Call Newsletter Volume 2 Number 1 September 2008

CNA-Q CALL E-Newsletter September 2008 In This Issue

Volume 2, Number 1 Dear colleagues:

Projects

Ramadan Mubarak! Welcome, and welcome back.

Tips and Tricks

All websites are working at press time—but remember, the Internet is a moving target.

College Subscriptions About Us Submissions Wanted

Links

No need to save this document to find the websites—they will be available permanently from the department’s CALL page, courtesy of Susan Curtis. See “EFL-CALL Resources Website,” on the College’s Intranet home page. Or just click the link here.

Web Pages

Server 9 - EFL CALL Resources Ed Technology (TLC) Templates & Tools (TLC) CNA-Q Library

http://epnweb.org/ Here is a collection of educational podcasts. These may be useful for ESP listening practice. – Cheri McLeod

http://www.speechmadesimple.com/ In case you missed it, Mike Kealey suggests this site developed by a former colleague of his, “Speech Made Simple.” It helps EFL students with presentation skills. – Mike Kealey

CNA-Q IT Tutorials

http://www.eslteachersboard.com/pdf/Robin/SurvivalArabic.pdf Not really CALL, but something useful available online: Survival Arabic for the EFL classroom. http://www.languagetrainersgroup.com/accent_game.html In their jobs, our students will not be hearing only Canadian English. Here’s a fun way to introduce them to the varieties of English accents. Incidentally, your present correspondent scored only 17, and missed the Toronto accent. See if you can do better. Students can also volunteer to add to the accent collection. Qatar is not yet featured.

Neither is Newfoundland. http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/ http://classicpoetryaloud.wordpress.com/ Poetry is highly valued in Arabic culture. When the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish recited, he could fill a football stadium. The nearest local equivalent of “American Idol” is a poetry competition with a prize of 1,000,000 riyals. Poetry might therefore be a useful tool to help our students learn English. Here’s a great resource online: classic English poetry podcasts, with texts. http://www.talkingpets.org/ Here’s something just silly enough that your students might love it: a talking pet who will enunciate any English sentence you type in, in your choice of accent. Students might, for example, enjoy composing talking Eid cards to email to one another. To be culturally sensitive, you might want to use cats, not dogs. http://www.kerpoof.com/ http://www.kerpoof.com/teach With Kerpoof, students can make illustrated stories, comic books, and animations. It might be used for an interesting writing assignment, or in a listening or reading exercise, in which the students must make an animation or a picture to match a verbal description. Or, as a speaking exercise, have them describe pictures they have made.

Projects Rebecca Hatherley has built an interactive whiteboard, thanks to Johnny Lee the inventor, using a Wiimote and projector. This means any instructor can have their own interactive white board. This short video clip illustrates the basic technique: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/245 If you are interested in seeing it in action, want to become involved, or feel you have something to contribute, please contact Rebecca for further information. [email protected]

Tips and Tricks Paragraph Indents

Have you ever wondered what these markers are for on the ruler in Microsoft Office? The First Line Indent marker (the top triangle) controls the starting position of the first line of a paragraph.

The Hanging Indent marker (bottom triangle) positions the start of the second and all following lines of text in a paragraph. The Left Indent marker is the square underneath the Hanging Indent marker. You can use it to move the hanging indent and first line indent together, keeping any space between them constant. The Right Indent marker positions the right indent of a paragraph – Rebecca Hatherley

College Subscriptions We now have a subscription to BrainPop, a collection of el-hi materials in all subject areas. All teachers and students can access BrainPop for free during school hours—even from home. To give it a try, open the Library home page and select “Online Databases”; or click BrainPop directly from any computer at: http://www.brainpop.com/ Our username is Our password is

About Us CALL, for the benefit of the insufficiently initiated, stands for ComputerAided Language Learning. We on the CALL committee have a mandate from the department leadership to aid and abet you in using educational technology in your classroom. We currently comprise two committees: software evaluation and materials development. If you are interested, we would be delighted to have you join us in this cause. Current Members: Steve Roney (chair), John Allan (chair, materials development), Sheldon Chisholm, Douglas Culbert, Susan Curtis,

Scott Dagilis, Darlene Liutkus, Cheri MacLeod (TLC liaison), Scott Webber Rebecca Hatherley (Academics liaison), Dan Rieb Larissa Conley Linda Earl

Submissions Wanted If you have a tech tip to share, or know of an interesting and relevant website, please send it along to [email protected] for inclusion in a future issue. A big thanks to those who contributed towards this issue: Cheri MacLeod, Mike Kealey, Rebecca Hatherley, Steve Roney. A special thanks to Rebecca Hatherley for our new design.