Exploiting StoryboardThat for Language Practice

StoryboardThat is a great tool for getting students to think visually and create picture stories and narrative.

Students begin by clicking on 'Create Storyboard'. They can then select background scenes for each of the frames of their storyboard.

Next they select characters. There's a really wide range and variety of characters to choose from and once these are on the storyboard they can be changed using the editor.

Students can then add text elements such as speech bubbles and thought bubbles and write in their text.

Once the storyboard is complete there are some interesting options for sharing and exporting. You can export as images for PowerPoint, Download to print, embed the storyboard into a site or blog or launch it as a slideshow directly from the site.

StoryboardThat is a great freemium tool. On the free account you can create and save two storyboards each week. If you want to become a serious user though you'll need to pay for an account, but accounts for educators are very reasonably priced.

Be sure to check out the Teacher Resources section of the site. You can find lots of great examples and lesson ideas there. Many of these are based around literary classics and you can simply adapt and customise the ready-made storyboards. Here's an example from 'A Christmas Carole' by Charles Dickens.

Quick Classroom Suggestions

• Create flashcards of a storyline and get students to make a dialogue and write the story.
• Get students to create storyboards of stories they write.
• Create a storyboard with dialogue to get students to practice reported speech. You could create two versions of the storyboard one with only character A's dialogue and the other with only character B's dialogue, then get students to work in pairs and tell each other what the characters said.
• You can create a the first three frames of the story and get students to work in pairs and create the next three. They can then exchange their three frames with a new pair and do the next three frames of each other's stories.
• You could give students a storyboard with a dialogue and then ask them to imagine or add thought bubbles to show what the people are thinking about each other while they are talking.
• You can create a storyboard with two characters and only include the dialogue from one. Then get your students to write in the missing dialogue from the other person.

I hope you enjoy these ideas and think of others to use with your students. If you'd like to find more activities like these check out my ebook -  20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom.

My Books:

• Digital Tools for Teachers – Trainers’ Edition V.2
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Creating Texting Dialogues for Students

As mobile phone use becomes ubiquitous around the world and texting becomes a new genre of communication, it seems increasingly important that we as language teachers engage with these devices and help students to deal with the impact they are having on the English language.

Some time ago I wrote about a texting language translater called Transl8it which enabled users to trans late short texts from standard English to something approaching sms texting language.  Since then I've used the site quite a lot to:

• Translate text for using in chat rooms such as TodaysMeet
• Translate poems and short dialogues into texting language for students to read
• Translate news headlines.
• I've also tried getting students to record example sentences of vocabulary into texting language, just to add an extra element to creating vocabulary records.

Recently, I have also found a handy tool called ifaketext and this enables you to create a picture of a smartphone screen with your dialogue on. Here's an example:

This is a great way to create materials to use with students, especially if we combine it with the Transl8it. Then I can make dialogues that look like this:

All we need to do to create the dialogues is go to: ifaketext.com and type in a dialogue. Be sure to put a name at the top and format the dialogue with the name of each speaker followed by a colon (:) then the dialogue. Then just click on 'Create Your Screenshot'.

Once the screen shot is created you get a number of options for adding it to materials. You can either get a code to embed it or a direct link to the image and you can save it from there and add it to you documents.

Here are a few ways you could use this with students:

• Convert dialogues from their coursebook into texting language.
• Create mysterious interactions and get them to predict the context.
• Create dialogues and get students to guess the relationship between the people.
• Create the beginnings of dialogues and get the students to continue them.
• Create dialogues with missing lines / words and get the students to complete them.
• Create dialogues with the responses in the wrong order and get students to arrange them correctly.

This is one small way that we can start to adapt materials and incorporate this kind of language into a our classroom. I hope you and your students enjoy using ifaketext and transl8it and you create some interesting and motivating materials for them.

Related links:

• 3 Tools for Exploiting the Wifi During Presentations 
• Questioning the Role of Technology in Education
• iPad Apps for English Language Teachers
• AudioBoo to Posterous: Audio Podcasting from the Classroom
• Survey Results: Mobile learning for ELT

Best

Nik Peachey