SECURITY

Security over the internet:

FOLLOW ME

Follow Me! was a series of television programmes produced by the BBC in the late 1970s to provide a crash course in the English language. It became popular in many overseas countries as a first introduction to English; in 1983, one hundred million people watched the show in China alone, featuring Kathy Flower.
The British actor Francis Matthews hosted and narrated the series.
The course consists of sixty lessons. Each lesson lasts from 12 to 15 minutes and covers a specific lexis. The lessons follow a consistent group of actors, with the relationships between their characters developing during the course.
Different varieties of English are presented.

HOT POTATOES EXAMPLES

JCloze.

JMatch

JQuiz.

JCross 

JMix

FIREFOX ADD-ONS

Each add-on specifies which applications and versions it works with. These add-ons are really interesting and we can use them for instance to download videos or  mp3 (easy youtube downloader) files from youtube; and many other interesting actions.

HOT POTATOES

HOT POTATOES SUITE

Hot potatoes includes six applications.

These applications enable you to create interactive:

Multiple choice

Short-answer

Jumbled sentences

Crosswords

Matching and ordering

Gap-fill exercises.

They can be uploaded to the World Wide Web.

Hot potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project.

Jmatch: matching and ordering.

Jcross: crossword

Jmix: jumbed sentences

Jcloze: fill in the gaps

Jquiz: multiple choice, true or false, text entry or short answer.

Hot Potatoes suite: the masher

The masher is a tool for automatically compiling hot potatoes exercises into units.

Imagine you have five hot potatoes exercises that form a single unit materials and you want to build HTML from all the exercises, with the same colours and appearance settings; you also want to link the exercise together using the navigation buttons, and create an index file for the unit. The masher will do it for you.

SHARED ASPECTS

Files designed with HP should be saved in two different formats:

HP FILE (extensions: jmt, jms, jqz, jcl, jcw)

HTML FILE (to be used with any web browser)

JMIX

A Jmix activity produces a jumbled word or sentence activity.

Letters of a single word may be jumbled, or the words of a sentence.

Jmix uses the standard and drag-and-drop types of output files should be saved in towo different formats.

JQUIZ

Jquiz can create four different types of questions:

Multiple choice

Short-answer

hybrid (a short-answer question that turns into a multiple choice questions after several attempts), and

multi-select (in which the learner has to choose several of a set of options, then check the choices).

JMATCH

The Jmatch program creates matching or ordering exercises.

A list of fixed items appears on the left (These can be pictures or text), with jumbled items on the right.

This can be used for matching vocabulary to picture or translations or for ordering sentencesto form a sequence or a conversation.

MULTIPLE CHOICE JQUIZ

The learner choose an answer by clicking on a button.

If the answer is correct, the button caption will change to a smily face :-) and if it is wrong, it will change to an x.

In either case, the student will see the feedback specific to that answer, explaining why it is right or wong (assuming you write the feedback when you make the exercise!).

If the answer is wrong, the learner can continue choosing answer until a correct answer is selected.

Once a correct answer is chosen, the scaring is “frozen”, but the learner can still click on buttons to see the feedback for other answers without penalty.

JCLOZE

Jcloze program creates gap-fill exercises.

Unlimited correct answers can e specified for each gap, and the student can ask for a hint and see the letter of the correct answer.

A specific clue can also be included for each gap.

Automatic scoring is also included. The program allowa gapping of selected words, or automatic gapping of every new word in a text.

REMEMBER

Files should be saved in the same folder.

HP does not include software for the edition of images, sound or video.

Suggested software: Gimp, Youtube editor, Audacity,...

Use long names, without spaces.

Browsers read spaces as : 20%

There may be naigation errors. Reading_in_English …..Reading in English.

LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE

INTERACTIVE WHITE BOARDS, FOR OR AGAINST?

Reasons against using interactive whiteboards

 Tight budgets

Interactive whiteboards are not cheap, and many educators believe that students are better served by allocating funds to teacher salaries.

Traditionalist educators

According to Education Week, one of the biggest complaints about interactive whiteboards is that they are often underutilized by poorly trained or technically-challenged teachers.

Reasons in favor of using interactive whiteboards

Powerful visual tools for teachers

Using interactive whiteboards, teachers can create lessons that incorporate video, moving diagrams, and online content to help explain difficult material and to keep students engaged.

Ability for students to interact

Students can interact in a variety of ways with whiteboards, including writing on them, manipulating objects in matching or sorting games, or voting on answers with the help of handheld devices.

Display student projects

Interactive whiteboards allow teachers to showcase projects that students have created using software such as PowerPoint. These types of projects may look more impressive on a big screen, and most students enjoy seeing their work displayed in this fashion.