Do you have an IWB in your school but you're not sure how to use it?

Make your learners film stars!

Have you ever heard of Brick Films? It's a website full of films with characters and sets made almost entirely of Lego! These films have been painstakingly put together and are available completely free to watch for everyone.

Here's an idea for how to use this website in class with students of intermediate level or above:

1. To teach this lesson you will need to be in a computer lab or have access to an Interactive Whiteboard or a data projector linked to a computer.

2. Click on the link below which will take you to the website.

     Brick Films

• Or go to Youtube and write in lego films in the search.

Youtube

3. Choose a film that you think your learners will like or that fits in with a theme you are using in class.  

Get your students talking about issues that matter with Big Think!

Big Think is an ambitious online project that brings together the views of experts from a range of different fields across the world and enables users the opportunity to interact and make their own contributions with an easy-to-use and accessible interface.

The site's core feature is a collection of interviews presented in short, concise video clips. The search function enables users to browse by topics (e.g. ''If you had $100 Billion to give away, how would you spend it?'') and experts (including Richard Branson and Wikepedia co-founder Jimmy Wales). Users have the opportunity both to respond to questions - by voting on interviews or rating speakers - and to upload their own questions or statements either in video, audio, slideshow or text format.

While the language level of the majority of content is quite high, Big Think could be used in a number of ways in the classroom. In his Learning technology teacher development blog for ELT, Nik Peachey offers a range of suggestions on how to use the site with your students, including:

- discuss some of the questions or statements in class then check with the expert on the site
- ask students to summarise an opinion they have viewed
- get your students to prepare their own opinions and video them for their own class Big Think. This could be added to the site or just used as a model for a classroom activity.

For other stimulating video-debate websites, take a look at the TED Talks and the 6billionothers project. To start Thinking Big, check out their online tutorial now.

We've added a graffiti box for you to leave us your pictures and any messages you'd like. We hope you enjoy it.

You can get one of these for your own blog or webpage. Just click on the link below and then find  the Graffiti heading at the bottom of the page.

     Graffiti

• Divide your class up into groups and give each group a different aspect of the news item to research.
• Divide the class into four groups; A B C and D.
• Group A can research climate change, group B, Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet. Group C can research the Amazon rainforest and group D, the Sahel region.
• Do this either in the class or as a homework task and learners can compare what they’ve found either after the allotted time or at the beginning of the next lesson.
• End the exercise with a discussion about what has been learnt for each topic.  

Here's a lesson idea for a beginner/elementary class learning to tell the time. You will need to be in a computer lab, using an interactive whiteboard or data projector to teach this lesson.

First of all pre-teach the language needed. Perhaps you could draw a clock on the board and elicit different times from the learners. Concentrate on particularly difficult areas like 'a quarter to' and 'half past'.

Then, choose a few MEC resources to do with your learners. For example:

• Vocabulary Activity - Early or late (level 1)

• Listening Activity - Telling the time (level 1)

• Vocabulary Activity - What time is it? (level 1)

• Vocabulary Activity - Telling the time (level 2)

These are just a few examples there are lots more time resources you can find in MEC.

Finally bookmark this link for you and your learners: 

World Clock

To end the lesson, use the world clock to play a game. Ask the learners what time it is in Mexico. The first learner to shout out the correct answer (using the world clock of course) gets to replace you and ask the other learners for a time in another country. Or any other variation you can think of!

Here's a link to an interesting video of a presentation by Lindsay Clandfield. He gives us his opinion on one of the many ways to teach grammar. He calls it hammering! Why not have a look for yourself to find out how Lindsay thinks hammering can be successful in the classroom. Just follow the link below.

Grammar Presentation Tips 

Perhaps you have other ways of helping your learners understand and use English grammar. Tell us your experiences by leaving a comment at the bottom of this posting. We'd love to hear from you!

Remember MEC has over 400 Grammar Reference Units which include grammar explanations and practice exercises. The perfect way to enforce your hammering!

Have a look at this great website which lets you find proverbs and sayings just by typing in a single word. Just click on this link to start your proverb search: Good Written English

Why not use the site to find a proverb to introduce the theme of your next Intermediate and above lesson?             

As a fun lesson warmer, try getting your learners to use the site to find different proverbs and sayings. You can do this as a group exercise if you are using a data projector, or individually if you are in a computer lab.

To continue the theme, try using the following MEC resources:

·         Proverbs - Vocabulary Activity (level 5)

·         Money money money - Pronunciation Activity (level 5)

·         Single Vowel Sounds - Pronunciation Activity (level 5)

·         Common Sayings - Vocabulary Activity (level 4)

For homework, you could ask your learners to put the new proverbs and vocabulary into their Word Lists area. You could also ask them to translate some proverbs from their own language into English and find an English equivalent, if one exists. Next lesson they can present and explain their proverbs to the rest of the class.

Product trainer, Sarah Milligan, writes:

Have you seen this website?

MEC Marketing Assistant, Julian Chant, writes:

For something to watch out for in the future, check out Wikia Search, the new open source search engine from the people behind Wikipedia. While still in its early stages of development, the concepts behind the project - transparency, community, quality and privacy - are noble ones.

According to co-founder Jimmy Wales, ‘It is meant to take on Google by creating a search engine where all the editorial decisions are made by the general public and all the software is open.'

Nikolaj Nyholm at O'Reilly Radar wrote this article about how Wikia Search can change the search engine domain in the foreseeable future. As he writes at the end of the article:

'Go play with Wikia Search. Then come back here and read the article again. Tell me what you see: a bluff or a ripple of change?'

Why not save Wikia Search as a MEC Web Link and send it to your learners. You could even get them to use it to research ideas for MEC Sample Essays such as:

·         Selling the case for sustainability (level 6)

·         Put your money where your heart is (level 6)

Or, you could ask them to use Wikia Search to help research an essay based on one of the food for thought questions on the MEC News Items.

Mr. Picassohead is a great new game that allows you to create, save and send your very own Picasso-like pictures. Check out this recent post from the International House Technology Blog for ideas on how to use it in the classroom.

For a whole host of other great activities for students, don't forget to go to the Games section in MEC.

A few months ago we blogged about the value of YouTube for finding video clips of just about anything you can think of. Taking advantage of the vastness of this type of open resource can prove extremely useful, but also time-consuming. The BBC web pages provide a convenient alternative.

For higher-level students, teachers can avail themselves of the BBC's large databases of audio and video clips. News reports expose them to brief, authentic recordings that can easily be combined with MEC's News Items to enrich classroom discussions on current affairs. Having images to accompany native-speaker audio materials also makes them accessible to lower-level students.

Try exploring the various topics on the BBC website, such as History, Lifestyle, Science & Nature, or Society & Culture, to find engaging materials you can send to your students as a package of Web Links, with ideas for written exercises. They can also serve as the basis for classroom discussions.