Infonews n°225 du 03/10/2004
For lower intermediates and intermediates
Presidents in History
For advanced students
Fun and cultural references
KNE (kiosque Numérique de l'Education)
CNS (Canal Numérique des Savoirs)
What you can do
Hurricane (from Riverdeep's Classroom Flyer, Friday, October 1st)
Organization of World Heritage Cities
Bollywood Dreams (from The Scout Report -- October 1)
ESL activities for Adults
Handouts Online
Games and activities
Barbara's Blogs
Teaching.com and KeyPal Club (from The Scout Report -- October 1)
For lower intermediates and intermediates
Time for Kids offers us the best site to deal with the US elections with
most students.
http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/election04/fact.html
Here is what you can find
- *** a brain Pop movie to learn everything about how elections work.
http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/election04/brainpop.html
This film had been made for the education of young American children, so
the vocabulary is simple, the notions are clear, and the illustrations
stress the key words and notions and facilitate understanding. Excellent
for oral comprehension for students with at least three years of English.
- the biographies of the main three candidates.
http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/election04/candidates.html
--> ** I prepared a questionnaire with the texts for those who want
something ready-made or can't access a computer in class (I can't put it
online for copyright reasons, but you can write to me and I'll send it).
This activity is also a good way to help students learn how to scan a text
for information, and then use contrast and comparison to report their
answers orally. You can use it at different levels.
- an "inside the issues", where you can read where both candidates
stand on
issues such as education, environment, health care, etc.
http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/election04/issues.html
- a "who said it" test, to check what they have found in the previous
part
about the position of Kerry and Bush about the main issues:
http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/election04/whosaid.html
Presidents in History
If you want to adopt a more historical perspective, you can go through
PBS's Democracy site, which brings you back in history and enable students
to learn information about the previous presidents and what they did, as
well as learning what a president's tasks are. A site with very efficient
interactivity, starting from young children's preoccupations to take them
to politics and citizenship:
http://pbskids.org/democracy/
And to learn about all the previous presidents and their life, go to one of
those addresses:
http://www.ipl.org/div/potus/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/
For advanced students
- Read about all the candidates : the three candidates featured everywhere
are not the only ones. Discover here the list of all the candidates, and
click on their name to learn more...if their website is clean enough, which
is not always the case...
http://www.vote-smart.org/election_president_party.php?party_name=All
- Listen to the sound files of last week's Bush/Kerry debate on NPR
(extracts from what they said, plus the NPR analysis)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4055740
[ unfortunately you have to pay for the scripts....]
- Watch complete video and full transcript of the Bush/Kerry debate on the
New York Times, or choose just to watch some extracts about the issues you
are interested in:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/politics/campaign/01dtext.html
Fun and cultural references
- for secondary school students of all level, see this lesson prepared by
our colleagues from Paris from two cartoons:
http://lve.scola.ac-paris.fr/anglais/uselectionsleadin.php
- for adults, see this political parody film called "In this land" from
JibJab ( for adults only and you need a good knowledge of the American
culture to understand it all...)
http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/static/thisland.html
Here are some more political parodies:
http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/spotlight/collections/mock_vote/
http://jibjab.com/vault.asp
KNE (kiosque Numérique de l'Education)
The KNE (kiosque Numérique de l'Education) is a portal created by editors
which aims at providing online resources to schools. The main problem is
that all the resources have a fee ( per school, level or student, depending
on the editor and the resource). You can read informations about how it
works at:
http://www.kiosque-edu.com/frontoffice/pages/CommentFaire.aspx
and here is the list of prices:
http://www.kiosque-edu.com/tarifs%20KNE%20mai%2004.pdf
The resources vary a lot from one editor to the next, and most resources
are for lower secondary school (collège) since they stem from the online
resources they have created for the experimentation of one portable
computer for each student (les cartables numériques) which took place in
the last two years. I found that the "multimanuel Step In troisième" from
"Hatier" is interesting, because you can access videos and activities,
it
is not just the paper version put online (to test it, see below).
