Puppet Pals

Puppet Pals is an app where students have the opportunity to create their own stories and animation. Many children (and adults for that matter) may find it hard to be in a movie themselves or to stand in front of the class and present their work, but with Puppet Pals this might feel easier. In this app, anything can happen - you can be a space monster on Mars, a prince/princess in a far away country, a pirate on the seven seas, and much more. The sky is the limit!

 

There are two versions of Puppet Pals: a free version and the Director's Cut. In the free version you get a few characters and backgrounds. I recommend buying the Director's Cut where you get many different characters and a lot more backgrounds. You also get the opportunity to take your own pictures that you can use when making your story/animation.

 

When we were working with this app the students were divided into smaller groups. The task was to first write a story together with a focus on having a cohesive storyline framed by a beginning, middle, and an end. When the students were finished writing the story they were to plan and organize a presentation of their work by making a movie in Puppet Pals.

 

What abilities are we training? If we read the syllabus for English the students should be able to communicate both orally and in writing, and they should be able to understand and interpret the content of spoken English. We also get into other subjects such as art, where students should be able to communicate with images to express different messages as well as be able to create images with digital techniques.

 

The above mentioned work with Puppet Pals was implemented during a lesson in Swedish, but you can of course do a similar task while teaching English. With good use of your imagination you can do anything you want to do!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYUx7QVXXX4

iMovie - language learning through moviemaking!

By this post, I would like to show how we can teach English language via the app iMovie, which I find is a very good app.

 

So, what is iMovie? iMovie is an app from Mac. So if you do have an Ipad or Mac computer, you can use it, and it´s free to download. Thru this app, you can make your own movies, by taken pictures on your Ipad or camera. You can use snapshots or short films that you allready have made, or take them during the time that you work with the movie. It is an easy app to work with, I already do use it together with young children, 6years old and the older ones does also like it very much. In the app you can do a lot of effects, you can choose the overall look of your movie, with different formats and you can choose to have a background music while your movie is playing. There are some for performed movies which you can choose to just put your own pictures into, or you can make your own from start. When you have choosen those things, you can start to work with your pictures. While making the movie you can make more effects, on each picture. You can write sentences, make voiceeffects like applauses or fireworks or even record your own voice in! And it´s easy for children to do this by themselfes, they found it very enjoyable! Try it out!

 

 



iMovie

 

Now, how can we use this app as a tool for teach language in school? Because the children of today are used to work with pictures and movies at home and among firends, I think it is a popular method to use in lessons. It´s a hugh benefit to make pupils work in pairs, it make them interact, communicate and reflect over the language with each other. One way to use it could be to get them to work with a subject, like dogs. Here they can find pictures from Internet, books or reality, take pictures of those, find facts, write and record them down. They can also do an interview of each others, take snapshots of each others doing things they like and write it in the pictures. They then can record their voices down (in English of course) where they talk about their friend, facts about him/her, what he/she likes and so on. When the movie are finished they can presentate it for the whole class and get supplementaries from the teacher or the other pupils.

It is also a good tool of documentation for you as a teacher, to use for pupils to see their own learning over a period of time, or to present for parents in appraisals.

 

I will here link to a youtube clip where you can see and hear a start of how you use the app. Good look!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZKjsF_bzKs

/Josefin Ehnebom

DVD player

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about technology in school is a video I saw myself in school. Since I went to school during the 90’s computers and other technology was rather new in the classroom, but I clearly remember the video “En cellsam historia”.  It’s a video about how the human body works, from the smallest cells to the biggest muscles. Even though this was used in our natural science education, I come to think about that videos, or more likely today DVD, is a very good tool to use when teaching English. And it’s a rather cheep kind of technology, though all you really need is a TV and a DVD player. Thanks to the technique today with DVD, the teachers are able to choose what subtitles should be used for example. Or if there should be any subtitles at all when the students watch a DVD. This is something Dudeney and Hockly (2007) writes about in their book.

Kids today are often very familiar with the English language through movies, TV and video games. There for, I think DVD’s and short movies is a very good tool to use to get the kids interested. Since most students already are familiar with this type of technology, it’s something they could use by themselves as well and not have to depend on the teacher helping them. Dudeney and Hockly (2007) writes about the importance of always having an idea behind it as a teacher, whatever type of technology you’re using. Usually you use DVD and movies as a treat maybe on Friday after noons, but instead I think it’s a very good opportunity to get natural English education, though this is something most students are use to from home. Besides not using subtitles I think it’s important to make the students really listen and after the video has ended maybe retell the story to a friend (in English of course). This helps the teacher see how much and what the students actually have understood about the video/DVD.  One could also use short sections of the movie and make students reenact the scenes from it. Using this type of material and method is also something that is present in the English syllabus (Lgr 11).

And of course there’re many educational DVD’s out there for pretty much every subject in school. For example the one I mentioned above, but you can find educational DVD’s for many other subjects. Skolverket have material for teachers on DVD that covers everything to how to handle student’s sexuality, to history based movies.