Quotes

This one is inspired by Shelly Terrell's webinar, Using Quotes to Teach and Inspire Students , thanks Shelly for that and all the other great ideas. Find the recording here.


One of the greatest powers of social media is the free flow of worthy ideas that often come in the shape of quotes. People do share inspirational quotes, no one can deny.
The visual nature of Facebook also causes the flood of quote-images.
True, teens sometimes share things that sound nice, without much consideration. Some quotations are just fake , some make no sense at all. (And of course the source remains unknown.)

This activity will make your students read, create, think somewhat critically and speak.

Ask them to find quotes that they either like or hate, found online, in a movie or in a book.

Tell them to post all of them on your group wall. (This phase will make them search the Internet, look through their Facebook newsfeed, think about films they saw, perhaps in L1, then they have to find the original script or the quote.)

They might want to use http://www.brainyquote.com
A way to use it:

Now that the group has many quotes you can use them in many different ways offline, in the lesson.

Give them the first few words of the quotes and ask them to finish them as accurately as possible

• Ask them to form groups according to which quotes they like and let them explain ...
• Take some colourful markers, coloured paper, crayons, magazine clippings, glue and make them create posters for the quotes
• Ask them to make up fake quotes
• Encourage them to get to know more about the person who said the quote they like 
• Use Shelly's ideas :)

Please add your ideas to these :)

Facebook breeds narcissism. So what?

(Sorry, there is nothing about narcissism here.)

Background

I've got a new job, I teach English speaking (?) in a rural high school in Hungary.
I work on Wednesdays only, I have 5 groups, one lesson each.
On my very first workday I met 80+ new people. I didn't go the usual 'introduce yourself' round, it's pretty boring, there was a bit of learner training instead. However I think it's important to know them.
Anyways, I wouldn't have been able to remember so many names. Honestly, I'm not sure I could remember so many faces.
Then what? I thought when I meet them more often I'll learn the names. But hey, I'll meet them once a week!


What can be done? What? Do I hear you say ... Facebook????


Facebook is the platform of which a considerable element is displaying yourself. I already know the names of those students of mine who do something on Facebook. They just post something, I click on their profile and I have some kind of an picture  of them which is just an impression but more than nothing.

What does one's Facebook activity tell about the person?

Is there an answer?

On Facebook we don't really know who sees what. Similarly we have no idea what they conclude from what we post on Facebook. Usually it's not harmful but I have the feeling we might be a bit more aware of this issue.

Like I've repeatedly been warned in messages and face-to-face that I have no life. (It appears to some people that I'm always online, never get any fresh air, have no real human encounters. Pffffhahhhahhaaaaa! I see much more of the forest than they do though, khmm... no TV in the house.)

Facebook/social media is not so much different from our 3D world, is it? Just like in the offline world some are more talkative and some are silent, extroverts and introverts. Personally, I am of the noisier type. I'm nearly always online and love sharing everything. The reactions are not so noisy, not many likes or comments I get. I might have the impression that out of my over 700 friends about 10 people see what I put on my timeline. Then occasionally I get messages thanking me the useful stuff and I meet people in the shop with smiles on their faces. That means what I present about myself evokes much more reaction and not exactly what I'm aware of. It's like presenting in a dark theater hall where strong headlight is shed on you and you just can't see the faces of your audience.

Why does this whole Facebook thing matter to me?

I'm convinced that web 2 will change the world for the better. It has changed my life for the better, so I believe in it.
It's so good! Once there was a blood donation event in my town,  a friend answered the question of a local TV reporter explaining why he gives blood. He said "I've got so much blood. It feels so good. I want other people to have enough blood and feel so good too." It was funny that time. Now I feel it :). The thing that I'm so enthusiastic about here is my personal learning network.

I know today's teens are connected and everything but I'm not sure they will get the grip of what I call PLN world (not I call it PLN exclusively XD).
They might make use of a bit of guidance or being shown other ways to use connectedness.
Social media/Facebook is a great training ground for that.

What is blocking the way?

