Brent Warner 0:00
The DIESOL podcast

Developing Innovation in English as Second or Other Language,

Ixchell Reyes 0:06
Episode 89: Mobile Cameras in the Language Classroom

Brent Warner 0:25
Welcome to DIESOL, this is episode 89. We are your hosts. I’m Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes 0:31
And I’m Ixchell Reyes.

Brent Warner 0:34
Hello.

Ixchell Reyes 0:36
Guess what?

Brent Warner 0:37
What’s up?

Ixchell Reyes 0:38
We’re on YouTube finally.

Brent Warner 0:43
I know. It’s a, it’s only taken us four years or so to get on there. But…

Ixchell Reyes 0:51
That’s where people always start it.

Brent Warner 0:54
Here’s what happened Ixchell. People told me from like, from the very beginning, they’re like, oh, yeah, just put it up on YouTube at the same time. Get it up there. And you’ll get in like, some people were like, Oh, I get at least the same amount of views on YouTube as I do on Dallas, or whatever. And I’m like, okay, yeah, we’ll get to it never got to it. And then like, already, I mean, it’s been like, less than a week or something like that. And we’ve already got like, not a ton, but like, almost 500 downloads and like, you know, it’s, it’s like, okay, right away. So it’s a great place. And we should have been there a long time ago.

Ixchell Reyes 1:27
Yeah. And it’s it also kind of highlighted for me how I, I wasn’t necessarily thrilled about going to YouTube initial now. But when we first started the podcast, because I thought a lot another thing to manage. who’s listening to podcasts on YouTube, because I listened on a on a podcast player. But in the last, probably since the pandemic, I’ve found a lot of really great True Crime podcasts that are broadcast only on YouTube. And so now I have a whole podcast community. Yeah, there are some people who are not like another because they do a lot of this stuff live. Okay. And then some people are actually moving them later to like, Apple podcast or something like that. Really cool. So yeah, so find us and then I guess it’s the obligatory to subscribe and hit the like button.

Brent Warner 2:18
So are we are we gonna be talking about like having us video versions of the show in the future? Or is that? Are we just gonna be putting up the audio version?

Ixchell Reyes 2:27
I think maybe drinks with DIESOL would be fun as a video because I was reminiscing us I was tagging certain things I was like, would have been cool to have video.

Brent Warner 2:38
Yeah, I mean, a lot of those. Love those podcasters. I always have like the videos of them talking. And it’s like, oh, you can you can watch it. And you can have it going on. Or you can listen to it as the podcast version. So we can we can think about that after episode 100. Maybe so that

Ixchell Reyes 2:52
would require me to not be in my PJs while we’re recording.

Brent Warner 2:58
That’s a big no.

Ixchell Reyes 3:01
No, not now. All right, fair enough.

Brent Warner 3:05
So we’re on YouTube now. Please go. Give it a subscribe if you if you please. I don’t think a lot of people know about it.

Ixchell Reyes 3:15
Comment there, click it.

Brent Warner 3:17
Maybe we’ll get more feedback that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that might be good.

Ixchell Reyes 3:21
I know that on app, on Apple, on the apple, on other platforms, maybe a few more steps to actually give feedback. But I think YouTube is just easy, because he just comment. Most people are already logged into their Gmail account. So there’s no having to make a whole other account to be able to comment on something. So I’m looking forward, hopefully hearing feedback. And maybe we can get ideas on. What else is interesting for our audience. Yeah, for sure about that.

Brent Warner 3:49
Well, and that also can be a place where we can do giveaways of pins and other things like that, too. So we still got some of those to give away. So feel free. Awesome. Okay, so it felt today we’re talking about cameras, cell phones, cell phone cameras, mostly. And so as as we say on the show, let’s jump in.

Ixchell Reyes 4:13
Let’s dive right in. Oh, no, summer last summer was diving. Okay, now you’re the bad guy.

Brent Warner 4:22
All right. So cameras, about a year ago, Ixchell, I wrote an article for TESOL about kind of no prep ways to use cameras in the classroom. And then we never really talked about on the show we might have we might have had little bits and pieces here and there. But, but it might be a kind of a fun episode to do because all of your students have cameras, right? Like, I don’t I don’t know of any students these days. I mean, I’m sure there’s some but like, at least, at least…

Ixchell Reyes 4:52
At least they’ll have a bottom of the line. The phone still has a camera. A dual camera.

