Introduction to Chat (Saturday 19th November 17.00-17.50) at Tapped In

Hi everyone - my name is Graham Stanley. I work as an English teacher at the British Council Young Learners Centre in Barcelona, where I am also ICT co-ordinator. I also work as a teacher at Turismo Sant Ignasi, the school of tourism of the University of Ramon Llull, in Barcelona, Spain.

I am particularly interested in blogging and podcasting with my students, mainly because I'm convinced that helping them reach a real audience for their writing / speaking is very motivating and helps create an environment where learners take more care over what they write & say (knowing it is for publication).

For this online conference, however, I decided it was an opportunity to try something a little different, and have been involved in preparing audio versions of the popular 'reading mazes'.

I am still hurriedly in the process of finishing off examples (one prepared by me for students, and another prepared and recorded by students) in time for my presentation slot on Saturday at Tapped In.

My plan is to:

i) present the background to interactive listening mazes
ii) introduce the two example mazes
iii) outline the process I went through in class with students to encourage them to create their own mazes
iv) talk about the practicalities of recording / producing /editing audio files and uploading them to the Internet.
v) discuss the variety of different ways of presenting audio files such as these (website/blog-based, podcasting) and the pros and cons of each.
vi) encourage discussion about other web-based listening / speaking opportunities for learners (including something called a 'podquest', which I hope will be one of my next learner online audio experiments!)

I decided to make my presentation a text chat (at Tapped In)only in order to give participants the chance to listen to the interactive listening maze material, although I'd be happy to chat to anyone who'd like to know more on Skype (Skype username: bonavista99)

I look forward to seeing you there if you think this may be of interest to you and your classes.