The latest celebrity English teachers on English, baby! are none other than Layzie Bone and Flesh-n-Bone of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. When I saw the group was fully reunited and coming to Portland, I thought, “How cool would it be to get them to teach a lesson about being at a crossroads?” Thanks to our friend Cool Nutz who introduced us, that dream became a reality.

Unlike most of our English lesson interviews with famous musicians, which take place before the show, this interview occurred at about 1am, after a Bone Thugs concert. It was fun. The guys were loose and happy to chat. They liked the concept of English, baby! and didn’t want to stop at one lesson, so here is some bonus footage in which they teach some very high-level slang. This was an English lesson for me as well!

It is so cool that these guys spoke so slowly. They seemed really aware of the fact that they were helping people in other countries learn English with this interview. They were such nice people–and to think, the crossroads in the both of their lives involved going to prison! I hope Bone Thugs has lots of success with their new album.

Visit Bone Thugs’ website here.

Videos can be really fun in the classroom. In older posts, I have explained a few ways to use YouTube videos in the classroom. They can be used in esl lessons about food. Students can also learn to use YouTube videos in their presentations or you can integrate them into lectures. Well, now, I have a slightly new challenge for you. Make your own educational video!

TeacherTube is full of videos teachers and/or students have made. You can use YouTube and TeacherTube to find videos for your esl classes, but when you just can’t find what you are looking for it might be time to make your own video. The next few posts will explain how to make a YouTube video.

First, you have to start with some video clips. Use your cellphone, a video camera, a web cam, whatever to capture some video and audio. I used the built in video camera and microphone on my Macbook to make this video. It will be used in an international studies class. The final project in the class is to make an annotated bibliography and this explains how to do it.

Once you have the video, you have to find video editing software. You probably have one on your computer. On Macs, there is iMovie. On PCs, there is Movie Maker.

So from here out, the directions are for macs on iMovie. But I have used Movie Maker and it is pretty simple too.

Once you have the video recordings, you need to import them into iMovie (File > Import Movie). A simpler option is to record video in the iMovie program using a webcam. Then, go through the recordings and drag the parts you want to use into the video screen. The process is a simple drag and drop. (There is a link at the bottom of this to a more detailed video tutorial.)

The next step is to add titles. There is a little “T” for text or maybe for title. Click on the “T” and the different formats of titles come up. Drag and drop the title that you want to the place where you want it.

Once you’re finished adding video clips and titles, press Share in the toolbar and then select YouTube. Follow the steps (including creating a YouTube account) and before you know it you will have a video on YouTube.

Here is an iMovie tutorial. It may seem a little complicated. But I opened the iMovie program for the first time last week and was able to completely finish a YouTube video in less than one hour!

YouTube in the classroom. Recently, I observed a class that used YouTube and saw a conference presentation by two ESOL instructors, John Armbrust and Alexandria Cesar, entitled: “YouTube: U Trouble?”

Both of these experienced have shown me the possibilities of YouTube in the classroom. While John Armbrust and Alexandria Cesar initially saw some problems with YouTube, their ESL class ended up developing a great way to evaluate YouTube videos for use in an academic setting.

Once we have some guidelines, YouTube can be integrated in so many ways. Armbrust used YouTube videos to enhance readings in his grammar class. Students read from a book, listened to a recording of the passage and then watched a YouTube video on the topic. What an exciting idea!

We just have to get over the fear of inappropriate content on YouTube. For your next unit, explore the possibility of YouTube. There is so much good content and the films are so short and easy to find. They can be perfect!

But before you let students do anything with YouTube, make sure you give them some guidelines. Some very clear guidelines, otherwise you will end up with a catastrophe like the first time I had students use YouTube. I ended up with a very sexy music video on our class wiki. Let me tell you, even though the student wrote a nice paragraph about the music, the YouTube video was not appropriate. That time YouTube was U Trouble. But Armbrust and Cesar have proven that it doesn’t always have to be like that. You just have to be very clear with your students.

It’s no big secret that rhymes help people remember things. Kids can learn using nursery rhymes, so why not ESL students too? Perhaps that’s what EnglishToday had in mind when they set out to produce a series of video limericks to help you learn English.

It’s a valiant attempt, but rhyming is harder than you think. Sure you’ve got “right, tight; lefty loosie” useful mnemonic devises, but rhymes aren’t usually that convenient. You commonly have to compromise meaning or word choice pretty heavily in order to get the job done.

This limerick about Maggie the Millipede is one of the best ones. I had to double check if it was already an existing limerick, but I think it’s original.

Some of the limerick videos are just this very, very British man talking into the camera in funny hats, which is pretty endearing. They did a good job of structuring these for YouTube. The meat of the video (the limerick), is at the beginning and there’s a bunch of silly stuff afterward in case you want to keep watching.

The only problem here is that the limerick is almost a tongue twister and is actually pretty tough to follow (Is “nobbled” a common word in the UK? I had to look it up. Spell check doesn’t even recognize it as a word.). This one about a three legged cat is pretty tough as far as English vocab goes as well. But the extras after the limerick are hilarious. I burst out laughing when clip art started landing on the cat’s back near the end.