People tend to feel the urge to establish themselves in the world by comparing themselves to others. A widespread means of this is observing others and comparing them to ourselves. That often leads to being judgmental. That takes people nowhere.
Let’s say I see a plump girl wearing a mini skirt. I'm happy that I'm somewhat slimmer, if I express my observation (concluding that she is wrong to put on those kinds of clothes) I establish myself as a pretty girl. Also I will become too shy to wear a miniskirt, I don't want anyone to think the same thing I thought of that girl. See that one? It's my own judgement that prevents me from doing things and it all creates an unnecessary kind of shyness.
This attitude is one of the main reasons why in my  culture we are a bit weak at initiatives and cooperation. Judgement instead of criticism, confusion of opinions and facts. Lack of critical thinking skills. We are in a constant competition where we are scored/judged by people with the loudest opinions.


Why not learn how to present ourselves online and how to receive others' online life portfolio? (I'm still learning it, it's not that I know how to... I mean learn it by dialogue. And doing.)

Assess and evaluate instead of judge

Especially teens love spying on each others profiles, photos, timelines, they keep track of the lives of each other.
I often find that they just criticize each other thus setting up a system of judgement. That's bad because it often  develops into another system of blocks, as in the above example with the mini-skirt. They just don't dare to do things because they think others think things that they think of others, which is often false. It's often paired up with the tendency of trying to please others over their own interests.



They (and everyone) might use some help with developing a healthy manner of judging others. One of the ever occurring posters of Facebook is 'THINK before you speak':
http://www.swtblessings.com/2011/08/before-you-speak-think.html

A Facebook Task

Each member of the group  picks the name of another member and analyzes their Facebook presence (what their photos, likes, pages, shares, updates, etc. suggest about them). They might write some paragraphs or speak about the person, they can also make a screencast. When preparing the 'product' they must bear in mind the THINK principles. (To avoid unkind and counterproductive outcomes.)

T-Is it true?

H-Is it helpful?

I-Is it inspiring?

N-Is it nice?

K-Is it kind?

As a model you can use the profile of a celebrity or a well-known third-party Facebook user, as Rose Bards suggests below in her great comment. (Is it OK to alter a post like this? I mean later? I'd say yes!)

Language

... suggests that ...
I see ... which make(s) me think ...
This person can't be/must be ...
The fact that ...  shows that XY ....

...

Life skills:
Knowing yourself, online behavior,  judgement vs assessment

Variation: 
They just describe each other based on their Facebook activity, "make a psychological portrait" (thanks Alexandra Chistyakova for that :)

Follow up:
It can be quite surprising to read/hear what people think of you. What I often find is that people usually downgrade themselves, this activity can well lead to a better self image. (Or not?)
In a next stage students may react to what's been said about them.

You may use it a as an icebreaker activity at the beginning of a course.
It's great to clarify who is who.

Who's the teacher
If you have no aversions to expose yourself to your students ask them to share what they think about you based on your Facebook activity.

Lots of false beliefs can be eliminated :)

Or? Please, share your ides here. Or on Facebook.

Optical Illusion

Optical illusions are a Facebook genre, they are often shared, they are fun.

Look at the red point for 30 seconds and blink at the wall:

Hmm? Great, isn't it? There's a difference between the inverted pic and the one you see when blinking at the wall :)

How can it be used as a Facebook EFL/ESL task?

1 Ask your students to create and post pictures like this or you yourself create one. (Portraits, places, objects, all depending on what your language aim is.)

How to make a pic like this? 

Get an image, invert its colours (image editors can do it, even Microsoft Paint, you can do it online at http://www.converthub.com/invert-colors/ for example).

Draw a dot in the middle of it.

Done.

2 Students are to comment on the pic. (It can range from descriptive sentences, opinions, something like

 "First I thought it was a sad face then it turned out that it's a happy one."

 "It was surprising."

3 Tag some studets (2-3), assign them to write a summary of the comments. (The summaries are supposed to be the very last comments.)

4 Peer review:

Ask them to "correct" the language used (all the comments and summaries) by rewriting it in their own correct version. (No red marks, just a new version, hopefully they will consult references, Internet, dictionaries.)

