Creative Commons listenings at elllo, http://elllo.org/

If you are interested in listenings under a Creative Commons licence, have a look at elllo, at http://elllo.org/. It stands for "English Listening Lesson Library Online". There are also videos and games. Speakers come from all over the world, with all kinds of different accents. There are also transcriptions and questions on the listenings. A highly recommendable website.

Online Courses for Spanish teachers

The Spanish Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte offers courses online for teachers at http://formacionprofesorado.educacion.es/. Applications for those courses can be submitted from 3rd to 10th September. There is a wide variety of courses, especially related to ICT.

English for free

I keep on working on a digital textbook for Bachillerato in Spain. The name will be "English for free". I hope it can be used in other countries as well. The idea is to have digital materials under a Creative Commons licence. Students would have a digital copy of the book and teachers could use the book in the classroom with a multimedia projector or a digital whiteboard. I hope the first unit will be finished by the end of the month and the next two by the end of September, and the whole book by Christmas. If anyone is interested, please let me know at jgarciateacher@hotmail.com.

School radio

A good alternative to having a school radio is a repository of audio files that can be accessed, downloaded and uploaded by all students. SPREAKER is a fantastic option if you want to do that. Check it at http://www.spreaker.com/.

Creative Commons books

Hi, everybody.

I continue trying to get rid of textbooks. For that reason I'm creating my own materials. The idea is to give students a digital book, crated with EXE LEARNING. All the texts and videos in the digital textbook will be under a Creative Commons license, so that teachers will be able to change and adapt the materials. The texts are from Wikipedia and sounds and pictures from Wikimedia Commons. I'm taking the listenings from www.elllo.org. Along the digital book, students will have access to exercises in Moodle, which will act as a workbook. Please, I'd like to receive ideas and feedback. As soon as I've got Unit 1 ready, I'll post  it in my blog.

Spice up your lessons

If you want to give your lessons a touch of humour, here is an idea that has given me good results with my students. The idea is called Lateral Thinking and it basically means that we should think in an unorthodox way. Visit Paul Sloane's website. There you have some riddles with their solutions. I usually post them in my school's website (in a forum) and give the students a week to find the answers and comment possible solutions to the riddle. Then I post the solution. This usually interests them. You can also use them in your lessons straightaway. If you want to find more riddles of this kind, just type "lateral thinking" in Google.
Have fun!

Get rid of textbooks!!!

Hi, everybody. I'm starting to work on my textbook for 1st BAT for next year. After having a look at MALTED and seeing that it crashes quite often, I think the best option is EXE LEARNING. I've already got a plan for nine lessons and I'm in the process of looking for materials. Any comments and/or help will be welcome.