Tag: classroom
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Three Powerful Mantras for Tired Teachers
We can easily picture educators who suffer from an ongoing, cronic burnout. No motivation, no strength, happiness in the eye, passion. Many become the complainers, resistant, tired souls that simply let life pass by, waiting for the day they can retire. I’m an optimist at heart and truly believe that if one decided to become an…
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Talking about Pets
My class tomorrow is about pets. This is a topic that arouses lots of interest and interaction as there are many people attached to their pets. A while ago, I recorded this simple video with a friend. As voicethread is a dynamic tool to create learning objects, now I can use it with my students…
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m-Learning in the EFL Classroom
More and more, I’ve been interested in finding and testing possibilities of using mobile devices in the classroom – flip cameras, smartphones, recorders, tablets – everything which is at a student’s reach. When I had a group of teens, it was simply natural to explore what was at my students’ fingertips, as for them it…
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Exploring Videos Series – EnglishCentral
I’ve used EnglishCentral with my online group, English4Travel. The feedback was very positive, for students can watch videos in English related to topics of interest, they can decide for the level – easy, medium, hard – and they can record themselves to evaluate their oral production. They can watch the videos with transcripts and without…
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DailyLit – The Excitement of Literature in your Inbox
With DailyLit, you decide how (via email, RSS), when and where you want to receive your daily literature snippet. It can be every single day, or you can set it up for every other day, any time of the day. It´s up to you! Now, imagine asking your students to subscribe to a certain short…
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14 Interesting Ways to use Google Maps in your Classroom
Not long ago if I had to teach directions or add any geographical aspect to my EFL classroom, I’d have to search for a map, those that I collected from my trips, to make the learning experience more meaningful and connected to students’ realities. Now, at the tip of your fingers, there are tons of…
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Comics in the Classroom
Creating comic strips in the classroom is one of the easiest ways to engage students immediately. They are glued to the comics creators because they are in charge of their creation, they have choice, and they can fully navigate through their imaginative realms. Every teacher should try to use comics in the classroom. There are…
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Stomp your Classes Up! 4 Simple Lessons from Stomp
This weekend I finally had some very pleasant hours with my kids, mom, sister and aunts watching Stomp. I was totally in awe with their vibrant beats made of very trivial materials, from brooms to match boxes. My oldest kid was totally glued to the amazing show, and my little one was focused at first,…
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No Helplessness in the Trenches – Take Action!
Funny thing happened this morning. My oldest son is a night owl, not morning person at all. He studies in the afternoon. Yes, in Brazil, there are two school shifts, and kids can study either in the morning or afternoon. Even so, my kids have morning extra activities, like sports and English classes. Well, every…
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DNA Rescue – Part 2: Skills are Cheap. Passion is Priceless
Still on Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, “Crush it”, I can’t help it, but keep exploring the world of passion and our double-helice (DNA) historical perspective and bring it all together into our professional realm. Because of my last post’s comments, I was taken into the recordings of the Reform Symposium(Thanks, Mrs Tenkely!). If it were in…
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Edublogging with Passion
A friend of mine in Italy, Seth Dickens, has kindly asked me to talk a bit about edublogging. We had planned for an interview, but due to technical issues, we went for a recording. Edublogging… How many times have I written about it, gave tips, presented, and tried to inspire others? Fact is the ones…