Brent Warner 4:59
Yeah, for sure. So there’s like something’s going on with the camera and in fact digital cameras like the old fashioned point and shoot digital cameras I guess are coming popular again for kind of the younger crowd so so some of the teachers out there yeah the retro No it’s a crazy it’s like the the Coolpix the Coolpix is like the is like the retro camera now so. So So yes, so anyways, people have cameras in their pockets, and we’re not really taking advantage of them nearly as much as we could in the classroom. And so I thought it might just be a good thing to talk about a little bit and start, you know, sharing some of these ideas, because I think they’re when to start thinking about it’s like, oh, wait a second, we have access to all these other things. It’s not just the one thing in our class, you know, it’s not just the the whiteboards or the you know, the papers in front of us, we have in our pocket. So many tools. We talked about this all the time. But the cameras are great and super powerful. And so, so let’s share some some ways to use them. And I’ll start off with the first one, which is, again, going back to Denise medulla Williams, our friend, friend of the show. This is I put this in the article. So I’m pulling some of these ideas from the article that I wrote about a year ago. But this, that article was inspired by one of her presentations about using cameras in the classroom as an icebreaker, which is basically step into class on the first day, pull out your phone, take a look and show show your classmates a picture of something recent that you did, right? And that’s it, right? So it’s like, Hey, what did you do recently, but now you have a starting point to have a conversation. So just as an icebreaker, and then you can say, oh, you know, here’s a picture of me at SeaWorld, or here’s a picture of me, you know, of my, my family. You know, we went to this interesting restaurants, you know, in the next town over and so, so I think it’s a really, really easy way. A lot of times when you you know, if you say, hey, just talk to your partner next to you, what did you do, they’re like, I don’t know what I did. But then if they have the picture to look at, then that kind of stimulates the memories for them. And that gets them really talking about, you know, what specifically happened, maybe who the people in those pictures are, you know, and then also when the other person sees those pictures, instead of just hearing about it, they’re seeing it, and they’re going, okay, that makes me think of this. And so, so just that little bit of visual complement to the conversation can really add a lot of layers of puking points for students to have a quick icebreaker and to start chatting with each other.

Ixchell Reyes 7:35
One of the ways that I have seen this work really awesome is when you’ve got students from just different countries, I know sometimes you tend to have like all Arabic speakers, and all from one region, or all Chinese speakers or from one region. But every once in a while you have like the perfect mix. And they’ll start talking about food or sharing pictures of food. And they’ll say, Well, what do you usually Rice, rice assistance of your staple food, but the way they prepare it as their friend, and so then they start sharing and then that becomes cultural exchange. And then again, they’re proud to show that off. Yeah. And speaking up, go ahead.

Brent Warner 8:12
Oh, I was gonna add a little bit, just one thing that we added extra there was, was that if you have the partners ask a minimum of two follow up questions, and it can really kind of go Oh, instead of just, Oh, that’s nice, right? Like, cool, or whatever it is right? Then you can say, well, creation, yeah, summation. Again, more practice just quick. And then once they’ve done that, then they can rotate through and you can do a mingle in the class and everything but But yeah, just just a little bit of way to reinforce that they’re not just looking and listening, but that they’re engaged with the conversation as well.

Ixchell Reyes 8:46
And speaking of feeling pride, I think vision boards comes to mind. It’s an activity I did recently with a group of language teachers, international language teachers, and vision boards are not outdated, the paper and magazine cutout ones maybe because you may not find magazines anymore. But you can have students build digital vision boards, and you can have them you can have students pick categories of what you want that vision board to represent. So for example, in my class, we did values fears, hopes and goals, and then maybe something goofy or something extra. And then they were to find pictures in their, in their photo albums to represent those and then put them together in using Canva or using Adobe Express and then talk about it with the class and students just again, that the hard part was narrowing down to how, again, six categories or four categories whatever we had, they just wanted to have so many pictures. And so the thing was, Nope, you’re only allowed one per category. And and so again, it helped them to do Really think about why they were going to place that picture there, and why that maybe represented their fear. And if they couldn’t find a picture, they were to find an icon somewhere or take a picture of something, they couldn’t make a face or example, and put it on there. But that got students to talk about them. We projected them on a screen once they were all finished. And it was really neat to see. You know, people would would look at the screen and they say, Oh, what did they put that frog picture there, or a snail a picture of a snail among you know, other things. So it created a little bit of mystery for the students. And they were really excited to ask questions. And like you said, one of the areas where students could engage in more language production is like, yeah, ask questions about the pictures. And then for the rest of the term, some of those pictures became the running joke of the class. And so one teacher had said, I’m a handsome teacher, students always call me a handsome teacher. So for the rest of the term. Oh, here comes Mr. Handsome here, because it’s really funny. Yeah,

Brent Warner 11:06
so I like that. And I, what I’m thinking here, too, is like you said it? Well, you could put it in icons. But I would actually probably, at least for the sake of this conversation, I mean, you can do whatever you want. But I like the idea of kind of restricting it to pictures that are in your camera roll, right. And so either pictures that you’ve taken, or go ahead and take a picture that represents your you know, your feelings about something with your face. And I like that idea would have been Yeah, I like that idea that it’s like, hey, no, this is something that I’ve already had. And so then you have to make like, a little bit more deep thought links into like, why does this connect? Or how or what does this mean? Instead of just oh, I’m gonna go on Google and search for your picture.

