ePals

This is my first time to contact with ePals, and it was found to be an interesting experience.

   I was attracted by its idea to connect classrooms of similar geographic features and teaching contents together. Without the internet tools, connections between classrooms are quite limited. But ePals provide teachers and students a platform to communicate with their counterparts, so that they could exchanges ideas and teaching or learning experiences. This feature also gives students opportunities to know more about the language and culture they are learning.

   The large amout of free resourses provided by other teachers also benefits inexperienced teachers a lot. By joining groups and connecting with other teachers, we could find many useful resources, like lesson plans, videos, and assessments that could be used in teaching.

   In my future classroom, I would like my students to use this site to work cooperatively with each other. Since the site includes a number of convinient web tools, such as forum and wiki, it will not be difficult for students to work on a project simutaniously and I could keep an eye on the their working log. When the project is finished, students' works could be published to the internet. Students will feel a sense of complishment when they see the final products of their efforts.

Movie poster -> story telling

My movie poster

I created a movie poster in Big Huge Labs, using a Flickr photo.
   I would like to use this poster in my EFL writing class. I would ask my students to say whatever they think of about the poster or about the title and note them down as a brainstorm activity. Then the students could write their imaginary scenario of this movie.
   This tool could be introduced to students for them to create their own posters and tell their stories, or to keep a photo diary of their own.
Students would be glad to see vivid images in the classroom. And interesting photos could arouse students' interests in writing.

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Photo by  bsabarnowl