Since returning to the U.S. and teaching in a setting without networked computers, I’ve had to put on my thinking cap and make a few adjustments to bring Web content into the classroom. On a couple of occasions, I have wheeled in a trolley supporting  a notebook PC, projector, and speaker system, but space limitations made it very difficult for the teacher (and students) to move around once the equipment was in place. What to do?

I asked the support staff if a TV were available. Dutifully they brought in a fairly large model and set it up in front of the classroom, out of everyone’s way. “Now, if only it has an S-video input, I can connect my notebook directly to the TV,” I thought. No such luck.

Hmmm. Then I remembered a video clip I had seen on TEFLclips (an amazing site, by the way, with lots of lesson plans and tutorials). The clip demonstrated how to download and convert YouTube videos using a free service called SaveVid and organize them on your computer using iTunes. My thinking was that once inside iTunes, a video should be readily exportable to an iPod, which (with a special cable) connects easily to any TV with standard audio/video input.

To make a long story short, this is the route I followed, and it has allowed me to present video-based lessons from an iPod from the front of the classroom and without impeding anyone’s movement. But there was one major technical snag along the way, and I thought I should point this out.

When downloading a YouTube video using SaveVid, you are given the choice of saving it as flash video (.flv) or MPEG-4 (.mp4). Choose the latter. Then, from iTunes, click on the File menu, Add File to Library, and then simply browse to the video file you just downloaded. The video is now in your iTunes library, and should be ready to transfer to your iPod.

But after repeated attempts, the file would not synch with the iPod. (Note: I use Windows XP; Mac users may have a different experience.). It had to be converted AGAIN, this time to the iPod-friendly M4V (.m4v). You can do this with QuickTime Pro or other readily-available video converter. Enjoy

I just came across a neat service called Riffly that allows visitors to your WordPress blog to add audio comments via microphone or combined audio/video comments via webcam. More specifically, Riffly is a plugin that for now works only with WordPress blogs.

If you are hosting WordPress on your own server, you simply download the plugin, unzip it, upload the folder to your plugins folder, and then enable the plugin from your dashboard.

The basic service is free but visitors will see an advertisement after leaving a comment. A premium version is available that offers “advertising removal, control panel access, and analytics,” but at a steep price. If you can live with a little advertising, I would definitely opt for the free version.

If you’ve ever used Chinswing for an online discussion with your students, you may notice that a completely new page pops open when you key in chinswing.com. The site has been renamed Voxopop, and while basically an extension of the original theme, there are nonetheless some changes that may take some getting used to.

In the old days of Chinswing, after signing up for a free account you could simply start a discussion thread, give the URL to your students, and they could add audio comments as long as they had registered. While the basic idea for the site is unchanged, Voxopop now requires that you start what they call a Talk Group before adding any discussion threads. This may seem like a minor issue, but it actually makes students jump through an extra hoop or two before they can contribute to the discussion.

Voxopop let me log in with my former Chinswing user info. I then proceeded to start a new talk group called English 92 and 93 for my ESL students, and for homework one day assigned my students to sign up and add a voice comment to a couple of threads I had started. The next time classes met, I asked them why so few had participated. “I signed up but couldn’t leave an audio message;” “I couldn’t figure out the menu;” or “I could sign up but not record my voice using a school computer.”

To troubleshoot, I created a dummy student account and went through the process of trying to record and leave a message to these threads. Not as easy as I had thought. So I decided to make a video tutorial and ask them to try again. Better results this time. Still, I must caution teachers that an up-to-date browser with a fairly recent version of Java are required to properly run the applet that will enable your students to record audio messages on Voxopop.

My apologies to those who have visited this site recently in search of new teaching ideas. I am just now getting back on track after a major career shift that has brought me back to the United States after 10+ years teaching EFL in Japan. Why the move? Complicated question, to say the least! Let’s just say that a change was long overdue and that it is nice to be closer to family members.

I am currently teaching ESL part time at Imperial Valley College in Imperial, California. Compared with my classes in Japan, the classroom environment could be described as basic but functional. Very few networked computers, but for teachers with a notebook computer, an Internet connection is possible in most classrooms and projectors and screens are available.

I don’t think that this is my ultimate destination. But I am grateful to the college for extending the opportunity to readjust to working and living in the USA.

Planning to attend TESOL 2009 in Denver? I look forward to hooking up with you there!