Ixchell Reyes 11:49
Like the stock watermark?

Brent Warner 11:53
I stock photo. Yeah. So I do like that idea. That’s, that’s really cool. And also those restrictions. Expand creativity, right? So you have to get get more thoughtful on ways when you’re, when you’re saying, hey, no, it needs to be a picture that you’ve already taken, or a photograph that you actually taped together. So I really liked that. And then the other thing, so now we’re moving out of the camera app, but back into Canva, or Adobe Express or whatever. The one thing, I didn’t want to do these for a while, because it’s like, well, you know, what, the old paper ones, you could cut the pictures out and like, get the get the shapes around everything. Yeah, the silhouette or the, you know, like the just like the, you know, person, like making it a really into a collage. I was like, Well, I can’t really, you know, it’s sort of hard to do with the photos and everything. But now with the remove background option that’s on almost all of these apps, you can actually do that in a really cool ways. And so you can still do those collages and say, Hey, this is the part that I want. And you don’t have to cut it out with like a mouse and like, go all the way around, you just say, Hey, this is the subject, and you’re only want that part of it. And it just deletes everything else. So yeah, so there’s some really cool things in there. All right, um, my next one is going to the video feature here. So you could turn this into, you know, like a breaking news kind of reporter on the street style thing. And you could say, Hey, you’re gonna go out and you’re gonna find something that’s happening, and you’re gonna go make a little report on it gonna be kind of some impromptu speaking practice, right? And so for different students, they might have different levels of comfort with that, but it could be something as you know, I mean, they could say, Hey, I’m gonna go interview someone about something, and just if they’re brave, and they’re willing to go do that, but they could also just do something like, Hey, we went outside the classroom, and we sat down in the grass, and we saw two ants, you know, fighting over a piece of leaf. And so, and then we just videotape that, that and we made that as like a news segment, right? And we say, hey, these two ants are fighting. And this is what’s going on. And, you know, they’re this, this ant is representing the hillside and the other ranches representing the valley side. And I don’t know whatever, like you can have some real fun with it.

Ixchell Reyes 14:00
I saw an example of this. Another instructor that works with me had something similar where he the students were to, they there was a target grammar point, a grammar structure, and then they have to create a breaking news segment. And of course, I students, our students are kind of shy to go talk to other people. But what they did is they did so we have so many squirrels on campus and the squirrels are really friendly. They’re really tame. They will beg you for food. So they made a story about killer squirrels. Oh, at our institution, and then they actually went all out and did a whole script and then filmed a little segment and, and they, I think that they use the one of the perfect tenses, and so they had to highlight that which was really cool because now that’s a video that people refer to when they’re doing another way of showing up Teaching students that target structure. So but now you have something else. And the students, of course, love it. And if you have students that don’t want to participate, you can have them be the camera person, or you can help have them be the person who helps write the lines, or it doesn’t have to be structured as as structured as that. But that’s a possibility as well. Yeah,

Brent Warner 15:19
so lots of different ways to play around with that. So you could say, Hey, you have 10 minutes to go out and find something and to make a two minute video, like it’s going to have to be on the fly. Or you can say you can plan it out and structure it. So there’s lots of different ways to play with that. But then, but in that context, then it makes it accessible for them. So I like that a lot. Yeah, cool.

Ixchell Reyes 15:40
All right. So the other activity that I haven’t tried myself, but I’ve seen it done successfully, so many times. And every time I observe scavenger hunts with a camera, I just think students are having so much fun. So instead of choosing a photo to talk about or, you know, going through a boring checklist that kind of forces students to either be really creative and go find whatever that is, whether it’s something of a particular color, you’ve you’ve done something a little bit different

Brent Warner 16:15
with this one, yeah, I’ve done I’ve done ones where I give them like a theme, or you know, something like that. So it’ll be like, you know, water or love, or, you know, something like that. And then they have to go out and figure out like, some picture that they can take right then and the cool thing is, you know, it has to be taken after you’ve given it to them. So so they have to go out and say, Okay, this is how this is represented, whether it’s they’re working in pairs. And if they’re like, if they’re saying love, and they’re kind of swooning over each other and giving like the, the, you know, the batting eyes to one another, or maybe they go out and they kind of see a couple walking together holding hands, you know, like, whatever it might be so, so they can find different ways to express that idea. And then and then they’re going to come back together, and share that with their classmates and say, This is what we came up with for this theme. And this is what we found, but like, but the idea with the scavenger hunt is great, because it can’t be prepared for it can’t be done ahead of time. But the students it’s for us, it’s really easy to say, hey, here’s the word. It could be a color I’ve done this. Years ago, when I when I worked on the boat, I did this and I said, Okay, our theme is going to be blue. And of course, you know, there was the ocean, but then, but a lot of the students instantly were like, like, no, let me figure figure out something else. Right. And so some of them figured out that blue meant sad, you know, or some of them figured out like, you know, like other different ways they did blue, but they found they found things that were like, small or different representations. And then they went and found and took these artistic pictures of these things. And it was like, and they were coming up with all these really cool ideas, because they were saying, Oh, I don’t want to just be doing the same thing that everyone else is doing. Try and figure out something that’s different. And then how does that represent and show what we’re talking about. So it was really cool. And then and then they have chance to talk to each other and make friends and kind of connect with each other as they’re doing those activities, too. So I think scavenger hunt is, is super easy for everybody, you know, and then you can just have them email it to you. Or if you have a LMS they can just upload it right there in a quick assignment. You can also do it into, like Padlet, or, you know, I mean, there’s all sorts of ways to upload and share the photos,

