The blogosphere is EXPLODING with cool ideas for using videos to teach English and here you’ll find links to some of the very best – .

If I have spelt anyone’s name wrongly or given a wrong link, or even worse, failed to include an entry – Argh!!! – please let me know so I can put it right!

Why?

‘Why use video?’ you may ask. What are the pros and cons? Here’s a great post from English Central debating the issue.

You’re going to want to INSPIRE, INFORM and INTEGRATE videos in your lessons after you’ve read this  post by John Hughes (Golly John knows A LOT about videos.)

And don’t forget, videos can expose our students to frequent collocations, especially with Jason R Levine’s cool raps.

And if you’re looking for more research, check out all the helpful info in this slide show from Paul Maglione of English Attack

What activities can you use videos for?

Oh so much! Martin Sketchley kicks us off with his top ten classroom activities revolving around the use of videos here.

David Bradshaw answers the question and provides some handy activities too.

And here are 5 more cracking ideas from Alex Barboza.

Not enough? We have more practical tips from Icalteflt too!

And it doesn’t stop there! Here are 50 really practical classroom ideas for using video in the class from fellow video enthusiast, David Deubelbeiss.

What videos?

Selecting the right videos is important of course, and Stephen Greene shares tips on that and also explores some of the extra things we can do with video that we can’t do with audio.

And what are the Best Popular Movies/TV Shows For ESL/EFL students? Larry Ferlazzo crowd sources the answer for us.

So who’s got a great lesson to share?

Got any sports fans in your classes? They’re going to love this lesson using a Nike Advert from Duncan

1. Read the book – 2. Watch the movie – 3. Spot the differences – Here’s how David Mearns did it.  Great idea David!

Steve Muir dishes up a mouth watering video lesson on cooking vocabulary – something advanced students can really sink their teeth into!

Maureen O’Keefe adds bells to her sit com lesson – ting-a-ling!

Monika ‘Mona’ Kisala explains how she uses shorts and real movies with her students – and shares an ‘evil’ not-at-all-homework activity too.

For an oh-so-well-constructed story telling lesson, check out this post from Rosa Perez Parapar on how she gets her students talking.

And while we’re on the subject of story telling, here’s Jamie Keddie on the ‘video telling’ technique He also demos how to do it. Inspiring!

Got some participial phrases to teach? Carissa Peck has just the video lesson you need.

I sometimes teach technical English and I’d already come across and bookmarked a video about a tinkerer. So I was delighted to discover Mura Nava has written a terrific lesson to go with it. Thanks Mura!

Wayne Yare shares a lesson with a song that culminates in a personalized singing task. Listening to his students laughing in the audio files is sure to put a smile on your face.

And there’s more! Who hasn’t benefitted from Alex Case’s spectacular Tefltastic work sheets? Alex shares a list of video lessons in one post here, all neatly mapped out to the tenses and language points they practice.

Learning with videos

And how about using videos to help you learn a language – Ian Schellenberg demos his bad-ass skills here as a Portuguese beginner. Bravo Ian!

How can videos help you bring up multilingual kids? (Yes, not just bilingual. We’re talking multilingual!) Read the experiences of mother and teacher Eugenia Loras here – fascinating!

Break time! This is a looooooooong carnival, so let’s pause for a little video break. Here’s Rachel of Rachel’s English to tell us why English pronunciation can be so hard.

Flipping out

With video we can take students out of the classroom into the REAL ENGLISH world, and nobody is better at collecting and organizing spontaneous speech than Mike Marzio. He tells us about it here.

And what about using videos OUTSIDE class? Joshua Durey explains how he flipped his classroom to great effect.

The flipped classroom was much on my mind when I set up Simple English Videos Dot Com and I explain why in this guest post at teaching village:

And that brings us to making videos…

Are you thinking of making videos yourself and posting them to YouTube? Then you don’t want to miss this really helpful and instructive post by Sylvia Guinan

Karenne Sylvester has some great ideas for making personalized video feedback videos for our students – Lovely to have you back in the blogosphere Karenne – we’ve missed you!

And of course you don’t have to do it on your own. Making videos can be a wonderfully collaborative activity as Turgay Evren explains here.

Some very cool avatars have been making ELT videos recently in second life. In fact there an EU project team developing machinima for language learners. Heike Philp tells us about it here.

But how can I use avatars to teach English you may be wondering? Don’t worry – Carole Rainbow has lots of answers here.

Students making videos

One of the most exciting uses for video is students’ projects where the students make the videos themselves.

Check out Let’s Go Viral! Creating a Viral Video  – a project based lesson by Shelly Terrell @shellterrell where students have to plan and then pitch their idea for a video. It’s for teens to adults but I can see it going down well with business English students too.

Cheridy Aduviri explains here how she gave her students a voice with ipads. She has some very sensible advice for others thinking of doing this – inspirational.

So let’s round off now with a great student project from Cristina Silva’s 12th graders. They have videos to share that they made about their home town.

A BIG BIG thank you to all the contributors for this ELT Blog Carnival. We knew there would be a lot of good ideas around on video but had no idea how many or how terrific they would be. The generosity of teachers never ceses to amaze me. Thank you for sharing!

The next ELT blog Carnival will be hosted byEva Buyuksimkesyan and it will be a timely one – all about Holiday Lessons.