Xtranomal Introduction Video for Comics Class

As I described in my earlier post on Xtranormal.com, their Text-to-Speech app has much to offer both for giving instructions and for encouraging another form of production from students. In the following video, I give instructions for my Comics class at Togaku using Xtranormal to introduce Xtranormal. And, as Sylvan explained (via his avatar, Broccoliman) one of the advantages is that students can re-watch the video as much as they need or want to. This is a great advantage as some students in my class "get it" on the first play, while others need greater repetition in order to understand fully. And, others, even when they understand, just enjoy the video itself. I hope you will too.

Trance States

Thanks for the sweet introduction, Daniel!

As an NLP Practitioner I'm interested in suggestion. You can suggest that students find learning easy, or fun, or that they can speak fluently. Ask: '...and which parts of the text do you want to understand?' and the students feel that there are parts they want to understand. To maximize this effect, you can get students into a trance state. There are NLP techniques for this, but if you haven't been on an NLP course yet, there are other ways. Recently, I've been using:

http://taggalaxy.com/

Webhead Dennis Newson drew my attention to the site. Type in a word, and pictures from Flickr fly in and attach themselves to a spinning globe. It's mesmerizing. You can introduce the lesson's theme like that, or have students type in words, practicing spelling and reinforcing vocabulary. The effect is to send students into a trance state perfect for suggestion. Mind your language!

Introducing Clair Taylor

The first contributor to join my on the TESOL 2.0 blog is my colleague and friend, Clair Taylor. Clair is a TESOL professional and emerging technology enthusiast. She has used many online tools in the classroom, notably Smart.fm and EnglishCentral.com and written about her projects and has helped bring along many of us at Togaku to implement these tools and others into our classes. I look forward to her contributions and invite you to do the same.

Image from http://pheakdey2u.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/dsc00409.jpg

Xtranormal (online animations) for TESOL

One of my favorite tools for teaching and learning right now is Text-to-Movie by Xtranormal.com. The by-line on their website says "If you can type, you can make movies." This was my topic for my presentation at KOTESOL last weekend. My co-presenter, Sylvan Payne of International Christian University in Tokyo, could not make it to the conference. So, he prepared his parts of the presentation using an avatar in Text-to-Movie. Below is the video he used to explain the TESOL principles supported by using Text-to-Movie. The participants of the presentation were blown away.

Getting Started

Ken Beatty (left)

I recently returned from the PAC-KOTESOL 2010 International Conference in Seoul. There was a panel of illustrious TESOL experts at the end of Saturday's program. One of the panelists was Ken Beatty. He has been writing on CALL. After the session was over, I went over and introduced myself and asked if he was on Twitter or was blogging. He said he wasn't, but probably should be. He also asked if I was. As some of you know, I am a fairly active Twitterer (@gtb). And although I use blogs a lot, I have not consistently blogged about TESOL and web tools, despite having a passion for it. And so, this is an attempt to get things started. I hope people will read, leave comments and share. And, depending on how things develop, I hope to have guest bloggers or even invite others to be regular contributors. Please leave feedback.




Image from Daniel Beck ©2010
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