Practice makes perfect. In order to improve your writing, you need to write. And luckily, today we teachers have more tools at our disposal than in the past to try to coax that writing our of our students. There are LOTS of digital options to use (Googledocs, and CNN iReports, which I have written about here, before) but it is really exciting to get your students to write a book! This can be done on any level (even the most basic) of language acquisition. Your students can write books that are based on pictures, or they can write books that have more text in them. One of the platforms I was aware of before is called Flipsnack, where you can upload files that are written in Word, saved in PDF and uploaded.
Another option which I discovered more recently, is called OurBoox. It is an Israeli-based platform which claims to be the simplest platform for uploading and sharing books. You can read more about them in their "About" section. In order to make a book with OurBoox, you do not need to use PDF files. You can just have your students write their stories in Word or Googledocs, gather the photographs or graphics they want to use (be sure they have the rights to use the graphics and do not infringe upon others' copyrights) and then easily upload and publish them on OurBoox.
As a counselor for Digital Pedagogy for teaching languages, I have made a tutorial that shows just how easy it is to make a digital book. The tutorial is in Hebrew.
Have you ever had your students sharpen their writing skills by producing a digital book? What do you think of the idea? If you DO experiment with this idea, please fill out the feedback form so I know how it goes! I hope you find this adds to your digital language teaching toolbox! Digitally yours, @dele P.S. If you have any questions about the OurBoox platform , Mel Rosenberg is happy to provide support (in English or in Hebrew). Just drop him a line: mel@ourboox.com
When I want to achieve something and I have it in my mind that that is what I must do I do not know how to let it go. All these people say that I am so “talented” and such a “computer wiz”. The truth is: it’s obsession, not talent.
As a part of my job as a National Counselor for Digital Pedagogy in Israel, I have been co- running a series of online sessions (we called them “meetings” since they were optional and no one got any official credit for taking them) regarding implementing digital pedagogy in the classroom. The sessions have been for leading counselors of language teachers in Israel. It has been for teachers of all the different languages not only English as I am used to doing. There were teacher-trainers for French and Russian, as well as Hebrew for Hebrew speakers, Hebrew for Arabic speakers, Arabic for Arabic speakers, Arabic for Hebrew speakers...even Chinese! These meetings are coming to an end and I wanted to culminate them in a way that these dedicated participants would leave with something in their virtual hands. Something that they could share with the language teachers whom they counsel.
I had seen a tool called “LiveBinders” which is a curation tool, and I was interested in setting up a collaborative tool box of sorts which all of the other counselors could add to and would be a huge collection of digital tools that can be used for teaching languages, in general.
For some reason I did not pick it up as quickly as I thought I would. In fact I was on the verge of throwing up my hands and giving up. I even went so far as to try to build a similar curation site using Google Sites. I guess the problem was that, while I was editing, it did not look like I expected it to look. And I did not understand how to see what it would look like in viewing mode, as opposed to editing mode. I had found some tutorials, but they were with an older version that looked different. Until…. in came another counselor whom I greatly admire and who is really on top of these things. She replied to my cry for help in our Digital Pedagogy Facebook group. With her encouragement in her comments on the Facebook group I finally managed to crack it.
That's when I became obsessed. I spent the entire vacation day of Independence Day learning and searching and building and learning and I finally figured it out. I am very pleased with what I have built and I only hope that the other language counselors with whom I work will get excited enough to jump in and join me by adding more tools and categories that will help language teachers from all over Israel.
This is what it looks like today. Hopefully, in a few months it will be even more populated and in use by language teachers all over Israel.
As my brother-in-law so delicately puts it: "Like a dog with a bone". And now… off to my next obsession……
Digitally yours, @dele
P.S.
In order to help other language counselors understand how to collaborate with this tool, I prepared a tutorial, (however it is in Hebrew).
Here is playlist of tutorials, in English, (I wish I had seen this BEFORE I spent the whole day trying to learn it by myself ;0).