To learn more about "les cartables numériques" read (in french)
http://www.educnet.education.fr/equip/cartel.htm
To learn more about "les manuel numériques", read (in French)
http://www.educnet.education.fr/dossier/manuel/default.htm
CNS (Canal Numérique des Savoirs)
The CNS (Canal Numérique des Savoirs) is another group also offering online
resources for schools.
http://cnsedu.planet-service.fr/index_matieres.php
Its prices:
http://cnsedu.planet-service.fr/Tarif%20des%20ressources%20toutes%20classes.pdf
In English, they offer dictionaries and online access to some sofware you
might already know on cdrom (including "Tell me more")
http://cnsedu.planet-service.fr/decouverte.php?c=63
This project stems from an experimentation called ENS (Espace numérique des
Savoirs)
http://www.educnet.education.fr/ENS/demo.htm
What you can do
Many schools in France have been selected to test those resources. Each
school receives 1200 euros to buy the access to the resources they want to
test this year. But It seems the editors realised that it was too
complicated to ask schools to choose, so CNS offers access to all its
resources for one year for only 1200 euros! ;)
Obviously, this is the easiest choice, but is it really what you need? I
would advise you to check the resources before buying them.
First check if your school is in the panel of selected schools:
http://www.educnet.education.fr/ENS/panel.htm
Then have a look at the offers, and test them.
http://www.kiosque-edu.com/
http://cnsedu.planet-service.fr
At the moment, CNS just offers you to buy everything without further
testing, and I think KNE offers the best testing opportunities:
-> to test everything in just one day (rather difficult to organise, but
still an opportunity to consider). Here is what they say:
" Vous pourrez, en regroupant vos demandes par établissement scolaire,
nous
demander l’accès aux ressources en ligne sur une journée de test, en nous
envoyant un e-mail à l’adresse suivante :
Info@kiosque-edu.com
En mentionnant:
- le nom et les coordonnées de votre établissement scolaire (adresse,
téléphone, site internet …)
- un contact (nom, prénom, fonction dans l’établissement scolaire)
- la liste des ressources que vous souhaitez tester."
-> to test le "multimanuel Step In 3ème de Hatier"
envoyez vos coordonnées dans un message:
à : info@kiosque-edu.com
objet : [KNE]demande de code multimanuel
Ils vous enverront un code que vous pourrez rentrer sur la page:
http://www.kiosque-edu.com/frontoffice/pages/Accueil.aspx
puis cliquez sur "hatier" ;"en ligne" puis "multimanuel
step in".
Hurricane (from Riverdeep's Classroom Flyer, Friday, October 1st)
In the last two Infonews, I dealt with the hurricanes in Haiti and Florida,
and gave sites to show students how hurricane work. hre is the opportunity
to revise it and do a handicraft about it or start a painting:
- Hurricane on National Geographic (visual)
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/eye/hurricanes/hurrintro.html
- Make a Hurricane Spiral (handicraft)
<http://info.riverdeep.net/Key=42297.DRn.M.GpgJXY>http://www.miamisci.org/hurricane/hurricanepopup.html
" Print out two templates for creating a hurricane spiral, then color
and
fasten them according to the directions here. When the wheel spins,
students should be able to see the spiral movements of a hurricane."
- Make some Stormy Weather Art (painting)
<http://info.riverdeep.net/Key=42297.DRn.P.ccqwX>http://www.arts.ufl.edu/art/rt_room/sparkers/stormy/storm.html
" Approaching storms are often used as subject material by famous artists,
among them Thomas Hart Benton and Winslow Homer. View examples here, and
then follow directions to have your students visualize and then paint their
own storm scenes."
Organization of World Heritage Cities
http://www.ovpm.org/index.php?newlang=eng
Cities around the world have served as the primary repositories for human
culture, innovation, and diversity for millennia, so it makes sense that
there is a worldwide organization dedicated to some of these important
historic places. Founded in 1993, the Organization of World Heritage Cities
(OWHC) consists of 208 cities, which have a combined population of 125
million. Some of their programs include symposia and seminars dealing with
the management, development, and preservation of historic sites, along with
creating an active and vibrant network among these places. In the section
titled “The Preservation Challenge”, visitors can read some of the key
documents dealing with the organization, along with information on their
current initiatives. Visitors may also find out about the various cities
that are part of the organization, such as Damascus, Tunis, and Galle.
