Exploiting a Video Viral

For a long time now I've been fascinated with viral marketing campaigns and the way advertisers use these to promote their products. What's really interesting about them is the advertisers ability to come up with really novel and original ideas to capture our attention and make us want to share with others. My Fame Star is a great example of this and one that we can use to create lesson materials.
What it does, is enable you to upload a photograph and then create a story around it.


It then converts this story into a small video report. Here's an example I created called 'How my past caught up with me.' (You'll have to watch a short advertisement first)

Example: Click here if the video doesn't play

How to use it with students

• Create a video about yourself or a fictional character and ask your students to watch it and make notes about your life story.

• Get your students to create their own stories then put them in pairs to listen to each others' story and make notes of the variations / differences.

• Use it as a prompt for students to write a newspaper story. You could get the students to watch the video clip and then convert the story into a newspaper clipping. You could add some realism to this by asking your students to use the Newspaper clip generator from one of my previous postings (Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts)

• Ask students if they can think of any real celebrities whose story is similar to this. Get them to tell the class or write the story of a similar celebrity.

• Discuss the use of 'viral marketing' sites like these as advertising.

• Do they think it's useful?
• Do they know of other viral marketing examples?
• Does it have an influence on their impressions of the company / product?

Have a look at an article I wrote here to find a out a bit more about viral marketing

What I like about it

• It can really personalise the lesson and materials
• It's fun and free (despite the advertising)
• It's easy to use
• Great stimulation for the imagination
• It has an embed code so you can embed the video into a blog or wiki
  

What I'm not so sure about

• Shame about the advertising, but I guess everyone has to make a living
• If you email it to someone the default is to accept promotions of the company's products (I deselected it)
• Sometimes the embed code doesn't work so well but can be improved with a bit of code editing.
  

Well I hope you and your students enjoy this and by all means post links or comment about any other ideas or materials you create with this tool.

Related links:

• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Create an English Cartoon
• Animating vocabulary
• Make you own animated movies
• Picture phrases

Best

Nik Peachey

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Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts

Here's something that's fun for the weekend and beyond. A site with a collection of image and gif generators that you can customise with your EFL ESL students and add their texts to. This is an example one I created with talking flowers giving a warning about the environment.

• The site also offers talking squirrels

• Talking cats

And a few other things like tomatoes, owls and a wizard. There's also a generator that helps you add a text to a packet of cigarettes and also a newspaper which I really like. It's really easy to do, you just add your text to a field and click the generate button.
You can then either download your image or get an embed code to add it to a blog or website.

So how do we use this with EFL ESL students?

• We can use the animal and vegetable animations to get students to express opinions about different topics we discuss. It can often be hard to motive students to do this and using a tool like this reduces their 'exposure'.
  

• We could get students to create an animal or vegetable very short story.

• We could use the cigarette packet generator for a competition to think up the best reason not to smoke (could use this for modals of obligation too - you shouldn't / mustn't smoke because..)

• We could use the newspaper gif to get students to write a short news stories about how they became famous, what they did at the weekend, their last holiday etc.

• They could also use the newspaper gif to write some classroom or celebrity gossip to share

• We could write news stories for the students as a prompt for questions - Write a short news text for them with the headline - 'Teacher Found Murdered' - add a few details and get them to write short questions to ask you more about the story. You could even develop this into a role play with students having to think of an alibi to explain where they were at the time of the murder and get some students to act as detectives and interrogate the other students.

• You could use the newspaper gif to create an editing task by creating a text with a number of your students' common errors in and asking them to act as newspaper editors and find the mistakes.
• You could use the newspaper gif to get students to convert a popular story form literature or folk tale (Romeo and Juliet, Goldilocks and the 3 bears, Cinderella etc.) into a quick news article. This is a good activity to practice summary writing skills.
• You could use the Ninja or Wizard animations to get students to create short advertising slogans.
  

What I like about this site

• It's free and really easy to use.
• Once you've created your images and animations you can either download them or get an embed code and add them to a blog or website.
• It's fun and adds an element of motivation to simple quick writing activities
• Ideal for warmer.
• It's all very 'low tech' and you don't need broadband.
  

What I'm not so sure about
You might have to be careful that students don't write too much. the wizard and ninja texts need to be very short.

Well I hope you find these useful and please leave comments with any other ideas or links to any materials your students create using these.

Related links:

• Animating vocabulary
• Make you own animated movies
• Picture phrases

Activities for students:

• Extending a Sentence
• 60 Second Writing Activity
• Create an English Cartoon

Best

Nik Peachey

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Personalised flashcards

Flashcards have always been one of my favourite teaching tools and with the FaceinHole website I've found a place where I can quickly create my own personalised ones.

The site is easy to use. You just need either an image of yourself that you can upload or a webcam that you can take a picture with. Then you choose the picture you want to put yourself into and upload your image. With a bit of resizing and colour adjustment you can have a set of your own personal flashcards in just minutes.

Then you can either embed them in a webpage like these ones, have a link to them on the site or print them up to use them in class as flashcards.

How to use these with students
These kinds of flashcards can be used for a multitude of purposes.

