It’s already time to celebrate Edublogs Awards this year! What I like most about the awards is that I can discover new blogs to follow and expand my PLN.  As usual, there are great blogs shortlisted here and waiting for you to vote! I believe this is a great time to show our appreciation to the bloggers who are already shortlisted in different categories. So, if you are reading this post, please vote for the bloggers that are searching, writing, reflecting and spending their times online to connect to you. It’s a good time to say "Hey,thanks for what you are doing!". If you have a minute, vote  here! You want to thank Özge?? Then go here!

New year is on the way and here are some tools to enjoy the last days of this year with your students! Santa has got an email address here, let’s write and wait for his reply. What about creating a custom letter for Santa? You can film yourself or upload your picture and send it to Santa’s mail. With a picture and your name, Santa can leave you a personalized video message. Try here and see it for yourself. Another alternative is also here. You can create a personalized Santa story for your kids. Here it is. Of course, Santa is a great social net-worker! You can follow him on Twitter. Santa is waiting for you to chat here. Are you on Santa’s good list?? If you want to know, here you go! Make your personalized Christmas card and share the joy with others. Make your online snowflake and let it snow. What about elfing yourself. It looks fun! Rain Deer Orchestra is here for you! Touch the noses to make your own music. Click on Santa’s advent calendar and find out new songs and activities to complete for each day. What about playing an escape the room game with Santa? Help him escape from the room before someone sees him. Send your greetings with an animated, customized  Santa to others,it’s here. You can also create animated and personalized e-cards for others. You can design your snowflake and watch it snow. Try it here. What about making your own virtual snowman? You can try this one or this or decorate your Christmas tree! Make Santa jump, hop, dance, sing!! Write whatever you want and Santa does it for you on SimonSezSanta. and cheers to a New Year!! This blog or the author are not responsible for any inappropriate images/text/ads of the external links. Please double check before you use it with your students.

Here comes next letter on the alphabet:K Kerpoof is a site where you can create original artwork, animated movies, stories, greeting cards and more.  Kakomessenger is a fun text to-speech application. It’s a singing telegram machine that will sing your text. You choose between two singers, Gina and Humphrey, write your text and let the singers sing them for you. Kadoo is a video sharing cloud which can help you to share your videos privately or public. Kidzui is a tool where you can get a free kids’ browser for safe internet.  Kwout is a way you quote a part of a web page as an image with an image map. Kruchus lets you put multiple links into one and share it with others. Kaywa is tool to generate QR codes. KidBlog is a platform where you can get your students easy and simple blogging. Kizoa is a tool to create video slide shows with pictures, musics, effects and text. Kicksend lets you send files of any size. Kukuklok is an online alarm clock that wakes up with different sounds. Kideos is a site where you can find videos for your kids. Kabongo is a tool to find games for reading. Keybr helps you to learn typing faster with fewer errors.

As the seconds tick away and time marches on; New Year is a reflection time for me as well as celebration. Here is a short list of my favourite posts this year: A-Z Web Tools: A complete list up to K! Homework Challange Through Technology Homework:Jazz it up With Technology! Tell Your Stories With Pictures Digital Storytelling With Animation Tools Digital Storytelling With Audio Tools Tell Your Stories Through Writing Tell Your Stories With Comic Strip Tools Web Tools That Educators Should Have in the Bag Hmm …QR Codes Have a Wondrous year everyone!  

Here are my favourite web tools from 2011: Grababeast is a tool to create your own monster using different body parts and colouring them using a palette. You can save it to your computer or share your monster with a link. You can attach different animal parts to a human body on build your wild safe and share it with others. SafeShareTv is a tool to remove inappropriate elements around the page and generate a safe link for our students. It also lets you crop youtube videos and get rid of the unwanted parts from a video. Howjsay is a free online dictionary. The words are pre-recorded and it is not synthetic. You can also hear multiple entries by separating them with semi-colons. BatLyrics lets you search for song lyrics based on words and phrases with a video. You can watch and listen the video with a teleprompting screen with the lyrics of the song on it. Penzu is a tool to keep an online diary and share it with others if you like. Google Search Stories is a tool to create your stories using google search.  You choose a video based on your search terms, add some music to create your video. YouPublisher is a web tool to turn your PDF documents into flippable and downloaded e-books and get a link to place it on your blog in very easy and quick  steps. DisposableWebPage  is a site where you can create a disposable page with any content you want and share it with others. AcapelaTV is a site where you can find ready flash animations to reuse by customizing them. You can use text-to-speech feature to make the characters talk. AMap is a great and a fun way to display your live debates on a very simple visual format. Join.me allows you to share your screen with others. Twurdy lets you find texts that suit your students’ readability level. It looks for the number of words on the page, the average number of syllables in each word and the average sentence length. Symface is a cute tool to express your emotions changing the face expression of an animated emoticon and writing why you feel like that. Cueprompter is a tool that makes your scren work like a teleprompter without downloading a software. Stay tuned for the new coming year … p.s. I have been nominated, please vote me here! This blog or the author are not responsible for any inappropriate images/text/ads of the external links. Please double check before you use it with your students.