Ixchell Reyes 18:27
the platform or whatever, whatever choice or whatever it is that you’re, you’re using. Yeah.

Brent Warner 18:32
Okay, so the next one is find the similarities. And this one is interesting, I think, with the students, because what you can do is you can ask them to pull up a picture on their phone, but not show it to their partner. So Ixchell, maybe if you pulled up a picture, and I pulled a picture and we’re facing each other, and we’re looking at it, then we have to start describing our photos and we’re trying to without looking at the other person’s picture. We’re trying to find what similar things are going on between our two photos, right? So it might be something like, oh, you know, we both have, you know, children in our photos or, or maybe both of our pictures are, you know, taking that night or you know, I don’t know, whatever it might be, right those as they’re talking through, they don’t know what the thing is going to be but there’s going to be some common element, right? It might, they might have to start really digging into details to find it because, you know, maybe one person took this beautiful landscape photo and another person took a picture of, you know, dinner at a restaurant and you’re like well these are it’s really hard to find something and you go oh, well, you know, color maybe yeah, like like the the table mat is green and the trees are green. I don’t know something right. So they’re finally figure it out, but they’re gonna have they’re gonna really have to talk it through and then they’ll get the joy of looking at them together at the same time at the end and looking at them side by side and going oh, what did we miss? What are we now that we look at them together? What are we seeing that we might maybe could have talked about or whatever else that is so. So that’s a kind of a quick and easy way for them to open up and, and kind of not have to, you know, there’s no investment, no time investment is just open find something and then you guys are just going to quickly talk about

Ixchell Reyes 20:14
it. Have you ever had like an interesting connection? Between two photos like, weird like, or crazy connection? I’m trying

Brent Warner 20:23
to think I feel my memory has gotten so bad that I don’t remember much of anything. So I don’t I don’t remember at the moment, but I do remember.

Ixchell Reyes 20:32
Those are fun. Weird ones were the wreck teacher. But how am I supposed to and then someone else will say, but right there. That’s the thing they have in common? Yeah, someone else or something? Right?

Brent Warner 20:43
There are definitely cases like those. And the students. I mean, I’ve definitely had the students have a lot of fun. I just can’t remember the specific details. But like, like, they really get into like talking to each other and go and then especially once they show each other, then they’re like, then they really get into they’re like, oh, this and this and this way. And I’ve even had them try to finish faster. So they could do a second one, see if they can do it that way. So. So yeah, it can be like it’s it’s surprisingly, engaging for something so simple and quick.

Ixchell Reyes 21:13
So then next activity is snap notes. And I think one of the when I think of why am I not using my cameras as much in the classroom, and I think it’s because we’ve gotten so used to having a camera that we use it to take snapshots, snapshots of notes, or I remember that time, teachers would complain that my students are taking pictures of the board. That’s how they keep track of their homework, they just take a picture. They don’t even write it down anymore. Like Well, that’s not what we what we asked them to do. It’s a lot faster, and it’s there, it’s guaranteed, but how often do we crowdsource from their notes, what they’ve taken. It doesn’t go anywhere, if we don’t have them to share, or have them add to some kind of repository or some kind of like Padlet or wakelet, or any of those document, what are they document holders, my parents. But I think when I was teaching teachers, one of the things that they were very good at. And I noticed Oh, they’re sharing all their notes, they’re taking pictures of the activities we did in class, they’re taking pictures of their of their demo lessons. And they’re all sharing it in their one group so that they all have the ideas. But again, we’re not doing that with our students who are not teachers who need to share their their own resources, so that they can have you know, a study guide or another way of looking at a particular concept. And just I think maybe it could be extra credit. It could be an additional because it is extra. And then it encourages someone with the nice handwriting or like more careful notes. And I have seen that it’s like, I want to take a picture of your notes because they’re so pretty. Yeah. So notes. Well, I

