As you may have read, I am huge Evernote fan. I love using evernote for professional development and for I also use it a lot for creating drafts of blog posts and other work. However, until now I haven’t really used it for learning a language. Fortunately, I am about to embark on a new language learning adventure and thought I’d try to use Evernote to help me learn, as it is a program I am familiar with and can see how I could use it for my own language learning and then I could apply it to helping students learn.

I intend to make this into a little series with some screencasts, suggested activities and resources to use. I hope we can then transfer my and your experiences for our students.

However, before we start I’ll do a vague overview of Evernote and some general ideas about using it for learning a language.

What is Evernote

Evernote is essentially an online notebook that synchronises across however many devices you have. In short, you write something on your PC, it automatically saves, and then you can read and edit it whenever you like on whatever other device you have (such as a phone or tablet). There are some other cloud services that offer similar functions (such as google drive/docs, box, dropbox etc) but the interface of Evernote and it’s ability to combine audio/text and pictures in one document make it really stand out.

A quick note, unlike other services, you can’t download your file as a word document or similar, but you can print it or cut and past the file. But let’s not end on a downer, there are other related apps that extend Evernote even further! (as I say I’m a bit fan)

Organising your notebooks

The first step I did with my new endeavour was to organise my new notebooks for learning Spanish. Notebooks hold your notes on different topics and organise all your files together. I started off with Spanish vocabulary, grammar, reading, listening, and speaking. then I arranged them under a Stack (collect of notebooks) of Spanish. This was my starting point and where I’d arrange all my notes from here on.

There is another feature that helps organise your notebooks, that is the tags feature which can also help you find notes as well.

Searching and stealing from the web

One of the great extra features of Evernote is that you can take webpages and put them on a note which you can then edit later. In fact, there are a couple of programs you can put into your web browser (clip to Evernote and clearly) which allow you to do this very easily. This will include any hyperlinks and pictures but, unfortunately, not audio or videos.

Creating content.

Although you can take audio or video directly from a webpage, you can use a smartphone or computer to record a video or audio onto a notebook. This is a great way to keep a log of your progress, record an answer for homework (or self set) task and then share it with others or anything else you can think of. Of course, you can use traditional text or a picture as well (or a mixture or any of the previous mentioned formates).

Sharing

As I’ve mentioned before in this post, you can share your notes to people, including those who DON’T have Evernote. What’s more, there are handy built in share buttons so you can email, Facebook, tweet or just get the url link , and share with someone else and let them make changes to your note, say a teacher or other person who is learning the same language as you.

Evernote peek

This is a feature I don’t have access to (as it is only available to iPad users with a smart cover) however I believe it too would be useful for learning a language. You can arrange different phrases and a translation of the phrase you are trying to learn above it. As you roll the smart cover away you reveal the phrase which you would try to remember.

Different versions of Evernote.

Basic (Free)

The basic version has almost all the great features of Evernote and has a 50mb monthly limit of uploads and free application on any device you have (by any device I don’t mean a random pen, whiteboard or similar but instead smartphone, tablet or computer system.) This is the version I currently use and it has filled all the functions I use it for (so far).

Premium ($5 a month)

The premium account cost $5 a month ($45 a year) and allows you a few extra features such as a 1Gb limit for each month, offline notebooks on mobile devices (so you can create and access notes offline), multiple note editors (this is the only way to have multiple users edit a note) larger individual note size and no adverts.

Premium for groups (variable)

There is also a group premium option where you can purchase multiple monthly accounts all to one billing account, the more you buy, the cheaper it is. Here is the pricing plan and some more details.

Premium for schools

There is an automatic 50% for education establishments and some resources to use in your school.

Further action and question

• Have you read my post about using Evernote for professional development? It’s a little old so I’m thinking of updating it, I’d love your help.
• Do you use Evernote or a similar system? For language learning?
• What self set task or activities do you use?
• Do you use it with your students? What tasks do you set them?
• What type of posts would you like to see in the future of this series?
• Evernote has some resources on their website for teaching and learning a language with the aid of Evernote. They could also help.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This idea was inspired during Jemma Garner’s Teaching Unplugged workshop.

If you’ve taught PET then I’m sure you’re familiar with the common matching tasks which can be very difficult for students. This is usually due to the fact that the details about the students include what they like in general and what they specifically want now. If students don’t read it carefully then they only address what they generally like and match them to that.

