Internet & "crazy" ideas!!! (by Antônio)

It’s pretty clear to all of us that the Internet is an amazing tool for entertainment, research, communication and obviously education. In other words it changed our lives in many aspects. When it comes to education, the range of possibilities is endless. The computers and specially the Internet made a revolution in terms of education. Another interesting feature of the Internet is the amount of emails we receive, most of these emails are “chains”, jokes, useless or nonsense information. Some are meant to be funny; while others have a social purpose such as people looking for people who have disappeared, charity and advertisements in general. Once in a while I receive funny emails like power point presentations, small audio files, cartoons and pictures. As we, English teachers, are privileged professionals that can work with almost any topic in classroom, I’ve decided to plan warm ups and wrap ups activities base on these emails I get. So I’ve been thinking about using some of these emails in class.

I’m posting here 3 of these files, which are my favorite ones so far. The first on is called “The floating cat theory” and needs translation. The second is a cartoon already in English. I’ve thought of doing writing and speaking activities with it, but I’m not sure whether it could be used as a listening activity or not. The last is my favorite one; it’s an audio file of a conversation between Condoleeza Rice and George Bush. I’ve already done an activity with it in class; it was focused on listening, general knowledge and a little bit of grammar (phrasal verbs). These are only “crazy” ideas for classes, which need planning. Contributions are welcome, so feel free to send me your opinion about them and I’m sure you might also have some interesting stuff in your email boxes.

At least they are very funny!!!!!

PS: I couldn't attach the last two files here, so I sent them to this email account. ipappi3@gmail.com