Be careful! You are about to read very techie resolutions for teachers!! The end of 2011 is fast approaching and another year has passed in a split second. Now it’s the time to look forward to the future and a time for a fresh techie start! Here is my list for teachers who are looking for techie resolutions for the new coming year… Blogosphere phenomenon will go on growing!Because it’s the best way to keep your ideas organized, keep pace with the changing world, leave your footprints to the digital world. It is the best way to say "Hi, I exist"! Get an account from Edublogs, Blogger or WordPress immediately and enjoy blogging throughout the new year! Twitter has been the best place for professional development in 2011 and it will be the same for next year. Reserve your place and access a steam of great ideas, links, opinions, feedback and resources from global professionals.Start following these educators here. Conferences and courses have extended virtually beyond the walls.  Do not miss the chance to be in K12onlineconference, SEETA, Electronic Village Online, Reform Symposium or Virtual Round Table virtually this year. You need more, here is a longer list and if you want to be a speaker in one of them, Steal This Presentation or You Suck at Powerpoint! Using technology in the classroom will still be popular among educators next year. Although many of the tools haven’t been designed education in mind, we teachers find unique ways and create new learning opportunities for our kids. If you are a newbie, here is a list of edtech blogs and web tools that have been chosen by educators. There is too much information that is floating around on cyber space and it’s important what other people can learn about you and what information they can access once they search for your name on Google,so invest yourself today with Creative Commons and don’t forget "Stealing is easy: Being original is hard!" Praise yourself and others as well. Leave nice and encouraging comments on other’s blog. Make others smile and motivated. Pat yourself on the back, because you are about to become a very 21st century educator and whatever the other people say, you are not wasting your time and you are doing great! And never give up because I or others will find you and appreciate your ideas. Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right. "We will open the book.  Its pages are blank.  We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day." - Edith Lovejoy Pierce p.s I have been nominated, please vote me here!

This is where my online journey begins … Electronic Village Online Sessions are five-week collaborative and hands on virtual courses & discussions that engage hundreds of educators. They are completely free and a great opportunity for professional development and connect with other teachers all over the world. This year also I will be co-moderating an online session on EVO with other great educators that we all know and follow. Shelly Terrell,Barbara Sakamoto, Esra Girgin, Jennifer Verschoor, David Dodgson, Michelle Worgan and Sabrina de Vita. So, if you are interested in digital storytelling and want to learn more about it, come and join our session on "Digital Storytelling for Young Learners" . The registration starts today! Don’t miss the opportunity, share the joy!

I have always been a big fan of TED talks since the day I watched the first video and today I am honored and super excited to announce that I have been invited to do a TEDx talk in February at Sabancı University!  Although it is a local TED, it’s still a TED, isn’t it? I have watched great talks from people sharing their ideas on TED which always  leave me inspired and I have genuinely learnt a lot from them. Here are some of my favourites: Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity: Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity! This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another: How it feels to have a stroke  Adora Svitak  says kids big dreams deserve high expectations starting with grownups’ willingness to learn from children as much as to teach: What adults can learn from kids Richard St. John is talking about 8 secrets of success: 8 secrets of success Thomas Suarez is a 12 year old child and talking about his own iPhone application:A 12-year-old app Developer Poet Rives is talking about the coincidences surrounding that most surreal of hours, 4 o’clock in the morning: Rives on 4p.m and you can watch more inspiring ones here.. This February I may be giving the talk of my life and I am really looking forward to it with butterflies in my stomach!!

Here is the new post for the A to Z web tools series with the new letter: L LittleBirdTales is a site where you can upload your drawings and record your voice for each picture to create your story. ListenandWrite is a dictation tool where you hear the audio and write the words. LetThemSingitForYou is a site where you write the lyrics of your song and let the site sing it for you. LinkBlip lets you monitor when the links you have sent to others has been clicked. LucidChart is another way to collaborate on a document simultaneously. Linoit lets you leave sticky notes that includes text, picture, link, video or animations in a collaborative way with others. Lexipedia is a tool to visualize words in a map. LetsCrate is a tool to share documents with others. LunaPic is a tool to edit your photos online and share with others. LegoComicBuilder lets you create online comic using lego characters. Learnit in5 is a website where you can learn any topic about edtech in 5 minutes. Librophile is a website where you can find free audio books. Lizmoz is a tool to create super easy lists online. Loonapix lets you add some funny photo effects to your pictures online.

Grow old with me!  The best is yet to be.  ~Robert Browning Valentine’s day is just around the corner and love is in the air… Here are my suggestions to tell your love to others in Web 2.0 way… Animoto is a life saver. Upload your pictures or videos, choose a love song from animoto’s song list and tell your love with a picture slide show. Animoto has also new features for Valentine’s Day, don’t miss! Make a story with telling your love with Storybird. Choose pictures, add your text and share the love. You can tell your love with AcapelaTV. There are flash animations, you can use text-to-speech feature to make the characters talk. You can make different language selections so it is easy to share your love in dozens of different languages. What about creating word clouds with love words using Wordle? Also try Tagul to create world clouds in the shape of a heart. You can create a shape collage with your photos on ShapeCollage and you can choose the heart shape to fit it to the day’s meaning. If you like it, you may want to try ImageChef too. What about making a photobook for the beloved one using Bookr? Have a look at Glogster to create page with text messages, videos, links, audio and many different lovely clip arts. Share the joy! Check the list of "I love you" translations in all languages in case you need it. You can make valentine cards using this simple tool or try this one or MyFunCards.  and I wish you a great Valentine’s day with full of surprises, candies and bonbons to make your day the best .. Stay with love … This blog or the author are not responsible for any inappropriate images/text/ads of the external links. Please double check before you use it with your students.