• They are great for generating stories / personal anecdotes ( The time I met Paris Hilton etc).
• You can use them to practice a range of grammar structures. The ones below could all be used for 'used to' and students could either ask about the experience or you could make up anecdotes to tell them.
• You could get your students to create their own flashcards using their own images and then come to class and tell the class about their imaginary experiences.
• Often when students have to talk about their own experiences, they can't think of much to say. Hopefully these flashcards will stimulate their imagination and they can have fun making up stories and anecdotes.
• You could even try to convince your students that some of these are true! (I actually used to have long hair and go dancing with Paris Hilton!)
  

Here are my 'used to' experiences.

• I used to play football for Manchester united
  
• I used to go dancing with Paris Hilton.
  
• I used to be a stunt man.
  
  
  
  • I used to have long hair.
  
  
  
  
  • I used to be a bit of an ogre.
  
  
  
  
  • I used to play in a band.
  
  
  
  What I liked about it
  
  • Lots of different pictures to choose from
  • Quick and easy to create the flashcards
  • Lots of fun for free and registration necessary
    
  What I wasn't so sure about
  
  • Would be nice to have some more ordinary images and perhaps different places around the world.
  • It only worked with jpg images, not with gif
  • Watch out. Some of them are less suitable for younger learners
    
  There's so much you can do with good images and personalised ones can be even more stimulating. I hope you find this useful and you get your students creating and talking about some great images.
  
  http://www.faceinhole.com
  
  Best
  
  Nik

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Soundscapes from Soundtransit

Sound Transit is a really wonderful formulation of an idea. It's not just a huge collection of Mp3 sound files from all over the world, but the sounds have been tagged by country and described and a visitor to the site can take a sound journey around the world.

You just choose your country of origin, your destination and how many stops you want to make. You then get offered a choice of itineraries with stops at various destinations and descriptions of what you will hear there. You choose the one you want and then the site edits together the individual sounds to create a unique sound journey for you. You can then download your mp3 sound journey, listen to it online or send it to a friend.

• To try this go to the Book a Transit part of the site. It's just like booking a flight on an airline website (except that it's free and a lot more user friendly!!)

Alternatively you can search the database of individual files by country, keyword or creator and just download the sounds you want. All the sounds are licensed under creative commons 2.0 so you can save and reuse them according to the limitations defined by that license.

• To access the database of sounds go to Search for sounds.

How to use this with students

• You can use the sounds for visualisations. Get the students to listen with closed eyes then write about what they heard. Or they can create a story from what they heard.
• You could collect four or five clips for students to listen to and then get them to create a chapter / episode of a story around each one.
• You could use them for grammar practice ( e.g. present continuous "Someone is speaking." etc.)
• You could get the students to use the site to plan a holiday with four or five destinations then use the descriptions in the itinerary to say what they 'will / are going to' do at each place. They can then choose the best holiday. For past tense practice they can tell other students what the did on their holiday while the students listen to the sounds.
• For vocabulary practice they could just listen and say the things they hear. This will probably involve a lot of guessing, so you could extend this for practice of modals of probability (e.g. It might be someone eating, It can't be in Argentina. That must be a car door etc.)
• You could use this site to give students inspiration to collect their own sounds and to tell the rest of the class about them. They could even upload them to the site and share them.
• They could create their own sound journeys ( e.g. Going to school, what they did at the weekend etc.)
• You could play 'Guess the sound' as a warmer with student and award points to each student or team.
• You could ask students to find their favourite sounds or talk about what the sounds remind them of. (e.g. This is one of my favourites. It's the call to prayer. This one was recorded in Delhi, but it reminds me of when I lived in Cairo. I went out to Giza one evening and listened as thousands of mosques from all over Cairo erupted in to a grand symphony of sound.)
  Listen here
• You can use the sounds to create atmosphere for story telling activities or student plays
• You can play the John Cage game and just get the students to sit silently and listen to the sounds around them in the school classroom ( for 4 mins and 33 seconds) then talk about what they heard. You could also tell them about the famous John Cage composition 4'33" afterwards and ask them what they think of it.
  
• You can play "Where am I?" by playing them one of the sounds and asking them to guess where you are. Try this one. I'm in a cafe in Moscow getting some coffee

What I liked about this site

• It's a wonderful free resource with a huge collection of sounds.
• It can really get students thinking about the sound environment they live in.
• I love the idea that the sounds are tagged to countries and that students can book a sound journey.
• The creative commons license

What I wasn't so sure about

• Some of the sound journeys are quite long if you add a lot of stops
• Some of the sounds are quite unusual and could require quite a high level of language to describe, but I think this just means that you have to choose the activity that you use carefully and be selective.

Anyway. This is a site that I really enjoyed and I'm now determined to go out and start recording some of my own sound adventures. As I'm based in Morocco I thought I would finish this posting with the sounds of the Marrakech market recorded by Reza Tahami.

To download any of the sounds you just need to right click and then click 'Save As..'

Best

Nik

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Create your own game

This is something that caught my eye last week. I just couldn't resist adding a feature about it here, though I think this does come with some warnings and reservations.

