Teaching English With Efekan

       ThingLink is an interactive media platform that offers a range of features for users to create, share, and explore interactive images, videos, and 360-degree virtual tours. With an intuitive interface, ThingLink allows users to enhance static media by adding interactive tags containing text, images, links, videos, audio, and embedded multimedia content. These tags can be placed at specific points on the media to provide additional information, context, or related resources. BUT before we get ahead of ourselves many of these features are paywalled and the free features are usable on a 30 day free trial which when it runs out it will be over for your experience.   That being said while you can use still use it, Thinklink can  help foster student engagement, critical thinking, and collaboration by allowing you to make interactive prestation's that keep engagements higher, allowing you to have the visual medium better fit in to your class thus allowing s...

    Peergrade is an online platform designed to facilitate peer feedback and assessment among students. It provides a structured framework for students to evaluate and provide feedback on each other's work, promoting active learning, self-reflection, and improvement... or so I'm led to believe by others.       This news does make it impossible for me to have a first hand account in my review so you'll have to take everything with i say a huge pinch of salt! As it is nothing more than my understanding of what other say about this tool. Nonetheless in the future new sign ups might continue so here we are.          First the teacher will need to create a rubric for the assignments to be used by the students in critiquing and inspecting each others work. These rubrics can include  includes yes/no questions, scale questions and text response prompts.     The Students get an intuitive interface to w...

      This was a great treat after the first webinar i watched this webinar unlike the previous "Resilience" one was actually well paced and quick to the point. You quickly understand points being made and they are paced well enough to not overwhelm you. Information clearly provided and explained, rest of the webinar was this well done too!          The name of the webinar tells everything and hides nothing about the content of the webinar, it's about how we can use critical thinking when teaching to lower level students who often have a poor vocabulary and weak grasp of the rules of English. At a first glance it really does seem like its either impossible or not worth the hassle to integrate critical thinking to lower level students but this webinar has really won me over. Not only can it be done but with a little foresight it isn't even hard! But of course first we must make clear what exactly counts as critical thinking which is ...

      This webinar without a doubt the most unique seminar i seen with its 3 hour run time and it being made in the Philippines by students! Now to be fair to it its more like 2.5 hours as there is a waiting for the webinar to start period and the singing of the Philippine National Anthem period.     How many webinars include a singing of an anthem?      I choose to watch  RESILIENCE: Overcoming Adversities , a webinar aimed at addressing mental health concerns and fostering resilience because of its unique status As I watched the webinar, produced by Filipino students and conducted in English, I was hoping to gain valuable insights and unique perspectives(or as much one can from an old covid era armature webinar made by students) . However, to my disappointment, I found the overall experience to be slow-paced, lacking in distinctive content, and not particularly impressive. Although i obviously admire the goal.      One o...

     Flipgrid is an interactive video discussion platform that allows teachers and students to engage in meaningful conversations through recorded videos. It provides a user-friendly and secure space for video-based discussions, promoting student voice, collaboration, and reflection. Needlessly to say this could be really useful for foreign language teaching as we can basically get our students use the language they're supposed to be learning thus making a gateway to learning and keeping new vocabulary. Oh and as always the site is free and easy to use as it requires nothing more than an account a mic at the minimum.     Here is an activity i created with FlipGrid aimed at increasing students self confidence when talking in English and expanding their vocabulary, a Virtual Book Club! Activity: The teacher will create a new group and share it to their students for them to become members. The members will be assigned reading based on their interest and capabi...

    AutoDraw is a completely free drawing and doodling site by google with a little twist being that an ai will try to guess what you are drawing and try to suggest professional drawings done by... well professional artists to replace your doodle. This basic website and the tool it provides could be helpful in digitally enhancing your classes. The students active involvement even by basic tasks like doodling can greatly enhance their learning experience and thus help them learn, as in doodling can engage the students with the class which is vital for any foreign language class because unwilling participants rarely learn!     Here is an activity i made based out the Ministry of National Educations curriculum. Its the 4. theme for second graders, Numbers! The idea is they can better grasp the concept of numbers in a foreign language better by drawing. Activity: The Teacher will explain instructions to the students ...

I made quick video on how to use the surveying tool website SurveyMonkey.  This digital tool allows for creating and analyzing surveys easily and free. Which could be helpful in understanding your students or even their parents. (if you could get them to take a survey of course!)   And here is an alternative way of watching the video if Blogger has a problem: https://vimeo.com/837014798/4c3d6852d5?share=copy Click here to check out SurveyMonkey!

A Simple Poster     A simple poster with and easy to understand message but it does hold a bit more depth than one might think at a first glance. Lets start with hands, as one can see they are of different colors but more importantly they are raised in solidarity as if they were to fight the fight separated and disunited the chance of a lasting successful change diminishes greatly. Speaking lasting change, the slogan "not only today, but everyday!" is there to remind the fight is not won or lost in a day and it must be fought for everyday, why? Many movements demanding equality is built out off the media buzz created by specific acts of injustice and when one way or another the media buzz disperses any hope for permanent change is gone with it. This is why the demand of equality of life must be for everyday. And at last of course "All Lives Matter" is to the point and self explanatory.         Unfortunately there wasn't an...