Dimitris Tzouris

I bet you watch a lot of video on the web - either for leisure or for work. Apart from streaming services I use at home, I usually watch a TED Talk when I have lunch at work and I usually include a video explainer in my training workshops. From what I’ve seen so far, I can quite safely assume that nearly all teachers show videos to their students almost daily. Talks, documentaries, animations, explainers and music are all in your quiver of professional EdTech tools. It is also safe to assume that many times you have wished you had more control over how YouTube and video on the web in general behaves, sparing you all those uncomfortable moments. Stop autoplay How many times have you felt embarrassed in front of your students or audience when a video started playing automatically? Remember looking anxiously for the tab with the little speaker icon, trying pause playback? Many websites use autoplay to draw you into their content. Some (like Facebook) allow you to change the

I recently received this email from Dropbox that reminded me about an upcoming change in their service. It starts like this: This is a reminder that your Public folder links will become inactive on March 15. On that date, your Public folder will become a standard Dropbox folder, and your files will remain safe in your account. If you want to share those files again, you’ll need to use shared links instead. Have you ever used your Dropbox Public folder to share and post things on the web? I have. I know it’s a lame way to host files on the web, but it was dead easy — plus, the existence of the Public folder helped you get organized and you could instantly know which files are out there, so deleting them was a no-no. I have personally used my Dropbox Public folder to host PDFs of conference programs and images. There are currently 14 items that I’ve linked somewhere — from blogs and social networking sites to email and IM. Well, on March 15 these links will be deactivated. The

Growing up in Greece in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, with no Internet and very limited TV channels, especially when it came to foreign satellite networks, it was almost impossible to have an immersive English content experience and practice listening properly. By immersive, I mean no localization whatsoever. English content was available on TV, but it was subtitled in Greek. Thankfully, dubbing was a failure, so we stuck with the European countries that subtitled foreign films and TV shows instead. I still remember sticking pieces of paper at the bottom of the screen as a last resort, after failing to avoid reading the Greek subtitles. The bright white letters kept magnetizing my gaze. Therefore, practicing listening to English was possible, but only partially. Watching a programme without translated subtitles or with English subtitles (for the hearing impaired) was a much harder task. You would either have to buy a satellite dish and receiver (quite expensive back then) or, if you

This post is as a sneak peek of the presentation I did at the 23rd TESOL Macedonia Thrace Northern Greece International Annual Convention, on March 26, 2016 and was originally published on the TESOLMTh e-bulletin. Computers have made it a lot easier to organize our work, do research and enhance teaching by incorporating creativity tools. The web has added flexibility and collaboration to the mix. Chrome is a web browser that brings everything together: Research, Collaboration, Productivity and Creativity. All this is achieved by both using the browser’s features and by adding third-party apps. Not like those on our smartphones, but web apps that bring additional features and functionality. Everything syncs like magic Got a new computer? Good for you! Been using Chrome? Once you log into Chrome on your shiny new laptop using your Google account, something wonderful happens. Have you witnessed it? All your preferences, your bookmarks, your saved forms and passwo

Listen. How often do you listen? Especially to your own voice? For those learning a foreign language, speaking is a core skill and technology has made it really easy to practice speaking and listening back to our own voice. ESL learners are lucky, since most of the apps available today were made for English. It is, after all,  the language used in over 55% of the Internet. Practice speaking and listen to your voice It is very important for language learners to be able to listen to their own voice, since it helps them improve their pronunciation and intonation, both extremely important in verbal communication. There are many ways they can record their voice, play it back and share the recording with their teacher, relatives and friends. You could also do the same and share your voice comments with them. Using a mobile device iOS devices come equipped with the Voice Memo app, which allows easy recording and sharing via email or other apps, such as Dropbox. There ar

tl;dr The following post is about organizing your bookmarks, annotations, PDFs and notes with Diigo Outliners as well as easily creating citations with Cite This For Me . Diigo Outliners How do you do research? Having ebooks and online journal databases at your disposal is a big help and means less trips to the library, right? But keeping everything organized in one place is very important and can become a helpful guide for your research. Plus, it gives you peace of mind. Diigo was the first tool featured in this column , back in early 2014. Since then, the Diigo team has introduced a new feature: Outliners . Outliners help you organize bookmarked websites, uploaded PDFs as well as your own thoughts and comments, all on one page. Here’s an outliner example for a lesson plan from the Diigo website: With the Diigo extension for Chrome or Firefox , you can bookmark any page on the web. You can also highlight parts of the text and add not

The following report of Andrew Wright's storytelling workshop was originally written for the 22nd TESOL Macedonia Thrace Northern Greece Annual International convention and has been cross-posted on their blog . Andrew Wright wasn’t wearing his storytelling coat on that Saturday morning, but he was definitely in storytelling mood. His workshop included tips on effective storytelling in our classrooms and of course, he read a few stories too. But, why do we tell stories? Andrew Wright believes that stories give motivation, they allow students to experience English instead of just study it, allow for bonding, support the four basic skills, help presenting and re-recycling and springboarding. What are stories? Stories can be real (facts, history, our life) or fiction (oral or written). They are life’s daily stage of events and we are the actors and how we talk, walk and behave is part of the story as well. How to tell stories? Be clear: Tell your story in such a