Brent Warner 22:57
also think to hear like, one of the things you know, I’m guilty of this, like, I’ll take a screenshot or I’ll take a picture of a board or something like that. And then I’ll just like, I’ll go back and look at it later. I’m like, Why did I take this picture? What does that mean? And so yeah, it gets deleted. And so like, as a teacher, we can actually say like, Hey, know, if you’re taking pictures, great. Now you have to tell me what those what the picture means. Like, what did you learn out of this? Right? Like, like, what is the especially if it’s like, if it’s a lot of times, I don’t know why students do this, but but they’ll take a picture of the slides that you have the slide deck available for them. It’s like, hey,

Ixchell Reyes 23:35
again, I tell them I’m sharing this slide. No, that’s an extra step, because you’ve got to download it, you have to conserve it in a separate repository, which is not your photo album. That’s their logic, I think,

Brent Warner 23:46
I know, but the slides, but the ones where they’re taking pictures of notes that you write on the board or concepts or whatever else it might be. And then it’s like, Hey, tell me why you took this picture. What’s going on in here? What What were you trying to save out of this? Because that’s the reinforcement learning that they can really value from, even if they just take an extra two minutes to write.

Ixchell Reyes 24:07
Synthesizing? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So

Brent Warner 24:10
they don’t do that nearly enough, right. And so if you turn that part, if you say, Hey, if you’re taking pictures, great, that means you have to send me a little A quick note about what it meant and why you did it. Right. And then that becomes a quick homework assignment, or, Hey, you needed to do this once per day in class, I don’t know whatever it might be, you know, you can play around with the way that works for you. But that could be that, like you said, that synthesis that reinforcement learning where they’re going, okay, there’s a reason why I took out my camera for this. But I need a but I can’t just have the note itself. It has to be connected to something that makes sense to me. And so I got back.

Ixchell Reyes 24:44
One of the things that I think will make that a little bit easier and maybe more common for a user to do is that the new iOS and I don’t know if Android phones do this already, but every picture that you take will now have a little field that says a Umm, photo notes. Yes, yeah, no captions. So the I think, I don’t know if the I have the beta version, but I think the more visible it is, the more likely we are to actually start indexing our own notes. Because right now you’re just putting them in albums, where I’ve seen other apps will take the voice notes, and then you’ll categorize them. But now if you can do that with your photos, now, again, that’s a whole other a whole other dimension that we’re going to have to grapple with.

Brent Warner 25:27
Yeah, well, we’ll figure it out, we’ll work into it. So. Okay, so the next one that I had was this idea of a story link, which is basically, same type of thing kind of connected to the different activities from before, but this is one where they all pull out a photograph. So maybe you have a group of four students, and they all choose one photograph, and then they put out their phone together. And then they have to use those pictures to create a story, right? So so maybe one person pulls out a picture of a mountain and another picture person pulls out a picture of, you know, four people talking, right, another person pulls out a picture of some food, right? And then they make the story that says, you know, oh, last week, my family went hiking in the mountains, and then we ate, you know, seafood, or whatever it is, right? So simple version

Ixchell Reyes 26:15
of categories, right? Like, first thing could be an item, the second thing has to be included person, the third thing has to be a food. The fourth thing has to be a location or something like that. And then you have

Brent Warner 26:24
like, so you can scaffold this as much or as little as you want, right? So you could say, like, hey, one person’s fun, this and this and this, or you can just say nothing, right? So no rules, but you guys are gonna have to make that connection between them. Right? Because so for example, I think the story is, yeah, what do you think the story is? What’s going on here? How do you turn this into a story board basically have like a continuation of the story. And so what I had said, you know, in the article originally was, you know, maybe you have kids in one picture, and adults in another, well, maybe those are the same people that have gotten older over time, right. And so something happened, what’s going on with those people, right, and so, so you have to kind of open up your, yeah, you have to open up your creativity a little bit. So you can scaffold it more, like you said, for the beginning levels. And you could release that scaffolding as you get as you get higher levels. But again, they’re all just picking something that they already have. And then they’re trying to link it with each other and see how they can make a story out of that. So I think there’s some real opportunities here.

Ixchell Reyes 27:24
I’m thinking this is so cool, because then you could have this story or different interpretations that the students had and low level type paragraphs. And then you could put the same items onto chat GPT and see, oh, yeah, maybe students have to now identify which one was created by GPT. And just have it right at a similar level, a similar language learning level.

Brent Warner 27:47
I like that. And then, you know, you could also do you as the teacher, you could drop your phone with a picture in the middle of theirs at the end and say, Okay, now now, you got to figure out how to mix this one in there, too, right?

Ixchell Reyes 27:58
It’s like the emoji the power emoji paragraph. But like with real photos,

Brent Warner 28:06
yeah. So so you can kind of keep mixing it up. And then they go, oh, wait a second. I just have to go in the middle, or is this gonna go at the end? Or what’s going to happen? Right, so. So yeah, some really cool opportunities there. All right.

