CoTech common report

This mine and Aire's report about three educational videos.
Enjoy!

Common report

We analysed three videos: “How to speak in a restaurant?”, „Hobbies“ and “How to Multiply with Your Fingers”.

First videos educational goal was to teach pupils how to speak in restaurant. It was approached clearly and understandably. The best part of the video was that creators had captured two different ways how to speak in restaurant so that pupils have an opportunity to see both ways and can make their conclusions about which way is the right way. Though the video is well made it has no worksheet with it so it leaves pupils in a passive role.

Second videos educational goal was to teach vocabulary about hobbies. This video has many good sides. First of all it has been created to different types of learners. This video helps pupils with spatial, kinaesthetic, linguistic, inter- and intrapersonal and maybe even musical intelligences to learn new vocabulary in a fun but yet educational way. Secondly - creators have used phonetic symbols and example sentences to make acquiring new vocabulary easy and logical. It has a worksheet with it and therefore pupils have an active role while watching this video.

Third videos educational goal was to teach pupils how to multiply with their fingers. Though this video gives a good tip for math learners it leaves pupils with a passive role while watching it because there is no activities or worksheets concluded. Therefore we cannot speak about how the educational purposes were approached.

“How to speak in a restaurant?” is based on Communicative Language Teaching Approach. Their lines are not authentic but close to real life situation. Video “Hobbies” is based on direct method as they act, show the phrase, give pronunciation and example sentence as well. “How to Multiply with Your Fingers” is done using deductive method, where the student starts multiplying after getting the rule from the teacher.

The restaurant-video is suitable in the evocation phase to start speaking and acting lesson. The worksheet introduces essential vocabulary that is needed to create dialogues of this topic. “Hobbies” video can also be used to introduce this topic because there are phonetic symbols and they repeat the pronunciation for three times. It can also be used to revise the spelling. The multiplying-video can be used in any phase of the lesson and it can be integrated to math lesson as well.

Our favourite educational video is “How to Multiply with Your Fingers”. We think this is a good video with clear picture and sound, camerawork is well done and is has logical structure. Also we can point out the fact that actors were natural. On the other hand, the bottleneck of this video is the point that students are quite passive while watching this video. They can try multiplying same numbers from the video but they do not have enough time try out their own operation.

All the videos were made with devotion and it reflected from their quality quite nicely. However, the video which was created to teach students how to multiply with their fingers had the best quality of them. It was really nicely captured. Cameraman had done an excellent work capturing this video from different angles. In addition it also had quite good lighting and it was clear and easy to watch even from the full screen mode. The video makes a really professional impression.

The video which was created to teach pupils how to speak in restaurant was nicely captured and cut. Only thing we would change is subtitles. Since background was quite light subtitles were sometimes hard to read. If the creators like to use white colour for subtitles they should consider using bit bigger font of the letters. But we would still recommend them considering using different colour.

Third video was made most children friendly and very interesting to watch but had too many elements in it. For example there were moments where background activity was going on and then star with the actor and word appeared. It created bit too distracted impression. I would recommend the authors to consider the star with the actor and word(s) to appear without the background activity.

We noticed two mistakes in the “Hobbies” video. There is no “t” in the pronunciation of word dance and in an example sentence to the phrase “to play with dolls” should be “A girl plays with dolls.” Negative side of the multiplying-video is a strong accent.

The restaurant-video’s starts and ends with music, but to set better restaurant mood, there could have been some smooth and calm background music as well. Characters were bit reserved but that is acceptable considering the situation. “Hobbies” video’s songs and locations were chosen to illustrate presentable vocabulary; characters were very lively and enthusiastic. There was quietness in the beginning and in the end of the multiplying-video but there could have been some background music. Characters played well and were natural as we mentioned before. Video’s location and background were suitable for this video because Arne was learning multiplying.

Crossword puzzles in a language lesson

Introduction

Crossword puzzles are a good alternation in any lesson and kids are usually familiar with them. A brief presentation the history of crossword puzzle’s will be given in the first paragraph. The following is an overview of their usage opportunities in lessons. Finally, a short list of the web sites providing crossword generators.