Even when drawing attention to this detail to students they can still forget this detail.

Whilst sitting in Jemma’s workshop, I was reminded about how powerful and useful it can be to take students within the exam task. When Jemma mentioned doing surveys with students, I started  thinking. Couldn’t we get students to match themselves to items?

Here’s a suggested routine.

1. Introduce the topic (for example films, books, magazines, locations etc)
2. Brainstorm different items within the topic.
3. Create some questions to ask other students
4. Create profiles of different students
5. Create items to match students to. (remember to create extra ones)
6. Students pass their activities to other students for them to match.
7. Get back together and debate which students match (the original answers might not be best)

I really like step 7 as it fits within the realms of critical thinking, students can argue that the choices the other team made aren’t correct and that they should have made different options. It could even be extended to get both groups to make suggestions of how to improve eachothers descriptions or items to match to and then pass it on to another group (repeating until every group has been done).

It should also generate a nice amount of intrigue as I’d certainly like to know what book/film/etc someone would match me with. I might even then go read/look/do their suggestion as a result which again could possibly lead to some extension work next lesson reporting back and giving reviews (or a homework of writing a review/letter with a review) which ALSO occurs in PET.

What do you think? Would it work for your class? What would you change?

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Seams like this one was a bit harder to stick to the time limit. I briefly went over

1. What a reflective journal is
2. Why you should keep one
3. How to keep a reflective journal.

What tips would you add?

This is part of the student blogs series [click here for more posts]

from Sxc.hu by svilen001

It’s been a while since my last post about using blogs so I thought I’d share some activities that I created for students to use the blogs for.

1. Share a story.

A simple activity where you encourage students to share a story or event. It can be real or made up and can be using a variety of formats, though depending on which blog platform you use will make a difference. Any blog platform will allow text based comments. As such, if you have a group blog where students can comment on the post only (and not create posts) then this is an option.  If, however, every student can create a post or you use posterous, where you can leave multi media embedded posts, then you can use vocaroo or upload a video on youtube and embed it for a video reply.

There are a million ways to extend this activity: add a photo, link to another story, include information from another site for example.

2. Answer the question

Putting up some questions, that you might expect to see in a text book, for students to answer is another option. This is a chance to give students extra grammar practice and can be delivered straight to students. Another great advantage of using a blog is that you can attach video or audio files so then you can give students listening tasks to do at home.

3. Create the questions

In this case you get students to create questions for others to answer in either grammar, vocabulary or for listening skills. The great advantage of this option is that the students can collaborate in creating the question and then set them for other students to answer (returning to the last activity).

4. Share something

Set the challenge to find something related to a topic and share it with the group. This can be an article, video, song etc. You can make this free or more controlled if you want, such as listing a website or a format such as only articles.

5. Collaborate

There a few ways this can be done depending on what the students are collaborating to create. A simple activity could be creating a picture dictionary using linoit. Students find pictures online, add them to the site and can even use a service like google translate to translate extra words they want to learn (the teacher can then moderate and correct). Alternatively students can use the blog to divide up the different responsibility.

These are some examples of the type of tasks that I set my students using their blogs. What types of activities do you set your students?

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Click here for the student blogs series

From Sxc.hu by Chidsey

I’m sure you’re all eagerly awaiting the arrival of the summer time, or even enjoying it if you live anywhere other than England…or the southern hemisphere.

What this means for me is Holidays, summer schools and projects.

Holiday

I’m off to Spain for a week and as I won’t have the time (or desire) to go online during my time away. I do, however, have some posts scheduled to appear (as though by magic) whilst I’m away. Unfortunately, as I won’t be online as I publish them I won’t be able to tweet letting you know they’ve been published. So, if you want to read these posts then you need to subscribe…or catch up on them once they are all out and I come back and bombard you with new posts. Click here to go to my subscribe page and see some subscriptions options. I recommend email.

Summer school

I’ve signed up again to teach at summer school which means nice pay, fewer contact teaching hours but many extra duties. As such, I suspect I’ll only be able to do one post a week, at best, (or risk burn out). So, I’d like to offer you the chance to do some guest posts on this blog. I’d particularly like some posts on Student blogs, Dyslexia, minute Monday’s, your top TEFL tip, or some advice on reflective practices. However, I am open to any suggestion. If you’d like to contribute a guest post then click here for more details.