Ixchell Reyes 28:18
Okay, so the next one that I I love this one, because it’s kind of simple. But it worked so well. And this is just poster videos. And I often had to teach difficult research topics to my language learners, to have them stuck out because they were so just dense in terms of like, just terminology and

Brent Warner 28:41
not the students. You’re talking. You’re talking about the

Ixchell Reyes 28:47
concept. The wine was the domestication of the fox. And then crossbreeding of potatoes

Brent Warner 28:55
before Yeah,

Ixchell Reyes 28:56
oh my gosh, and and I worked so hard to make that into a more meaningful activity. So finally, I settled on the fact that I’m not going to test them on on the article and go to paragraph Oh, blah. What did they mean by this? I’m going to ask them now the questions and they have to somehow, or trade out illustrated however they want on a poster with markers and paper in a group. But then each one of them has to explain it in a video. And they could either talk while filming The poster, or they could have themselves in front of the poster. So I had some shy students. But I found that they were actually using the target vocabulary, they were able to better and their own words told me the key that like the key takeaway, like the questions that critical thinking questions, they were able to explain it. Or I felt, yeah, the student understood they may not have the full vocabulary, but they understood so they’re not going to have trouble when they go into into university rather than saying okay, you know, on on a piece of paper on a paper test or whatever test we’re giving them, they’re going to memorize information and they’re just going to regurgitate what they think I want the answer to be. And then I’m not really assessing whether they can communicate, which for me was much more powerful. And of course, because they had to record over and over and over, they learned how to pronounce domestication, learn how to pronounce barley, of who was the guy, and they learned how to say certain things. And they would joke about it later, I’ll never forget about potatoes.

Brent Warner 30:33
The important things to remember in life, crossbreeding of potatoes, we joke but who knows? The way the world is going, they might be the survivors. Okay, so next one is. My last one is recreations. So, this one, I just thought, you know, it can just be kind of fun, silly. It’s not a big deal. I mean, but but it’s actually going to take a lot of conversation and a lot of kind of detail explaining. So you know, those activities, and we’ve talked about them before, where you get a picture, and then you explain it to someone, and then they try and draw that picture, right? And try and draw whatever you’re saying. So it’s like, oh, there’s an apple on the corner of the table. And then there’s the door on the right hand side of the room, or whatever else it is, right. And so. So what I thought is, it might be cool to do this with a photo that you already have in your phone. So you pull something up, and then you explain it. And then the other people in your group are responsible to try to actually recreate that photo, as you’re explaining it. Right. So so maybe if it’s a portrait photo, okay, know, that they’re, you know, they’re gonna have to turn more towards the right, and then then, you know, they’re gonna, you know, make sure that you’re facing this direction, and the sun’s coming at you this way. Or if it’s a group photo, right, you say, Oh, well, the child is smiling bigger, or, you know, the, you know, the, the person who’s the dad would be, you know, distracted, you know, whatever it is, right. And so then they’re trying to recreate the photo as you’re talking and telling them about it. And then they’ll take that photo. And then finally, you’ll compare side by side, right? So it’s kind of similar to the one that we had talked about before. But this one’s actually where they’re recreating it, instead of just trying to find similarities, they’re actually trying to make it look the same as the photo that you took. And then you can kind of have these, like, this is what my real one looked like, this is what you guys made. And again, that same conversation there. But that takes some very brave students. But I think like, if you had them in, in kind of small groups off to the side with each other, then they could they could really do it, right. And so it’s not it depends on what the original photo is, too, right? Because it doesn’t necessarily have to be people, right? He could say, hey, this was no, you know, this is a picture of a building that I took and like, Okay, well, how do we how do we get a matching photo of a building, it doesn’t look anything like that. And so then you could also give like, little awards and say, like, okay, closest recreation, you know, most creative interpretation and ever say, like, Okay, well, these ones are totally different, but we see what they were trying to do. So I like that, or, you know, I mean, there could be a lot of fun ways, ya

Ixchell Reyes 33:09
know, I’ve seen something similar, where one of our teachers had the student I was observing, sure, had the students recreate, she gave a card, and on the card was either a picture or a phrase. And then that student had to act it out. It was not on a camera, but they had to, again, I was using a picture. But you could do this from from your camera folder, your picture folder. And one of the pictures the silly Penguin, I think, I think it was silly penguin with a penguin and the guy kind of look like funny because I knew what it was. And the students were like, No, it’s like if he was kind of, you know, waddling. And kind of moving here. I was like, Oh, you’re drunk. You’re drunk. No, it’s not a drunk person. They never got it. At the end. It was like “PENGUIN!”. But it was funny. I could see how that that would work in small groups. That would be fun. Yeah. And they see the pictures, they would love to see like, Oh, look at that. That’s you and you’re doing building?

