Lessons' ideas-yellow group

1.Monkey See - http://www.monkeysee.com/
Ask your students to go to the magic tricks section of the site at: http://www.monkeysee.com/video/subcategory/6?subcategory=86 They should watch a video and learn how to do a magic trick. Then come to class and show and teach other students how to do the trick (in English if they can)
Monkey See at http://www.monkeysee.com/video/subcategory/6?subcategory=86 episode "Dissolving coins". Well, to my mind this task can be appropriate to pre-intermediate students as they could be interested in showing various tricks to their peers or even to young learners but in that case there could arise problem concerning understanding the language and presenting the trick in English. Speaking about pre-intermediate students there also could be some problems relating to lack of practise of showing the chosen trick, as it was said in tutorial, students should practise some time in front of the mirror, in order the trick looked naturally. What refers to my students, I'm not sure that they will take an active part in such type of exercise, so my score to it is 2.

Monkey See - http://www.monkeysee.com/- episode “Linking Paperclip”. As for me, I find this task interesting but inappropriate for my students, because the instructions there are not clear, the information is not so important. So, it can be used just for fun. This trick may be interesting for pre-intermediate level students, teens.

2.Tokbox - http://www.tokbox.com/ 

Try to find an English speaker who is able to give a short talk to your students. Ask them to prepare a short interview and some questions for the speaker. Set up your computer with http://www.tokbox.com in class and make a conference call to the speaker. Get your speaker to do their talk and answer your students’ questions. (To do this both you and your speaker will need to register for a free Tokbox account. You will also need a webcam).
Tokbox at http://www.tokbox.com To my mind, the tool itself is very useful and the only thing which you need to organise a conference is to register fo a free Tokbox account. I suppose it won't take too much time to register, but speaking about my teaching environment, some problems can appear exactly in computer lab, as one more essential device is needed for making a conference, it's a webcam. Unfortunately, but computers in my school are not equipped with webcams. Of course, it's possible to ask students to bring their own webcams for the lesson, but some of them may forget to do it and, as a result, the lesson will be failed. So my score to it is 2.
Tokbox - http://www.tokbox.com/ I agree with Natasha that the problems may be connected with registration and technical equipment. Though the idea is brilliant, I’d like to try it next year, because it’s impossible at the moment, and I need some preparations.
Wordia - http://www.wordia.com/ 
Go to the site http://wordia.com and find some suitable video entries about words. Ask your students to watch them and make notes about what information is included about each word. (Wordia definitions often include short stories or anecdotes too). Then start a word of the day project with your students. Each day get one or two students to prepare information and a short story related to word, then record their story with a video camera or webcam. Keep the videos and review them regularly to help students remember their vocabulary.

Wordia at http://www.wordia.com I suppose, this website is appropriate for intermediate to upper-intermediate students and I am really fascinated by the presentation of words here. I find it very useful because nowadays we teach our students how to define words using some other useful words or phrases and this site can be a good example of showing how to do it in appropriate way. I am practically sure that this site will be in the list of my favourites and I will try to use it in my teaching practise. The score to it is 4.

Wordia - http://www.wordia.com/ I admire this offered wonderful idea to use in my class with pre-intermediate or intermediate students. Students dislike learning the words by heart, they find it boring, and sometimes ignore, so such activity can motivate them and bring new fresh ideas into the learning process. I am going to try it in the near future. Thank you for the idea!

Summary

To sum up the information about this site, I'd like to mention that we both, together with my colleague Zhanna, agreed that materials presented on site Monkey See could be appropriate to pre-intermediate / intermediate students in order to practice listening skills, but some instructions there are not very understandable and weak students may have problems with understanding the language. What concerns strong students, they could try some of activities shown on the site and could even present some of them to the rest of the class, but it could be time consuming as some activities need serious preparation. It's up to teachers whether to use this site or not, it depends on the aim of the teacher, may be it could be used as a source of some extra materials when the syllabus allows to do something different.

Our impressions after having visited this site were admiration and fascination. We suppose that this exact site should be seen and even used by teachers of English, because it gives definitions of words in useful and appropriate manner, what could motivate our sudents and bring some fresh ideas into the learning process. We suggest that learners won't have serious problems with understanding presenters there, and even weak students will be able to get the main idea. We advice our coleagues to add this site to the list of their favourites, it's worth doing!