5 Reflect/review on the reviews (diagnostic, remedial work.)

This seems to me as a relevant task, because

• it's on Facebook
• it's semi-authentic language use
• the subjects of the photos can be your students themselves, anything they are proud of, anything that they use to build their 'brand', 'image', they have a chance to show themselves (if they want to)
• it may be a hip activity with little teacher effort (students provide pics, they comment, tagged people summarise, peer review)
• it doesn't take too long or require much work
• fun
• personal

Please try it if you fancy and meets your aims, comment and add your ideas!

Facebook, a tinédzserek élőhelye, mint tanulási platform Edit NYESZE NYELVTANÁRI KONFERENCIA, 2012. május 12.

Facebook, a tinédzserek élőhelye, mint tanulási platform on Prezi

Surpr@ise

On 10 March I had the chance to take part in an outstandingly magical, surprising,  inspiring ELT event called Surpr@ise Day in Kosice organized by Vladimira Michalkova and Chuck Sandy.


Prezi on using Facebook in ELT:

Facebook Surpr@ise on Prezi

Reflection

Exam training can be quite boring. Sometimes students just lose the motivation as they are really conscious about  the mock test results. Also test-preparation materials can be pretty boring themselves. By asking your students to give a short reflection about a given task their  learner autonomy can be awakened. Good to know why they do a certain exercise.

You can set up a poll in Facebook question:

What was this activity good for?

You can add answer options as well of the members can provide those.

Music

The simplest way of exploiting your learners passion for music is to ask them to share their favourite music videos. Then they can do a range of things with those favs.

They can easily find the lyrics and turn them into cloze-tests with the help of a cloze-maker http://l.georges.online.fr/tools/cloze.html

They can use the images of a video. They stop the video at a point, they note the time but keep it in secret. They describe the scene in a comment and the others have to find the given scene in the video and write the time point in a comment.

They may simply lip-sync the video like this:

You can just take phrases or words from the songs they submitted and play a quiz to find out which song it was from. Write a collaborative stories/letters using the phrases, words.

Translate grammar sentences

One of the low-fun activities for me is the translation of sentences from L1 to L2. Some exams still have this tasks and some students still choose exams that have it.  Of course they are beneficial though. Khmmmm...
Suppose your students are to translate a couple of sentences that are examples of a certain grammar points.  You can post these on Facebook, you can assign two or three sentences to one student. After having translated them peers can correct or comment on each other's sentences.
Variation:

They will use Google Translate, it will give them sentences with errors. Why don't they correct them?

You can also give them google-translated sentences with errors, they would have to correct them and find out the original L1 sentence.

Coursebook exercises with non-connected sentences

Coursebooks often have guided practice exercises where you find single sentences numbered, under each other, students are to use the appropriate word or the words in brackets in the right form.
I often find that students simply neglect the meaning they do the task automatically. They are simply too lazy to think and say one or another answer, not really wanting to get it right. It is funny  but  also a waste of time. When I see that my students are missing the point with tasks like these I try to make them imagine the situation depicted in the task.

An example:
Sentence from the exercise:
Billy has eaten/ate all the watermelon form the fridge.

Digital teens tend to quickly choose one of the options without too much thinking. Let’s colour it a bit:

How old is Billy?
What does he look like?
What was the last thing he ate?


On Facebook you can start a conversation about 'crucial' thing like Billy's hair, it may make the exercise a bit more memorable. If  these comment threads are fun enough students might take up looking for the  the meaning in these seemingly monotonous tasks.

Trollfaces

Do you know trollfaces?
Facebook teens are surely familiar with them.
They can create their own trollface comics to practice any kind of dialogue.  To make it collaborative they can create a whole comic book and put it on issuu.com.

Principles for designing Facebook activities

• collaborative
• allow for creativity, individuality
• cater for stalking and narcissism
• students should work more than the teacher
• bite-size activities
• relevant to life and language aims
• fun
• account for differences
• look like Facebook (Facebook genres)

Translate and translate ...

The other day one of my students asked me to help him with a test-prep project.
They were doing -ed/-ing adjectives. 
They did the unit of a relevant grammar-in-use book.
Their teacher told them they were to be tested on the sentences in a couple of days. The test was translation from L1 to L2. This is very challenging as the subject of the test is not only -ed/-ing adjectives but a range of other points (other grammar, vocabulary, etc.)

