How to manage Hot Pot exercises.

I have made four JMatch exercises in HotPot. It was a real challenge for me, then. My fault was I started with complicated ones, too many words and long sentences. I didn`t insert any clips or pictures either. My exercises look too boring and long for the students.The BaW moderator Fernanda Rodrigues has adviced to start with easier and simplier exercises. She gave some useful sites to begin with and, moreover, suggested wonderful free sites of cliparts. So, these are for you !
Here you can see some types of exercises you can build with HotPotatoes:http://hotpot.uvic.ca/wintutor6/index.htm
Why not start with  JQuiz?
Here you have a guide about how to write a good multiple-choice exercise:http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hotpot/howto/mcquestion.htm

Read this about how to create a multi-select question:http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hotpot/howto/msquestion.htm

Here you have a tutorial:http://hotpot.uvic.ca/wintutor6/tutorial.htm

If you need images, you can find free clipart here:http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/?CTT=97
http://www.openclipart.org/browse
http://www.iconarchive.com/

Teresa Almeida d'Eca in Sakha-Yakutia !!!

The most remarkable event after the BaW 2011 online course was the meeting with Teresa in Yakutsk. It happened on the 3-rd of March, in Yakutsk University, where she was instructing the local EFL teachers. I left my village early morning at 6 AM and got to Yakutsk at 10 AM. Our meeting with Teresa lasted less than 3 hours but those three hours gave a full representation of her human nature. She turned out to be a nice lady full of energy and strong will. She was diligently instructing the Newbies and seemed not to pay any attention to the contrasts between her and local cultures and the differencies of lives and people. We had a short but impressive talk on everything, I was afraid first I couldn`t utter a word in English but my tongue moved flexibly enough and I loosened up at the end. I am happy a lot to meet our BaW coordinator F2F and hope to meet our other moderators and participants later.

Pedagogical Conference

The pedagogical conference took place on the 18-th of March last week. It`s another more exact name is “the 14-th Regional Pedagogical Readings” where the secondary school teachers read their reports and hold the workshops for their colleagues from other regional schools. I have read a report on the theme called “The Web resourses useful for EFL teaching in the rural schools of Sakha-Yakutia”.

I told how I was taught in the “BaW 2011 EVO”  - course and what I have learnt during those fantastic 5 weeks.

I was announced to be the “laureate” and was recommended to go further, this time to the Republican Pedagogical readings, Yakutsk.

The conference was held in the settlement called “Kobey”, another remote village, 6 hours bumpy and rough road trip from my place. The teachers from 4 regions ccame together there. Our region is called “Lena Region” because we live in the centre of the Sakha-Yakutia republic, around the magnificent Siberian river Lena.

My long- term correspondence

I have been managing the long-term correspondence between the American secondary school students and mine for more than 16 years through a “snail mail” as they call it in the USA.

My senior Ss (grades of 9-11) were penpalling with Salt Lake City, Utah, Thonas Jefferson Junior High school Ss , and my so-called “juniors” (grades of 6-7-8) were exchanging letters with the 5-6 graders of Kendall Elementary school, Mount Baker, NY.

I have witnessed how  profound was the input in English language skills overall and the motivation to learn English was strong enough. To arrange and manage the correspondence was messy, bothering, hard and time-consuming,  though. We exchanged letters twice a year only.

Unfortunately, my two dearest and faithful American colleagues have retired last year and we don`t have any penpal at the moment. It`s too sad, of course.

Welcome to Quia Pages !!!

Let`s have a look at my Quia Page made three years ago. It has plenty of language games: http://www.quia.com/pages/foreignenglish.html The games made by myself are three-four only, but you all will enjoy them !!!

Integrating the Internet into the EFL classroom

Welcome to this blog! Technology, when used appropriately, helps teachers create effective learning environments for their students. I am looking forward to getting to know you as we explore the Internet for content material to integrate into the classroom, and share techniques for enhancing our English language teaching. Visit 

http://www.diigo.com/education

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/