Projects

I have two projects that I am very excited about. One of them is directly for this blog and the other is…different. I don’t want to say too much about them yet as they still need to be worked out and for one of them I really don’t want anyone to steal it! However, these again will take up some time and, as such, are yet another reason to encourage guest posts. The aim is to have both ready by September as they both require a fair bit of work. [A final little something on the first project, it will involve me giving away something for free. ]

One last thing

I hope you have a great Summer whatever you are up to and thank you for visiting this blog. A little while back I passed the mark of 1000 unique visitors. Thank you very much.

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(Sorry it’s a little quiet) This video was inspired by my thoughts with job applications coming for the next year I thought I’d share some common tips. my 5 tips are

1. Apply to lots of jobs.

2. Be honest about your strengths and weaknesses.

3. Show areas you have improved and how you want to improve.

4. Find out about the local area.

5. Speak to current staff and get the true story on the job.

What tips would you give?

Do you ever have trouble finding time? I know I do.

from Sxc.hu by 2020VG

Recently, I crested a large mountain of work that amassed all at once. Some of this was my own doing; due to procrastination, and saying yes and some was due to other people dumping adding to my work load.

I’m sure you can relate.

It’s part of work, especially the work of a language teacher in a foreign country. There are always shouting voices calling for a time and attention.

• Top quality lessons
• being available for students outside of class time
• Caring for students
• Admin and paper work
• Professional development (including)
• Reading books
• Reading blogs
• Writing blogs
• Doing courses
• Attending conferences
• Delivering a conference workshop or plenary
• Chatting in the teachers room

That’s all before we even try to add in such things as having a social life, doing charity work, learning a new language or other pressing demands on a teacher’s time.

It’s no surprise that some people react to comments that they should do more by responding

“If you did half as much as me you too would agree that I needed to say no!”

I suffer from a rare, fortunate, disorder that I tend to relax by doing something new or start a new project. Experiencing the excitement of doing something new, the flow of creative thought waves and thrill of seeing things succeed really does relax me. In fact, if I stay too still I often get fidgety and want to get out and do something new.

I also have the great blessing of finding writing a real release and opportunity to process my thoughts, bringing ideas together on a page in some form of structure.

from sxc.hu by xweapon

But I am not everyone, and everyone is not me.

Even being me, I do need to take breaks and relaxing. Step away from the computer, electronic device, book, go outside and live a bit more. In fact, doing that actually helps my productivity and ability to do all these myriad of things.

I’d like to pass on a few good tips that I have found very important to being productive, stress free and healthy.

1. Say yes when you don’t want to, Say No when you don’t want to.

I know it is completely counter intuitive but some of the moments that have left me most relaxed have been when I’ve said yes when I really shouldn’t. The best time to say yes is for something which helps other people who can’t help themselves. The best time to say no is extra work for money you don’t need.

2. Get a good sleep.

A good sleep helps you to relax, removes tiredness which is like weight on your mind and clears your brain. It like rebooting your computer, afterwards it’s always faster…speaking of which, that’s not a bad idea occasionally. There is even some evidence that you are more creative first thing in the morning as you’re not as bound by “common sense.” General guidelines go something like 8 hours for people.

3. Eat and drink well

If you don’t get all the vitamins and food groups you need then you’ll feel lethargic and tired and can even find it harder to sleep. On top of that make sure you drink plenty of water. There is a guestimation that most people don’t drink enough water and so they are dehydrated.

4.  Do exercise

Exercising released endorphines…or happy chemicals, into your body. Happy chemicals are really good and help people with stress. On top of that doing things like long distance running helps to develop sticking power to get through tough challenges. 1 more mile to go!

5. De clutter

I don’t know about you but working with lots of things all around me doesn’t help me relax, it just gets in my way or worse distracts my thinking with something else I need to do. Tidy up, have only your essentials around you. work out a filing system. Use simple but effective tools for the task you need to do.

6. Unplug

Part of the problem with modern living is that we are always in the loop. On the one hand it’s amazing! We can keep up with millions of people, read loads of blogs, respond, respond to responses, discover hundreds of new things every day and share cat pictures (all very important). However, it is tiring and mentally straining. Make sure you have a period of complete out of contactness in your day, week and year. I always have my phone off during dinner, I don’t want someone calling me then! I have Sunday morning completely with my phone and computer off and I take a break from communications for a week each year. I find them all pretty good.

What do you think about these tips? Is there any thing you’d like to add on? How do you balance your time?