Pictogame.com is a website which enables you to create your own games very easily with just a few easy steps. All you need to do is:

• upload a picture,
• select the part of it you want to show
• choose a game type
  
• add in a title and description.

Then you simply click to see the completed game. You need to register to upload and save the game, but it's free and very quick to do. There are quite a few different game types to choose from, but there are lots of examples on the site that other people have made, so you can look at those to help you decide which type to make.

Here's a rather annoying game that I created in less than 5 minutes

Make a game | Share | Free games | Pictogame

So how do you use this with students
You could just create a game using a picture of yourself and use it;

• as a filler for those students who finish early if you work in a media lab / connected classroom.
• as a nice 'leveler' to make a game for your students with a picture of yourslef and shows that you have a sense of humour.
• to include a messages in the game like, "Hey! Remember to do your homework"

You could get students making games as a short task using either pictures of themselves or of well known celebrities.

• This will give them some practice at following instructions and they could work in pairs to discus the type of game they would like to create and who it would be for
• You can have a class competition for who can create the best game. Get students to vote for the best one and justify their choice
• Some of the games include quizzes to test general knowledge
• Get each group of students to create a different type of game and then describe to the other groups how the game is played
  

What I like about it

• It's free and very easy
• It's a nice simple fun task that you can get students to do as a filler
• Students can share the games quite easily either via email or through blogs or other online forums
• It can easily be integrated with other Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, Blogger etc.

What I wasn't so keen on

• Some of the games are unsuitable for younger kids
• You need to make sure that students don't misuse the site and create unpleasant games using photographs of other students

This isn't the world's most useful site for developing language, but if used properly it's one that you can use to lighten up your course and your students can have some fun with.

I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who uses or has used this with their class, just to see how your students reacted and what you did with it.

Best

Nik

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Creating audio-visual monologues

Flipz TV is a really useful piece of free software for creating entertaining audio-visual materials.

The software enables you to record your own audio monologues and lip-sync them with a choice of animated talking heads. It then turns them into small Flash files which can be run in a web browser. These can be put on the Internet, run form your computer desktop, or the Flash files can even be delivered to mobile phones.

Here’s an example that I created using a Sonnet (130) by William Shakespeare. (You’ll need to have the sound o your computer turned up)

Click here to see an example

Use the small controls on the right to stop and replay the audio.

What I like about this software, apart from the novelty value, is Flipz creates quite small files. You could easily email the file to students with some instructions so they could listen at home or in a self access lab. Or put them on their phone or mobile device. You could make some really useful homework tasks for them. The students could even download the software onto their computers at home and create their own materials to bring to class.

Creating something like this is very easy. Just click through the five steps on the interface.

• The first step is to choose the character you want from a possible 8 talking heads (two come with the standard download of the software and you can download another 8 by registering)
• You then type or copy and paste in the text that you want the animated head to read.
• You then either import your audio file or record your own
• Then simply click a button and the software generates your audio character and synchronises the speech to the text
• You can the either preview or finish your project. The software generates an html page with the talking head embedded in it.

You can watch this short tutorial movie to see just how easy it is.

Tutorial movie (Flash 523k)

Here are some ideas for combining this into your teaching.

• Record short poems or stories for the students to listen to
• Record some tongue twisters for the students to listen to and practice
• Get students to produce and record their own news reports
• Get students to record an imaginary daily diary for one of the characters
• Get students to record imaginary problems for a problem page. They can then listen to each other’s problems and record some advice
• You or your students could record a song or import a song audio file and add the words

You can download Flipz for free from: http://www.flipz.tv/
It’s about 3.15Mb so it shouldn’t take to long to download, then just unzip the file and install it. It only runs on PC (sorry MAC users)

Click here to see how Flipz would look on a phone or PDA
Flipz on phone

If you use Flipz or have any good ideas for how to exploit it, by all means post them in the comments below.

Best
Nik Peachey

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Make you own animated movies

D- film is a really useful website that has been around for a few years now. The site makes it very easy to create short animated movies with colourful characters and cartoon style dialogue in bubbles. (Be careful though, some of the characters may be unsuitable for younger learners less mature students.)

The site is really easy to use and you just click your way through various screens selecting backgrounds, characters, scenarios, soundtrack and credits. You also type in your own short dialogues. Then when you are ready a single click turns the whole thing into a Flash movie.

You can make short single screen animated movies or longer ones by adding more scenes. You can then email the link to your movie either to yourself or to your students etc.

How do I create movies?

• If you watch this tutorial you can see just how easy it is to make a film.
  Tutorial movie (458k flash)
• Here’s an example of a film that took about 2 minutes to produce.
  Example movie
• This link takes you straight to the movie maker page.
  Movie maker
  

How do you use this in the classroom?
You can use it for a number of things:

• To demonstrate language points
  Example movie
  
• To give examples of social English
  Example movie
  
• To tell jokes
  Example movie
  
• I once got my students to create their own movies based around concepts (fear, happiness, boredom, etc) and we had our own miniature animation festival.
  
• You could try setting up a competition in the school to see who can create the best film.

If you think of any great ways of using this little tool or you or your students create some nice films, by all means add a link to them in the comments below.

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