Using Chinswing to create authentic listening materials

What is your favorite sweet? What do you think it represents about you, your life, or your culture?

It is that time of year when I start to think about yummy holiday foods, like Buckeyes! That reminded me, earlier this year, I posed the above question in a on Chinswing. Responses ranged from my memories of Buckeyes from Ohio State, Carla's musings on Brigadeiros from Brazil, and a host of other tasty treats from all over the world!

According to their web site, Chinswing is "a global message board where anyone can add voice messages to ongoing topical discussions" and it incorporates "podcasting, text forums and live voice chat".

The goal of this project was to collect some authentic listening material on an interesting topic for a university course I teach. Students listened to the recordings (7 people in 5 different countries have recorded messages for a total of 17 minutes), and then continued the discussion on our class blog.


By the way, if you would like to record a message about your favorite sweet, go ahead! I plan to use this voice thread again in another class, and I just heard that my proposal for "Using Chinswing to create authentic listening materials" has been accepted for TESOL 2008 Electronic Village Fair!

This post was included in the Teacher Potluck Carnival: New Year's Edition! Check it out!

Get Hip to Learning English!

The first semester of our school year has just ended. One of my major goals for the term was to use blogging with my students. I started a class blog at Motime called Get Hip to Learning English IES. Overall, it was a good experience, thanks mostly to the comments of great friends from online communities of practice! The students felt really encouraged to know that they were making connections with a larger audience.

There are some points that I want to improve about the blog for next semester. First, I want to make it more visually appealing and interesting, so students won't lose interest. Second, I hope to use the blog to conduct a collaborative online project with a guest or guests from another country. Finally, I hope to get students more involved in generating content for the class blog, or to have them start their own individual blogs. In addition to those items, I want to become involved in Dekita, and help students to create some relationships with student bloggers in Japan and other countries.

By the way, I chose the title "Get Hip to Learning English" because "to get hip to something" means to become more aware and appreciative of it (M-W Dictionary).

Since I'll be continuing the same blog with the same students in our next semester beginning in September, I'm looking forward to the chance to work toward the above goals. Please share your reflections or suggestions about blogging with students!