Brent Warner 34:13
Yeah, exactly. So there really is. And then those are like the kind of things that slowly open people up to each other over the course of the classes as well. So it’s like, you know, if you’re willing to just let loose a little bit this time, then people kind of go like they’re okay. You know, like I can, you know, so

Ixchell Reyes 34:28
last hour like, yeah, when you have students all day long, if you have them all day long, or if you have one long class on Fridays, that last hour could be something like that, and I love doing those kinds of activities. And the last activity here is using Apple clips, or cap cut. And that’s, again, using one of these apps to add captions into the videos to see how well it processes what you’re seeing. You could also

Brent Warner 34:59
what When’s the last time you used Apple clips? Or shell? Has it been a while?

Ixchell Reyes 35:03
i It has been a while. But that’s because so many of the other apps have that built in that function built into it. I don’t know that there’s language apps because I see things wrong all the time. Well, there

Brent Warner 35:19
none of them are. But like, that’s that for sure. I went back and downloaded Apple clips again recently. And I’m like, oh, that’s actually it’s surprisingly robust. And so because I was getting these ads on Instagram, or something, hey, do you know like, because those are the hot thing right now, right is those those tick tock videos or the Instagram reels or whatever that have like the, the text over the video so that you don’t have to listen to it to be able to see what’s going on. And so, so I think that’s a good practice for the students to is like, that’s a system that they’re used to seeing. But then with the language, when they’ll see how it’s understanding them. And they might go, oh, wait a second, this is not what I said, either missed the pronunciation. or Now I recognize after I’m reading it, I recognize that the grammars a little bit off, right. But with those ones, the students can then go back in and change the language, right? So they can go back and change that, that captioning. And so that’s incorrect part. Right, right. And so then that’s really good practice for them to like, spend the time with their own with themselves speaking it and then changing and updating the language because let’s say they, they said the word you know, if they are like, I don’t know, if they’re Korean, and they have the P and the F issue, for example. And they say, Oh, this is, you know, this is a pyre, and it’s like they meant to say fire, right. And so, so they, they might then go in and go, Oh, it’s still hearing that p but I’m gonna go back in and write it. So that says f, so that people would still know what I’m saying if they looked at the video, right. And so I think there’s a lot of opportunity for, for building back and practicing their own language and understanding what their what what’s being interpreted from what they hear.

Ixchell Reyes 37:01
So we’re, I think this is way more useful than using this symbol, like, talk to Siri and record yourself and see if you know, if it’s reading, if it’s capturing what you’re what you’re saying correctly. The extension that this has apple clips, or Caprica is that you can add a photo and I think when a student’s looking at a photo and saying something, or a video and narrating that, like because I have my students very often is that they have to make the connection as they’re seeing the picture. So I think it’s like another layer of reinforcing what they’re seeing, rather than just memorizing a word. And I say this because of students from Vietnam, who often miss certain syllables or certain letters, endings, I think it is in some cases, and they know, but as they’re seeing, it creates another connection in their brain. And I think that it makes them even more aware of it. So it makes them slow down and actually pronounce a try to pronounce that, that that they’re dropping off. I think also with my Thai students, it happens. But I like that you can have a photo or a video with the text there. Because it’s not just the text by itself.

Brent Warner 38:12
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it because especially if they’re talking about something that they are interested in or care about, then they’re going to be more prone to wanting to fix it and make sure that it’s clear so that they’re sharing with other people like sharing their passions or interests, or whatever it is with other people clearly, right. So yeah, really, really valuable and interesting way to approach it. So cool. All right. So if you’ve been using AI in your classes, we would love to hear about it. I know there have been a few people, I’ve seen posting a few things out there. And so how’s it been going? What’s going on, we’d love to you to write a guest article for our sister site AI in esl.com. So please feel free to share that. And we’ve also added a YouTube channel. So we mentioned that the beginning of the show, please go check out the YouTube channel or subscribe if you’re if you’d like having the show on in the background while you’re there vacuuming or else you might be doing some you know, I don’t know. I don’t use YouTube to listen to podcasts, Ixchell, but we talked about that at the beginning but but I totally get it the people do and so just having it on in the background might be a good way. And we’d love it and maybe we’ll throw up some extras or some some other things as well in there too. So YouTube channel, we’ll have links to everything in the show notes.