History

The first known published crossword puzzle was created by a journalist named Arthur Wynne from Liverpool, and he is usually credited as the inventor of the popular word game. December 21, 1913 was the date and it appeared in a Sunday newspaper, the New York World. The first appearance of a crossword in a British publication was in Pearson's Magazine in February 1922, and the first Times crossword appeared on February 1, 1930 (Eliot, s.a.). There was an educational interest in crosswords as early as the 1920s. One of the earliest variants on the conventional crossword was the bilingual one in which the clues were in English and the answers in French (Little, 1986, 76).

Crosswords in the classroom

There are different types of crossword puzzles. Here is one classification:

1) American crossword – it includes solid areas of white squares. Usually, each answer is required to contain at least three letters.

2) Swedish crossword – the clues are contained in the cells which would normally be black in other countries. Arrows indicate in which direction the clues have to be answered.

3) Cross-figure – the numerical analogy of a crossword, in which the solutions to the clues are numbers instead of words. Clues are usually arithmetical expressions.

4) Number puzzle – each cell has a number between 1 and 26. The solver has to find out for which letter of the alphabet a number stands.

5) Free Crosswords – This is a special type that tries to be least restrictive. You can use all available cell types (e.g. clue cells, double clue cells, image cells, solution letter cells). You can mix answers that have a clue cell with answers that do not. Answers may contain characters as well as numbers (KrossWordPuzzle, s.a).

Crossword puzzles encourage logical thinking, correct spelling, and can motivate students to know factual information. Accordind to different studies students who use crossword puzzles show greater retention of facts, improved association of concepts, and increased levels of confidence. Solving the clues often requires the use of higher levels of cognition, including analysis, synthesis, and application of pre-existing knowledge. Most students see crossword puzzles as non-threatening, recreational challenges and not an activity associated with school work. The challenge of the puzzle drives the student's resolve toward completion. A major advantage of a crossword puzzle is that learners become active participants who must make decisions, solve problems, and react to the results of their choice, as opposed to being passive observers simply memorizing a list of terms. The crossword puzzle represents a unique way to inspire the students' interest in working with factual information from a course (Raines & Lynn, 2010).

Five benefits, which can accrue from using crosswords in the language class by Little (1986): 1) vocabulary building; 2) orthography; 3) morphology; 4) abbreviations; 5) general knowledge testing.

Crossword puzzle generators

If the phrase "crossword puzzle generators printable" is typed into www.google.com, there will be about 1,110,000 answers.

1)http://www.theteacherscorner.net/printable-worksheets/make-your- own/crossword/crossword-puzzle-maker.php – 2-30 words, must have a clue, alpha-numeric characters, words can have up to 20 letters, clues may be up to 200 characters.

2) http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/create.html - Up to 20 words and hints, hints can be left blank.

3) http://edhelper.com/crossword.htm - Up to 50 words, PDF-version.

Conclusion

Crossword puzzles are useful in the language lesson. It gives pupils an opportunity to use their logical, critical thinking and they get immediate feedback. There are different kinds of crosswords for different kinds of lessons (word building, morphology, etc.). Pupils do not think that solving crosswords is learning and so they are not afraid to be wrong. This reduces stress in lessons.

References

Eliot, G. (sine anno). Brief History of Crossword Puzzles: This is a puzzling world.
[16.01.2011]

http://www.crosswordtournament.com/more/wynne.html

Little, J. (1986). What's a nine letter word for “a type of word Puzzle”? In TESL Canada

Journal. Vol 4, no 1, 76-81. [16.01.2011]

http://www.teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/viewFile/499/330

KrossWordPuzzle/Crossword Types. (sine anno). [16.01.2011]

http://userbase.kde.org/KrossWordPuzzle/Crossword_Types

Raines, D., Lynn, C. (2010). An innovation to facilitate student engagement and learning:Crossword puzzles in the classroom. In Teaching and Learning in Nursing. Vol 5, Issue 2, 85-90.

Dog's body parts

Hey-hey all video enthusiasts!

This is mine and Kerli's educational video about dog's body parts.

And here is a screenshot of my worksheet.

Snowy and icy greetings from Rapla!

Bye!