Schoolmaster’s Blog

I just couldn’t resist. No way. The BubbleShare idea was just too tempting, so I decided to forget about all the other things piled up on my desk. It’s like being a boy again who got a brand new toy Thanks to the wonderful people at blog06 and podcast_elt that spread the word!
What is BubbleShare? You go to bubbleshare.com and - following the easy instructions there - upload your images, put audio comments on them (online!) and either share the slideshow via E-mail, insert the code into your blog or website or photoblog it (the show gets its own rss-feed). Great. One could think of a dozen good uses for the EFL classroom: photo novels, cartoon stories, reports on field trips, introduction of places or people - you name it.

So, here’s a first and very rough attempt on using BubbleShare plus cartoons to make students talk… I could imagine to establish a collaborative blog, give students access to cartoons like that (split into panels with some erased speech bubbles) and make them fill the blanks with speech. Or - make them comment on the cartoon. Or whatever…

Here we go…

We were asked to introduce the place we live in. Here we go - with greatest pleasure )

For the past 20 something years I ‘ve been living in the town of Jena (Thuringia, Germany) - and I still like it a lot and wouldn’t move anywhere else.Why? It’s a small university town of about 100,000 inhabitants (20,000 students). Nice surroundings, small old centre. It combines the best aspects of living in a rather small place with the advantages of a university town: You know people, there’s lot of nice pubs and cafes, a fairly vibrant cultural life of all sorts… Just great to be here. Some people might find it a bit too provincial - well, I don’t.

Here’s a satellite view of the place:

And here’s a nightly view from my living room window:

If you like, you can have a look at one of Jena’s webcams. This one here is installed on top of the towerlike
high-rise building in the centre of town
(you see it in the nightly photograph).

You need to have Java installed to be able to use it! Enjoy…

And here’s a little voice message . Again, just testing…

welcome message