Ixchell Reyes 39:38
All right, it’s time for our fun finds. And this time Brent, I have the live action version of one piece. I am I have never seen the show. I’ve never I did. I did attempt to read volume one and Japanese ones and I got past like maybe the first and pages and still didn’t understand because it took so long for me to translate. Yeah, so I just dropped it. But I know that this series has inspired so many people and has created a whole like Fandom of, of, of non Japanese speakers and introduce them to the Japanese culture and the Japanese language. And I’ve got students from the Middle East who have been inspired by the main characters, attitude toward trouble and hardship. And so I finally decided, You know what, I mean, let me just watch an episode. And it’s actually really well done. I’ve never seen the series. I mean, it’s, it’s, I guess it’s for a general audience. And, and, but I can see it very much. It mimics the way that anime, like the scenes and the close ups, or what manga might look like. And the characters do remind me of what I’ve seen, at least how I’ve seen them drawn, or how I’ve seen them depicted. And so far, I’m on episode three, and it’s pretty good. And I can see why. Yeah, so I do recommend that. It’s fans of the original. Say, it’s just like a fast paced version of I don’t know how many episodes there are there. Like, hundreds of them, I think. Yeah, it’s actually pretty good show.

Brent Warner 41:19
Okay, so that’s interesting to hear. So one piece, so this, you know, this is a long running anime from from Japan. I have never been able to watch or read one piece myself. And I know people love it. But I’ve never been able to watch it or read it myself, because I just kind of, I’ve never liked the art. I’ve never I’ve never liked how the characters look like look grotesque. Yeah, they all look like grotesque. And it just, like doesn’t appeal to me in any way. And so like, I don’t know what the stories are about. I know people go absolutely. Like they just love it. And it’s,

Ixchell Reyes 41:53
I’ve seen people who’ve cried after a particular book or

Brent Warner 41:57
Yeah, so I’ve been unable to get interested in it. Because of the kind of weird you might like

Ixchell Reyes 42:03
it, but the main character he’s likable, I think he’s interesting. He’s quirky, He’s weird. And and you kind of wonder how they’re gonna portray that in a live action version. So so far, I feel like okay, invested now after three episodes have invested.

Brent Warner 42:22
Maybe. I’ll tell you so interestingly, we both chose Japanese anime is another one. So I because to show to prove that I am open minded to trying things that I would never before I actually got. My wife introduced this to me recently is Detective Conan, which is, you know, I guess in English. I looked it up on on Wikipedia. It’s complicated, but it’s also called case closed because the name Conan Conan is mixed with so many other intellectual property rights things. But I never I never read this or watched it before, because I thought it was a total kids show. And it kind of is, but it’s also very, not a good show. Basically, it’s a 30 minute murder mystery, anime and manga. Where this, it looks like a young child, but he’s actually a high school student that was given some sort of poison shrunk his body into becoming a child.

Ixchell Reyes 43:21
Why does this always happen to the characters? I don’t know. Like the guy from one needs, he ate something and he stretches. I think

Brent Warner 43:28
it’s because like, that’s what like, makes it appeal to kids somehow. Like it makes anyways for Conan. Anyways, it makes some kind of like, like kids can watch it and feel like they’re him even though he’s like intellectually superior, whatever it is, but, but it’s it’s kind of fun. And, and the reason that I actually am enjoying this right now is one, it’s the, you know, the murder mystery. And so it’s kind of like anime, or because there’s a live version, and watching the anime. I don’t know. But the live version, I’m watching the anime of it. It’s got like 20 seasons or something like that. It’s been on forever since like the mid 90s. And so but, but it’s really interesting. And then the part that I really like is that it’s just all real Japanese. So for my language practice, it’s not like some of these ones. Like, I don’t know about one piece, I assume that there’s a lot of kind of fake fantasy language, because it seems like they’re doing like, well, those things. I kind of got into Naruto a long time ago as it was interesting and fun. But then I’m like, but nobody speaks like this at all. And so one of the important things for me is about learning language is like, if you get into these kinds of fantasy things, they make up all sorts of language that doesn’t exist. It’s like trying to study English with Harry Potter. And you’re like, Well, you know, yeah, you don’t need to know like, these spell casting words, you know, you know, whatever it is. And so this is the same type of situation I have. Conan is good. It’s real language. Very cool. Yeah. So we’re checking Now

Ixchell Reyes 45:04
All right, so please share the show, buy us a coffee, join our Patreon or leave us some feedback. If you’re giving us a shout out any other way to us on social media and the YouTube you can find that and the YouTube channel to follow us we have like 10 subscribers. We’re gonna be drivers now that’s the keyword. The show notes and other episodes are DIESOL.org/89 you can listen at voice ed.ca You can also find us on Twitter. You can find the show at odd

Brent Warner 45:40
you can find me at @BrentGWarner

Ixchell Reyes 45:43
and you can still find me at @Ixy_Pixy.

Brent Warner 45:50
Yeah, you can find Yeah, we’re gonna have to have a longer social media conversation at some point.

Ixchell Reyes 45:55
We’re still we’re still going through an identity crisis there. It’s rough. Okay. In Greek thank you is somebody still Sahadi still for tuning in to the DIESOL podcast.

Brent Warner 46:09
Thanks, everybody.