.com/squizzes/history/
Online interactive games to raise awareness
Interactive activities from Media awareness, an activist but educational
site to make kids aware of how the web and the advertisements can influence
and manipulate them and make students aware of the dangers of their cyber-environment.
They are meant for English speaking students aged 9 to 12, but I tried it with
my 15 year old ESL students and they liked it. We studied Jo Cool, Jo Fool,
to understand what is behind a site offering cool things to kids. You could
also try the game about drinking and advertising, about food advertising, about
hate propaganda or facts or fiction on the web.
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/games/index.cfm
Learn Vocabulary with games
This site from our colleagues in Israel invite students level B1+ to enrich
their vocabulary through games like hangman, crossword, wordsearch and other
quizzes.
http://vocabulary.co.il/index_main.php
Discover "English Interactive"
A site offering loads of resources for listening, video, pronouncing, reading
and writing activities and to prepare exams like TOEFL.
http://englishinteractive.net/
Colloque Cyber-langues 2008
Pour le Bureau de l'association Cyber-Langues,
http://www.cyber-langues.asso.fr/
Yvan Baptiste ( yvan.baptiste@orange.fr )
de l'académie de Montpellier nous signale que le prochain colloque Cyber-Langues
2008 aura lieu à
l'Université de Dijon et au CRDP de Dijon du mardi 26 au jeudi 28 août 2008.
Il s'intitule cette année « TICE et langues : de l'expérimentation à la généralisation» et
concerne comme toujours toutes les langues vivantes.
http://www.cyber-langues.asso.fr/spip.php?article50
La coordinatrice de cette année est Elisabeth Prévost-Kaboré ( elisabeth.prevost-kabore@ac-dijon.fr )
Les inscriptions sont ouvertes jusqu'au samedi 7 juin 2008 minuit à cette adresse:
http://www.cyber-langues.asso.fr/spip.php?article46
Vous pouvez aussi télécharger des affichettes d'information à diffuser:
http://www.cyber-langues.asso.fr/spip.php?article52/anglais/
Venez nombreux !
Ceci est un message de la LISTE INFONEWS
réalisé par Christine Reymond
lycée Blaise Pascal, Rouen, France
E-Mail: Christine.Reymond@ac-rouen.fr
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