On the other hand it was not just rote learning 10 sentences or so, there were about 70-80 sentences!!!

It was not a real option to write them each in two languages by one person to be studied later.

The number of learners in his group is 16. If they create a flash card set collaboratively, quizlet.com for example.  5 sentences (L1, L2) per person is quite manageable. So each student writes 5 virtual flashcards in collaboratively created virtual flashcard set (they may peer-correct it and the teacher can have a say too).
Now there’s nothing else to do but have a flashcard contest. The scores can be posted on Facebook, the winner may win a ..... something.

Fails and rules

Fails

Kids' behaviour on Facebook is sometimes  offensive, certain images and comments may evoke considerable concern. Certain comments may be disturbing. There is also a tendency of stalking (sort of spying on each other's Facebook walls) which is definitely a waste of time. Unfortunately girls tend to upload sexually explicit pictures of themselves, they are just not aware of the possible results of their actions.
You can educate students about that by simply discussing what these pictures suggest.
That is an area teens need our guidance.
After discussing these issues you may give your learners tasks with a language aim.

Ask one student (or more) to draw a picture of a typical fail profile picture.
The person depicted will be serve as a fictional character for these activities.

Students may write letters to a Facebook misuser suggesting that they should change their behaviour. (Alternative to  coursebooks’ agony aunt type of tasks to practise giving advice.)

They can also write (collaborative) stories that may be the results of a Facebook fail. Pictures and fails (memes spreading on the Internet) might be story prompts.

E.g.
Anna (14) uploaded this picture on Facebook one day. 


Stalking

Explain or discuss why Facebook stalking is a bad thing. (In L1 if necessary.)
Students may compile instructional materials to explain why it is a waste of time. (Do’s an don’ts, info-graphics, etc.)

They can as well create instructional shareables other than written things:
videos, sound, slides, talking pictures, etc.

Everyday situation role plays

It is quite trivial, simple, handy but highly Facebook friendly: get your students video record everyday roleplays.
You can use your coursebook situations as models that are  just to be copied by students or they can write their own scripts. Knowing that the video will be uploaded on Facebook they will surely pay more attention and practice more. You can follow the steps of a usual video project.

Talent pageant for grammar exercises

Sometimes out of some mysterious reason you might want your students to practise a specific grammar point. The Facebook way:
Suppose your grammar point is Present Perfect vs. Past Simple.
post this link on your group wall:
http://www.agendaweb.org/verbs/present_perfect-exercises.html
(Agendaweb is a great resource for all kinds of web-based exercises, basically a multitude of links categorised, for grammar I go there first.)

Ask the members of the group to find 3 links that are relevant to your point. (I clicked 10 times to find 3 relevant links.) This stage helps raise the awareness of what exactly these structures are and increases learner autonomy.
They are to post their threesomes of links in comments.

Semi-final:
After having done the exercises they choose one favourite.
You post an update ?FAVOURITES? for example, they post their favourites in the comments section.
Final:
Now they have to vote for the absolutely favourites. For that everyone has to do all the favourite exercises (one per group member) and vote in a poll (Facebook question).

Now the three best exercises are the winners.

Then create a group document and tell everyone to copy in there a certain number of items from the exercises per person, depending on the size of the group. You might need about ten items.
Now this may serve as a test. Or if you want to take it more seriously you just make slight changes in the sentences  and alter the order.

Through this procedure you make your students aware of the given grammar structure, you hopefully give them ample amount of practice (many sets of different types of exercises disguised as a talent pageant for exercises :D:D) and even more autonomy as they can have a say about the test.
They may get acquainted with a number of free online exercises that are corrected automatically, they can choose sites that are suitable for them for further self-study.

Motivationals, demotivationals

A popular genre to share in Facebook is "motivationals"(image in a b/w frame with a caption).
They are sometimes quite nasty, sometimes pathetic.
Many times wise quotes are shared in this manner. 
To deepen the experience of reading a book (graded readers as well) ask your students to pick sentences from the book they are reading and create a motivational poster with it and share their posters on Facebook. Commenting is mandatory :)