Fun with Powerpoint

Many of my colleagues are obsessed with students making powerpoint presentations whenever they go to the ICT rooms.

It's something all staff and students can do and it needs minimal supervision.

There is nothing wrong with this of course, but the problem is what to do with them once they are finished. 

You could put them on the class wiki/blog but you'd need to download each one separately to view them.

I decided therefore that it would be a jolly good wheeze to make Powerpoint presentations and make them into little cartoon strip style movies.

How do we do this?

Step one: Make a powerpoint

Step two: Instead of saving it as a powerpoint presentation save it as a series of jpeg files.

Step three: Go to a gif making website e.g. makeagif.com although other sites are available

Step four: Upload your jpegs and create an animated gif

Step five: Download the finished gif and put it on your wiki or blog

It can take fewer than 20 minutes to create something fairly good.

Like this:

UPDATE

As Clare Seccombe also pointed out, this can also be used as a stop/start animation tool.

I've done something like this in the past with my beginner German students.

It works like this: I give them a powerpoint. They fill in the blanks in German. Then they make it into a gif. Finally they use the ppt as a basic template to create their own.

This is the template made in to a gif:

Headteacher bans mobile phones and improves standards.

If you live in the UK you may have seen this story in the newspapers or on television or radio on Friday.

The headline in the Daily Telegraph was: Headmaster who banned mobile phones makes the right call.

Please read the article and make up your own mind.

From having read the article, it seems to me that this school should not have banned mobile phones, on the contrary, it should have taught its students how to use a mobile phone responsibly.

It claims that since banning mobile phones the attainment of students has "soared".

It could just as easily have been claimed that making the students wear blazers (a rule which came in at the same time) has contributed to the improving academic standards of the school.

Ironically, the school which banned mobile phones is a Media Arts College.

Some people just don't have a clue...

image courtesy of clker.com

1 jour 1 actu - the news for children in French

Des outils pour mieux comprendre l'info

This is my new favourite French website. (I am extremely fickle, as you know.)

1jour1actu is a news website for children and teachers by Milan Presse.

It publishes one news story each day (Monday to Friday) along with accompanying pdf worksheets for teachers, background material for the story and, very often, a video clip, too.

You can sign up to receive daily emails, or follow them on Facebook or twitter.

You can also search through the archives by topic or by date. The topics are: Monde, Culture, France, Insolite, Science, Sport, and Planète. There are also sections called Dossiers and Espace Enseignants.

This is an amazing authentic resource for learners of French of all abilities and some of the topics are relevant to the AS and A2 exams.

It's independent learning AND it's snot.

On a rare visit to another school yesterday I discovered a different way of getting students to think for themselves and collaborate with their peers.

It's the same as the 4 Bs: Brain, Book, Buddy, Boss but much more memorable and the students love it.

Especially the boys.

It's called SNOT.

It stands for:

SELF

Students ask themselves: Have we done this before? When did we do this? What do I know about this? Is it in my book, folder, etc?

NEIGHBOUR

If they can't find the information they require students ask the student nearest to them.

OTHER

Student asks another student for help.

TEACHER

If no other student can help then, and only then, is the student allowed to ask the teacher.

I came across SNOT when I visited a music lesson.

A pupil approached the teacher with a question. 

The teacher asked the pupil, "Have you snotted?"

He then explained to me that that is the system the school uses to try to get the students to take more responsibility for their own learning.

I loved it.

I've already started to use it with my own classes.

Let's not parler franglais.

From the early 1980s until it closed in 1992 I used to read Punch magazine.

 

One of my favourite features was Miles Kington's Franglais column.

Miles was a bit of a brainbox and a hero of mine. He was regularly heard on BBC radio and this quotation is frequently attributed to him: 

"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that a tomato doesn't belong in a fruit salad."

 

As a keen student of French I always thought his franglais column and books were very funny and, to Miles (and me) franglais was a joke - playing with the two languages and having fun. 

To many of the French (and my Canadian friend, Sylvie) le franglais n'est pas un joke du tout - c'est très serious indeed. 

It seems the French are so worried that their language is being taken over by techno-English that they have decided that the only way to protect themselves is to invent new words.

So, in future they won't have to put up with the abomination that is le hashtag from Twitter or Facebook's Je like and Je ne like pas.

You can read all about it in Metro's article from last week.

Personally, I love it when the French "adopt" English words.

My current favourites are:

les people (those who are famous for being famous)

and

les oh my gods (a term for "typical" young american ladies)

I think the Academie Française might be fighting a battle it can't win...

50000 visits.

Fun with languages - aka suttonhighmfl

In March last year I recommended Sutton Academy's MFL website which is a great place to go for interactive games and exercises in French, German, Russian and Spanish.

Just last week I tried to load up the site but was having no joy.

I have discovered today that the reason is that the site has moved and has a new address.

It is now called Fun With Languages.

I still recommend it.

It is in transition mode at the moment as the files are being copied to the new address but it is ideal for revision purposes for students of all levels.


PS: When I was looking for this site Edmund Ellison recommended a site Down For Everyone Or Just Me which is a great place to go if you are trying to access a site which doesn't appear to be working. You paste in the address of the site you are looking for and it will tell you if the site is working or if the problem is with your computer.