Teacher Nik's English Teaching & Foodie World

Dad joke alert! but a nice segue into this weeks blog looking at how a mobile can help in the world of ELT. Oh hello, did you miss me? What and when was your first phone? Do you remember? Mine was the Nokia 232 (1994), it was the phone that Alicia Silverstone's (dream girl alert) character had in Clueless! before like everyone else in the 90s I 'upgraded' to the 3210. Back then it wasn't that common to have a phone, nowadays you would be hard pressed to find someone without a Mobile, with the cheapest smart phones available from as little as £29 in the UK. Of course, this can be somewhat of a drawback, how many times have you been teaching a class only to note some plucky upstart sniggering away at their mobile? More than once I dare say.  Yet, mobiles are not going away, like it or not- they are a part of every day life and will be for at least the foreseeable future. So how can we utilise this to improve the classroom experience for these mobile wielding scamps? There...

Oh hello you- I hope you enjoyed my Moira compilation last week and welcome to this weeks blog. Today I'm taking a look at Padlet. An online tool which can be used in class (pending T'internet access) and set as a (short) homework.  So what is it? In essence, it's effectively a noticeboard. You can post a topic/subject (a padlet) which your learners can then respond to. You will need to sign up for an account - you can do this using your google, Microsoft or Apple email address: Now it's important to note there is both a free and paid version of Padlet- The free version only allows you to post up to 3 Padlets- (you can delete and post new ones consistently of course) or you can pay $8 a month to be able to post unlimited Padlets- this is of course worth doing if you intend to make Padlets a regular part of your teaching. But should you? Let's  take  the Padlet adventure together and find out! Being a very poor student, I was unable to get the old moth collector out,...

  FLIPADELPHIA Sorry for the confusion- but as much as I would enjoy writing about Sunny (one of my favourite shows) that was just a bit of fun word play, for today I am casting my beady eye over 'Flipgrid' and taking a look at this video based website:   Flipgrid | Empower Every Voice Now being a video based site, it would be remiss of me to not include a video introduction to flipgrid and this is one of the best: That's a really good introduction of what Flipgrid is and how to use it, but actually reviewing the tool- that's my job! I should note since that video- the site has updated a little (which is always a good sign- they are continually trying to improve it. Now when you first sign up- you will need to create a group- this is effectively your classroom (can add students to it). You can then create topics/assignments (the blue +topic button shown below) You will note there is already the introduce yourself topic, which is pre-loaded into every group, its perfectl...