CNA-Q CALL E-Newsletter

September 2008 Volume 2, Number 1

In This Issue Dear colleagues:

Projects Ramadan Mubarak! Welcome, and welcome back.

Tips and Tricks All websites are working at press time—but remember, the Internet is a
moving target.
College Subscriptions
No need to save this document to find the websites—they will be available
About Us permanently from the department’s CALL page, courtesy of Susan Curtis.
See “EFL-CALL Resources Website,” on the College’s Intranet home page.
Submissions Wanted Or just click the link here.

Links
Web Pages
Server 9 - EFL
http://epnweb.org/
CALL Resources Here is a collection of educational podcasts.
These may be useful for ESP listening practice.
Ed Technology (TLC) – Cheri McLeod

Templates & Tools http://www.speechmadesimple.com/

(TLC) In case you missed it, Mike Kealey suggests this site developed by a
former colleague of his, “Speech Made Simple.” It helps EFL
CNA-Q Library students with presentation skills.
– Mike Kealey
CNA-Q IT Tutorials
http://www.eslteachersboard.com/pdf/Robin/SurvivalArabic.pdf
Not really CALL, but something useful available online: Survival
Arabic for the EFL classroom.

http://www.languagetrainersgroup.com/accent_game.html
In their jobs, our students will not be hearing
only Canadian English. Here’s a fun way to
introduce them to the varieties of English
accents.

Incidentally, your present correspondent scored only 17, and missed

the Toronto accent. See if you can do better.

Students can also volunteer to add to the accent collection. Qatar is

not yet featured.
 Neither is Newfoundland.

http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/
http://classicpoetryaloud.wordpress.com/
Poetry is highly valued in Arabic culture. When the late Palestinian
poet Mahmoud Darwish recited, he could fill a football stadium.
The nearest local equivalent of “American Idol” is a poetry
competition with a prize of 1,000,000 riyals. Poetry might therefore
be a useful tool to help our students learn English. Here’s a great
resource online: classic English poetry podcasts, with texts.

http://www.talkingpets.org/
Here’s something just silly enough that your students might love it:
a talking pet who will enunciate any English sentence you type in, in
your choice of accent. Students might, for example, enjoy
composing talking Eid cards to email to one another. To be
culturally sensitive, you might want to use cats, not dogs.

http://www.kerpoof.com/
http://www.kerpoof.com/teach
With Kerpoof, students can make illustrated
stories, comic books, and animations. It
might be used for an interesting writing
assignment, or in a listening or reading
exercise, in which the students must make an animation or a picture
to match a verbal description. Or, as a speaking exercise, have them
describe pictures they have made.

Projects
Rebecca Hatherley has built an interactive
whiteboard, thanks to Johnny Lee the inventor,
using a Wiimote and projector. This means any
instructor can have their own interactive white board.

This short video clip illustrates the basic technique:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/245

If you are interested in seeing it in action, want to become involved, or feel

you have something to contribute, please contact Rebecca for further
information.

Rebecca.Hatherley@cna-qatar.edu.qa

Tips and Tricks

Paragraph Indents
Have you ever wondered what these markers are for on the ruler in
Microsoft Office?

The First Line Indent marker (the top triangle) controls

the starting position of the first line of a paragraph.

The Hanging Indent marker (bottom triangle) positions

the start of the second and all following lines of text in a
paragraph.

The Left Indent marker is the square underneath the

Hanging Indent marker. You can use it to move the
hanging indent and first line indent together, keeping any
space between them constant.

The Right Indent marker positions the right indent of a

paragraph

– Rebecca Hatherley

College Subscriptions
We now have a subscription to BrainPop, a collection of el-hi materials in
all subject areas. All teachers and students can access BrainPop for free
during school hours—even from home. To give it a try, open the Library
home page and select “Online Databases”; or click BrainPop directly from
any computer at:

http://www.brainpop.com/
Our username is
Our password is

About Us
CALL, for the benefit of the insufficiently initiated, stands for Computer-
Aided Language Learning. We on the CALL committee have a mandate
from the department leadership to aid and abet you in using educational
technology in your classroom. We currently comprise two committees:
software evaluation and materials development. If you are interested, we
would be delighted to have you join us in this cause.

Current Members:
Steve Roney (chair),
John Allan (chair, materials development),
Sheldon Chisholm,
Douglas Culbert,
Susan Curtis,
 Scott Dagilis,
Darlene Liutkus,
Cheri MacLeod (TLC liaison),
Scott Webber
Rebecca Hatherley (Academics liaison),
Dan Rieb
Larissa Conley
Linda Earl

Submissions Wanted
If you have a tech tip to share, or know of an interesting
and relevant website, please send it along to
Stephen.Roney@cna-qatar.edu.qa for inclusion in a future
issue.

A big thanks to those who contributed towards this issue:

Cheri MacLeod, Mike Kealey, Rebecca Hatherley, Steve Roney.

A special thanks to Rebecca Hatherley for our new design.