Over the last few weeks I’ve been exploring some of the content on Russell Stannard’s
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/ website. The videos aren’t pedagogical type classroom videos of teachers working with students, as you might at first assume from the title, but are video tutorials which show how to use various software and websites to develop your teaching.
What’s on the siteThe site is aimed at ELT teachers who are interested in developing their technology skills for teaching purposes. The main content of the site is split into three main categories, which you can find in the left-hand column of the homepage.
- The first is ‘General teacher training videos’
This contains video tutorials on how to do some pretty useful stuff from how to use ITunes and download podcasts to how to create a Blog and PowerPoint tips. There’s a very useful series on how to create a Wiki and I really enjoyed the ones one PhotoShop basics ( A program that I have tried to master a number of times!) - The second is ‘ELT teacher training videos’
This section is particularly aimed at the ELT teacher and looks in-depth at some ELT related sites and how best to use them. There’s a really useful review of some of the best ELT podcasts as well as a series of videos on how to use Podomatic to create and upload your own podcast. - The final section is ‘Multimedia learning videos’
This contains videos that will be particularly useful for anyone who wants to learn how to use some of the major authoring programs being used to create e-learning materials. The main focus at the moment seems to be on Flash and Director. The videos go from the basics of understanding the tool set to some of the more demanding tasks, such as animation.
Each one of the topics above is covered by a whole series of as many as 20 short 2 minute video tutorials with audio narration which take you through the processes involved step by step showing you exactly what to do.
What I liked about it- The tutorials are very clear and are really well staged.
- You can easily jump to just the video you want to watch from the side menu
- The videos are short and download reasonably quickly (on my broadband connection)
- They cover a real variety of software tools and websites
- It’s free
What wasn’t so good- This is a huge collection of really well prepared and presented FREE training materials so what’s not to like?
ConclusionThis site really represents a wealth of free development for anyone really interested in improving the tech skills and using ICT with or to create materials for their students. Russell has obviously put in hours of time and a huge amount of work on the site to provide a really excellent resource that I’m sure teachers around the world can benefit from. Check it out at:
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/
Typo-O is a word prediction, spelling and text-to-speech app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The app costs $14.99 and requires iOS 6. Click here to view the app in the App Store. Typ-O is simple and easy to use. To get started just start typing, Typ-O then predicts the which word you are trying to type. You can touch the word to accept the predicted word or you can press on a speaker button to have the word spoken using a text-to-speech voice. The word prediction is very good and can help improve spelling. Hearing the sentence read back to you using text-to-speech can also help improve grammar. Once you have finished writing you can send your text via email or text message. Typ-O includes a number of customizable setting to help improve word prediction accuracy. One negative of the app is that it uses text-to-speech voices from the internet which means if you are not connected to the internet you must use low quality text-to-speech voices.
