How to use and share your teaching resources more effectively with other teachers and parents

This Christmas break I have been thinking long and hard about the different ways of getting the parents a lot more involved in their child’s learning. I also wanted to explore different ways of being able to show the parents what we are teaching in the classroom.

Here are a few of my tried and tested ways which you might like to consider…

Did you know if you have a PowerPoint from your lesson, and you have the latest version of PowerPoint, you can convert it (with a lot of patience) into a movie file. This is great, as then, as I discovered you can upload them either to a FaceBook page, so the parents can watch the PowerPoint for themselves (You can even do a voice over if you are really keen), or you can upload it to YouTube. I must admit that I tried this and it was a success – I then uploaded another 200 of my lessons and YouTube decided enough was enough and asked my to kindly slow down on my contributions.

I also discovered SlideShare which lets you upload your teaching PowerPoints to the site, where over 70 million people, who have a SlideShare account might see it. This is a really great tool as you are able to embed the slide straight back into Facebook or your class web page, so the students can see it more clearly.

However, the most effective way I discovered was a way I had completely overlooked. Did you know you can share folders and files directly from your Genesis Google Drive account with people? I discovered I could upload whole files of work I have produced and then share it with people. The nice thing being that you are able to control what the other people can do with your materials. If you like, they can just watch it on the site or they can download it and watch it elsewhere. I liked this option the best as it has no restrictions on if the material is considered well made, too commercial or a possible advert for your other activities.

How can this help you further in an English class? It means you are also able to develop and share the work of the different students in the class and encourage them to speak more about their learning and discoveries by creating their own PowerPoint presentations. They can share their work with others and practice their public speaking skills. They can also (if you do it via FaceBook videos) make comments about each others work.

The additional benefit of storing all your material on the Google Drive is that should anything happen to your own computer or memory stick, you can rest assured that the lessons you so loving created are still there and still safe. The students are also able to access the different lessons again at anytime, making revision and lesson reviews a lot simpler and a lot more fun.

Some teachers even go so far as to place the lesson on the Google Drive so the students have time to see the PowerPoint in advance and so understand all the vocabulary before they arrive in class. This gives you more time to discuss the ideas behind the lesson and less time needing to be spent on teaching the basics.

To see examples of my different ways of sharing English teaching materials, please take the time to visit http://www.TimeToTeach.co.uk.