Yes - I have maintained a bit of a blog silence for awhile now as I was in the final weeks of pregnancy and focused on getting things organised for our new arrival. I can now announce to the world that we have a new baby girl called Zoe. She arrived last Saturday and here are a couple of pictures of her. Obviously blogging is not a priority at the moment so you can expect things to be a little sluggish for a while but I do plan to get back to posting when the dust has settled! Zoe catnaps on Dad Zoe and Mum Zoe and Dad bond

Creating a book can’t be easier today! There are many tools that you can use to narrate your own stories, and here comes Picture Book Maker which is a fun and a cute tool to tell your stories. The illustrations and the text that you write are hand drawn. There are many backgrounds, props and characters that you can choose from. You can also change the actions of the characters. When you are done, you can save it to the gallery, mail it or print your own story.  How to use  this tool: Students can create their own books around the animal characters. Give the first page as a prompt and ask students to come up with their own stories. Create your own story and ask students to change the ending or write what happens before the story. Enjoy this tool in and out of the classroom!

Your blog is boring? Some people may actually like it that way! Here is  the world’s dullest blog which I have read on Mike Harrison’s blog recently. A super creative and a clever person has been keeping that blog by writing simple and really boring things to talk about such as: "I decided to go for a walk. I set off in my chosen direction. Eventually I returned to my starting point." or "A window was slightly open. I decided that I did not need it to continue to be so. I closed it and securing it using the window handles." The blog posts are short, mostly in past tense and very easy to understand, boring but fun to read! and we can find different ways of integrating this idea in our lessons. Students can dramatize the blog posts. Ask students to come up with their own dull blog posts in a similar way. Some ideas can be: Students can add more description to the chosen blog posts. Create a worksheet and ask students to match the titles with the descriptions. Students can leave comments on the blog. Give different dull titles to the students and they come up with the dullest blog post in groups. Vote for the dullest one. Enjoy exploring the dullest blog in the world with your students!   

Teacher TV The UK have a number of fabulous online resources for teachers and one of my favourites has to be Teachers TV. There are a huge number of videos on almost any teacher topic you can think of with matching downloadable resources. As a registered member, I get email updates and went and watched this video linked to from their email about teaching poetry. There are a number of great ideas in this lesson and all the materials used in the lesson are available for download from this page as well. You can even download the resources from the video player itself at the point in which they are mentioned in the video so you can decide if you would like that resource. http://www.teachers.tv/video/38046 Check out their huge bank of videos designed to help teachers upskill.

Reference.me Website Reference.me helps you build a trusted network of professional connections where relationships actually mean something. Strong professional links, well leveraged, can give you a broader and more efficient spectrum of opportunities. What do you think of Reference.me?

I love the ways that we can use the avatars that we have created for a variety of educational purposes.  They certainly bring fun and joy to our lessons. Here are my favourite avatar makers: If you are a fan of Simpsons, here is an avatar maker that lets you simpsonize yourself. SouthParkStudios allows you to create South Park characters’ avatars. RasterBoy is another avatar maker that you can create an avatar from the beginning. You can fully customize your character, play with the colors and attach different objects to your avatar. With Mini-Mizer, you can create lego characters and download them. DoppelMe is another favourite of mine, though you have to sign up to be able to use all the features. It is fully customize and you can add accessories and objects to your avatar. BuildYourWildSelf is one of my favourite web tools that can also be used for creating avatars. FaceYourManga is another avatar maker that you start from scratch to create one. and here are a few ideas to use avatars in education: Avatars makers are very easy to use so you and your students can easily create them. If you don’t want to use your students’ real pictures for safety reasons, avatar makers are great way to replace. It’s a great way for students to create their unique avatars to represent their personalities online. Students create their avatars and talk about why they have chosen them. Teachers can gather all the avatars of the students and students guess which avatar belongs to whom.

Christmas wiki I am a self-confessed Christmas freak. There is nothing I like more than putting up a tree and getting out the tinsel. That love of the festive season has spilled over into my online life through a Christmas links wiki I set up a few years back that has links to all things Christmas. Every year, I pull it up and dust it off and see what needs updating etc. It always gets a huge number of hits around this time of year so I thought I’d bring it to your attention. Christmas wiki PBWorks It is also the time that I catch up with PBWorks given that pretty much all of my other wikis are with Wikispaces. While I generally prefer Wikispaces, I have to say that PBWorks is still a pretty good tool with some features that Wikispaces lacks. One of these features is the ability to create folders and nest pages within them. While my Christmas wiki isn’t big enough to need this function, I could see that this would be very useful for one of my bigger wikis such as educational software where I have created index pages for different sections - the folders would then help to keep my pages organised and easy to navigate with people able to use the navigation panel on the wiki to move around the folders and access the pages within them. I also like the formatting options for tables in PBWorks. The ability to set the width of tables being the biggest advantage over Wikispaces. There are other very useful features such as  page level access and easily backing up the wiki but these are subscriber only options and at $99US per classroom wiki, that is not a cheap option. Still, overall this is still an excellent wiki alternative for teachers. Mrs Pancake I’m also reminded of the Mrs Pancake website as I have linked to her Christmas resources. She has really created a wonderful site with very high quality printable downloads for all kinds of topics. Go check it out. Baby is calling so back to being a Mum!

Google Currents Google Currents lets you browse, read, and share favorite content, presented in a swipable magazine format. Your favorite publications, tuned for your tablet and smartphone. What do you think of Google Currents?

Zoomerang Website Zoomerang provides you with unlimited surveys & polls, 12 Questions / 100 Responses and real-time results online. Wide range of question types available. What do you think of Zoomerang?

If you are looking for a tool to create a good looking infographic, meet with Easel.ly today. It’s a very simple tool to create colorful and simple infographics on anything they you want. After you register, click to create a new one. You can choose a new visual template or start with a blank one. Click on the objects and drag them on your canvas. Move and scale them. Play with the colors, add shapes and text. You can also upload your own pictures. when you’re done, save it and share it with a link, get the code for your blog or download it to your computer as a picture. How to use this tool: Students can summarize a research or a survey that they have done in groups. Assign students to create different infographics on different topics and present them in class. Show your students different infographics and discuss about the hidden data on the infographic. Students prepare their own questions, ask others, collect data and summarize the data by using this tool. This tool is a good way to use technology both for educational and social purposes.