Week 8: ANVILL is great

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I am surprised; this site is simply great, what I most like of ANVILL,  is its flexibility; it has got something for every language teacher and the great opportunity for language practice. I definitely think that this site motivates students to do things by themselves making them more autonomous because of when students find many things to do and things they like, they feel eager to go and give it a try. I have used www.agendaweb.org which has tons of stuff for learners of different ages and that is what students like, many options to choose from.
 It is hard for all students to have access to internet connection either at the campus at home, here in Ibarra, Ecuador; few people have got internet connection at home. Some will not able to afford it but the main reason is internet speed, it is very slow and princes are a bit high so I think this could be a constraint that would make difficult to use this technology.
The solution to overcome this problem is that the government start having a better control of those internet providers, in the speed connection and cost so that people will feel more confident about it.
I like to use www.englishconversations.org  for getting real conversation in real life contexts, this site is great and when I checked Voicethread I starting thinking of doing a mini project with students, this will be very simple, I will just ask them to go to the site, download audios they like, download the scripts, burn audios on the CD or passed them to their cell phones or MP3 player, print scripts out and make a booklet and finally present to the class what they have done, why they have done it and what will they do with it having in mind the most important “Autonomy”
I also like the ANVILL Voiceboards,  for distance partnering. I will try to do something similar to this in the future.

Comments

  1. Gonzalo H. RosettiAugust 12, 2011 at 1:09 PM

    Hi Javier,

    You are a resourceful e-teacher. I like how generous you are with all websites you have visited.

    I see you are mentioning Voicethread. How do you use it with your students? Do you have access to Internet in class?

    As I mentioned in some posts before, all students in Argentina are receiving a laptop from the government. I wonder what will happen when they all try to use the internet in class time.

    Have you tried that?

    Cheers,
    Gonzlao :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. G. Javier BurgosAugust 12, 2011 at 2:45 PM

    Hi Gonzalo,

    I am ver happy to know that in Argentina have that great help from the government. W e would love to have that huge help in Ecuador. Unfortunately, Id does not happen and I might sound negative but it will not in a short future.

    We do have internet access in class but very feww Students have got a laptop.

    I have not tried Voicethread yet but www.englishconversations.org. I will give it a try for sure very soon.

    Have you tried it?

    Javier

    ReplyDelete
  3. nagwa SolimanAugust 14, 2011 at 5:10 AM

    Dear Javier,

    I went to the Voicethread link to try to figure out how to use it and became confused because its name is similar to voiceboards that we use on the ANVILL program. I feel I need to go through all the important information that we were exposed to in this course because I am honestly impressed.

    ReplyDelete

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