Finally, the site also contains registration and program material for the
8th OWHC World Symposium 2005, which will be held in Cuzco, Peru. [KMG]
[ le programme de seconde est centré sur "vivre ensemble" et l'exemple
des
villes est même utilisé dans els instructions officielles. ce site
permettra à vos élèves de faire des exposés sur certaines de ces villes, en
en soulignant l'intérêt et les spécificités. le site propose des infos sur
els villes et des liens pour en apprendre davantage. parfait pour le
travail au autonomie d'élèves de seconde de bon niveau.]
Bollywood Dreams (from The Scout Report -- October 1)
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0306/jt_intro.html
As Dirck Halstead notes in his introduction to this online photographic
exhibit which probes the thoroughly vibrant and frenetic world of Indian
cinema (which is known as “Bollywood”), “It turns out far more films than
Hollywood, and in fact, most of the rest of the world combined." The
informed Scout Report reader may not be terribly surprised by this fact, as
the country does have over one billion people, many of whom go to the
movies several times a week. So begins this online exhibit, which features
the photographs of one Jonathan Targovnic, who was wandering the world
after his time of service in the Israel Defense Force and turned his lens
on the Indian film industry. On the site, visitors can view more than three
dozen photographs, including a shot of the famous Bollywood star Shah Rukh
Khan getting ready for his next scene and a rather clever shot of dancers
getting ready for a big number on the set of the Raj Kamal studios in
Mumbai. The site is rounded out by a short piece titled “Indian Cinema, A
Way of Life” by Nasreen Nunni Kabir” and series of short interview clips
with Jonathan Torgovnik. [KMG]
[ for literature and film students ready to discover Bollywood.]
ESL activities for Adults
Those activities are designed for adults, and some questions have to be
adapted for students, but the field they cover are interesting: job
interviews, the secret of my success, giving advice, retrospective advice,
regrets, and activities to reflect on exclusion, racism, education and
laws; and they are often organised around a grammar point (should, if, etc.)
http://bogglesworld.com/adultesl2.htm
And there are lots of other resources like that in the other "adult" files,
plus interesting resources ofr other levels in the links at the top of the
page.
Handouts Online
http://www.handoutsonline.com/
This site offers ready-to-use handouts, with teacher's notes, for adult
learners, organised by:
- themes
http://www.handoutsonline.com/theme/index.php
- grammar and functions
http://www.handoutsonline.com/navigation/search_info.htm
I especially liked the activities about "should" except the "agony
aunt"
which advises "don't fall in love with your teacher, they drink and are
poor!" ;)
http://www.handoutsonline.com/navigation/collections/modals.htm
- instant lessons
http://www.handoutsonline.com/navigation/instant_index.htm
Games and activities
Most of those suggestions need some work to be finalised, but the basic
idea is often very good. I like the "advice" section.
http://www.ctu.edu.vn/centers/cfl/teaching/EFL%20games/games3.html
Barbara's Blogs
You were not with us in Orleans to take part in the workshop at a distance
with Barbara Dieu from Brasil?
You can read the report on Cyber-Langues' website, and learn what blogs are
and how you can use them with your students:
http://cyberlangues.online.fr/2004/actes/index.htm
http://cyber04.blogspot.com/
And you can also read an interview of Barbara by François Jarraud, in "le
Café pédagogique"
http://www.cafepedagogique.net/disci/disci.php?discipline=pratiques
Teaching.com and KeyPal Club (from The Scout Report -- October 1)
http://www.teaching.com/
There is much that binds fellow educators together, including a passion for
helping students learn and for creating supportive environments that both
nurture and challenge young people and their colleagues. Stepping into that
equation is the Teaching.com website, which serves as a place to support
these various activities. Here teachers can sign up to take part in online
forums such as “Teacher Talk” which allows K-12 teachers the opportunity to
discuss teaching techniques and trade lesson plan ideas. Another resource
offered on the site is the KeyPals Club. The KeyPals Club is “a place for
young people, teachers and students to locate and correspond with other
youth and students around the world.” The site also has a place where
teachers can share such ideas as “What was a piece of advice that was very
helpful to you during your first year of teaching?”. [KMG]
[ I registered and immediately got access to several classes with the
profile I required. So it seems you can add this site to your list, to find
keypals. This is the old IECC (Intercultural Email Classroom Connections),
through which I often found partners for my yearly class projects : a
reliable address.]
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Une compilation réalisée par :
Christine Reymond
lycée Blaise Pascal, Rouen, France
E-Mail: Christine.Reymond@ac-rouen.fr