CNN Student News

CNN Student News is another great free listening resource on the web. It is a daily (Monday - Friday) news programme designed to be used by high schools in the United States but which provides great listening practice for students around the world.  It is only 10 minutes long and usually has three or four current new stories in each programme. It is also a great way to follow current news events.

The best feature about CNN Student News for EFL students, however, is that unlike many other major news organisations, CNN Student News provides a complete transcript of each programme.

This is my advice on how best to use this resource. Rather than listen to the whole programme, choose one of the stories (which will probably last 2-3 minutes) and watch that a few times. Make notes on what you think 1) are the main points of the story 2) are some key words. Next, have a look at the transcript and check your notes. Next, watch the story again while reading the transcript. Finally, write down 5-10 new words from the story that you think will be useful to learn and make vocabulary flashcards for these words on Quizlet.

If you study like this once or twice a week for a year, I think that your understanding of news programmes in English will really begin to improve. Plus, you will learn lots of new, useful vocabulary.

It's a great resource, so please give it a try. You can find it at: http://edition.cnn.com/studentnews/

Collaboration Tools (2) Dropbox

This is my second blog about collaboration tools. This time I want to tell you about Dropbox. Like Google Drive, Dropbox is a cloud storage service that lets you share files with your group members.

I have to say from the beginning that Dropbox is my favourite of the two. Over the past couple of years, Dropbox and QR codes have become good friends of mine! Anyway, I'll explain why I prefer Dropbox to Google Drive a little later.

To start, go to the Dropbox homepage and sign up for an account. Once that is done, click on the 'Download Dropbox' button to download the free Dropbox desktop application. Once downloaded, click on the Dropbox icon to install the application on your computer. A Dropbox icon will appear on the toolbar of your computer. Next, enter your email, Dropbox password (which you created earlier) and log in to Dropbox.

Click on the Dropbox icon on your toolbar and open a Dropbox window. You can now drag and drop your files into Dropbox. It is as simple as that. Now, wherever you are, you can access all your files (photos, slide shows, essays, etc.) by going to your Dropbox folder.

Once in Dropbox, you can create various folders for all your different documents. To work on a file with your group members, simply click the 'Share a Folder' button and you can create a new folder just for sharing or share a folder already made. You now type in the email addresses of the students you want to share with and click the 'Share Folder' button. With their email link, your group member will have access to all the files in that folder.

Dropbox and Google Drive are both excellent. Google Drive gives you more free storage, so it's good to use for large files like videos. However, overall, I find Dropbox a little bit more flexible and easier to use. For example, with Dropbox you can share using a link or a shared folder. Also, it works really well with my iPad, allowing me to move files easily to my MacBook laptop computer.

To sum up, I think you probably need to use both Dropbox and Google Drive. Together, they will really make group work a lot easier the next time your teacher asks you to collaborate on a presentation or video project.

Also, don't just use Dropbox or Google Drive for group work. Use them for all your files, all the time.  Put the apps on your smartphone and you'll have access to all your files at home, on campus and on the train!

Collaboration Tools (1) Google Drive

Students are often asked by teachers to work together in groups on a project. It might be a writing assignment, a PowerPoint presentation or even a video. Today, therefore, I'm going to tell you about two great tools to help you work and share your work together with your group members. First, let me tell you about Google Drive. Many of you have heard of it, but I don't think many of you use it yet.

To use Google Drive, the first thing you need to do is open a free Google account. Then you can download Google Drive as a desktop app onto your home computer. Once you have done that, you can upload any documents, including PowerPoint presentations and video, into Google Drive. Also, everyone gets 5GB of storage for free, which is enough for most students.

Now you can access any documents that you have uploaded to Google Drive from anywhere. You can also download the Google Drive app to your smartphone. 

Now for the collaboration bit. To share a document with other members of your group, just click on the share button and add their email addresses. They will then be able to see the document on their Google Drive dashboard. A link to the document will be sent in their email. Alternatively, if you want to share the document with many students, simply share the document with a Google Group.  

By working this way, you and your group members can work together on a project without the inconvenience of having to meet up all the time. I know this can be a big problem at Rikkyo University because we have two campuses. 

One final thing. Google Drive has brought in a new feature recently that allows you to see who has been doing what to your document. For example, perhaps your friend has edited the worksheet without you knowing. Well, now you can see all the work that has been done in an activity stream. Just click the (i) button in the top right hand corner. 

M Reader

     As some of you know, I'm a big fan of extensive reading with graded readers! Today, I want to tell you about a great website called M-Reader. This website has quizzes for most of the graded reader books in our graded reader libraries (at both Tokai and Rikkyo University).

     This is useful because, when you have read a book, you can take a short quiz and prove to your teacher than you have actually read it! When you log in to M-Reader, you will see your own page, displaying all the books you have read and the total number of pages. It's a great way to keep a record of your reading.
     Also, if you like a challenge, you can try to read more books at a particular reading level than any other student from around the world. One of my students at Tokai University recently found that she was the top reader in the world at level 4. She was really happy and it motivated her to read even more books.

     To start using M-Reader, your teacher needs to join up. This is very easy. I am the administrator for Tokai University and have all the information your teacher needs, so tell them to talk to me. To get your teacher interested, you can suggest that he or she has a quick look at the following link:
http://mreader.org/mreaderadmin/s/html/about.html