Here is a very cute web tool for creating stories and promoting creativity.  PinkDinkyDoo lets you choose a story theme among Silly, Fairy Tale, Mystery, Scary or Outher Space stories. Then, click on the empty lines to complete your story with the given pictures.When you finish your first scene, move on to middle and end parts to complete your story. When you are done, you can listen to it, print it or share it with others via mail.  What I really like about this web tool is that it is super easy, there is no sign up and it lets you create you story in  minute. Here are a few ideas to use this tool in class: Ask students to choose the same theme and come up with different stories. Read different stories in class and ask students to write a different ending for it. Create a whole class story and role play it in class.  Show only the pictures of the story first and students write the text for it. When they finish, they compare their stories.  or give the text of the story and ask students to draw the related pictures. Display their stories on the bulletin board.  Enjoy this web tool!

Spotzi Website Spotzi is a world map reflecting different themes such as Agriculture, Climatology, Meteorology, Business, Health & Diseases, Transport and Communication, Environment and Conservation, Military, Geology and Biology What do you think of Spotzi?

Who doesn’t like watching animations? If you think, it needs more complicated skills and takes a long time, you are wrong!  ABCya is a cute web tool for kids (as well as adults:) that they can create their animations and publish them. The tool gives you 100 frames that you can create. For each frame, choose a background, add your images, draw or add text on the frames. You can delete or duplicate your frames as well. When you are done, you can save your animation as gif. file on your desktop. Here are a few ideas to use this tool with our students: Give them a topic and ask them to create their own animations about it. Create an animation and ask your students to write the text for it. Give the first scene and ask students to animate the rest. Students can turn the book or the fairy tales into animations using this tool.  Students can create their own short stories.  It can be a good icebreaker as well. Animate your introduction and show it to your students.  I really likes this cool tool as it is fun, colorful and easy to implement.  

Vodburner Website Vodburner lets you record Skype video calls. Create MP4 or WMV files. Edit the video using the built in Post-Production Console. Choose any combination and order of cameras for Group Video Calls. Trim portions of the call, balance the volume and add text captions/pictures/music/transitions to the final production. What do you think of Vodburner?

Summer is over and it’s time to meet our news students today. This year, if you would like to have a techie start to the year, here are some ice-breaker and warmer ideas.  Ask children to create their biographies on Animoto or PhotoPeach which are my favorite video makers with music, text, pictures and transitions. You should also try Photopeach’s quiz feature as well. Use Wordle or it’s alternatives for introduction activities. Create a Wordle with the children’s names to welcome them in class or create a cloud of classroom rules with them. Motivate children to create a Wordle about themselves  including their ages,  family, hobbies and their favorites. Show each Wordle in class and ask children to guess who that Wordle belongs to. You can also create a Wordle with some key words about you and ask children to guess what each word represents. Children will love to learn more about you!! Symface is a cute tool to express your emotions changing the face expression of an animated emoticon and writing why you feel like that.  Let the children create their own symfaces and talk about their feelings on coming back to school. Ask students to create their unique stories on Storybird introducing themselves. They can talk about their families, likes, favorites and feelings. Or, as an alternative, students can create their animations using ABCya.  SimpleMeet is a backchannel room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions and many more. Create a room in TodaysMeet. While each child is introducing themselves, the rest asks questions on the backchannel. Ask children to keep an online dairy of their first week at school. They can talk about their feelings, what their plans of the new year, their aims and their expectations. Use Penzu or MyDiary for this. At the end of the school year, let the children read their diaries that they have written at the beginning of the year. Students can write their poems about their feelings on coming back to school with Magnetic Poetry.   Students can create their own slogans using Pinwords in groups and share them with others. Play a TPR activity using the teleprompter, Cueprompter where the children will read the instructions instead of you saying it.  Create an avatar using Voki and record your voice while introducing yourself. Encourage children to create their own speaking avatars talking about themselves. You can also choose an avatar with children to use it as a class mascot during the year. What about creating  a collaborative online board using Padlet or Linoit. Children can add their pictures and their texts about their summer holidays. They can also write about themselves and read each note and try to guess who that person is. Create a quiz with Quizpoo to see what children remember from the previous years or create a quiz about yourself and let the children guess if the statements about you, true or not.  Ask children to interview each other using a simple voice recording tool,Vocaroo.  You can start a talk group using Voxopop.You can talk about yourself or ask questions to the kids that you want them to talk or start a discussion on any topic. Voicethread can be an alternative to Voxopop. If you have given the children a book report, ask them to leave a comment on your Voicethread.  Enjoy the new school 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. Picture Source: ShutterStock

BlogTalkRadio Website BlogTalkRadio lets you host a live talk radio show online, simply by using a telephone and a computer. Share your content and opinions in a worldwide public forum in this growing online talk radio network. No software download required. What do you think of BlogTalkRadio?

Many of us are already using timers to get started on a new project, to keep us focused and to be punctual.  We are also using timers in the classroom as we set tasks for the kids. And here is a nice list of fun timers that we can adapt and use in the classroom. Simply, choose your style among egg/rocket/candle/bar/swimming timers or, bomb/dynamite countdowns. Set the time, show it on the screen and let it start! Don’t forget get to use the timer full screen. Use these fun timers to give kids a visual five minutes until they finish their work. Ask students to write a short story until the timer finishes. When we make a quiz, we can refelect it on the screen and students can watch the time. That’s a great way to help them understand how much time has passed as young kids have difficulty with understanding the time. Jump or turn around or hop as the timer ticks down. Students to close their eyes or turn back and ask them to raise their hands when they think 1 minute has passed. The closest person to the timer can be the winner. Ask students to be completely silent until the timer shows 00:00. This will be a challenge for kids! That’s also great to give and show them the time to get in a line or put away their staff. This really motivates them. This is certainly one of the great ways to keep us and students on task! Image Source: ShutterStock

There are many authentic texts on internet that our students can benefit from but unfortunately many of them are far too difficult for our kids to understand specially if you are working with EFL students. However, here is a great web tool that will help us to make texts more readable for our kids. Rewordify will help you to simplify a text or a website. Just copy and paste your text or the web link, click on "Rewordify" text! It will analyze the entire block of text—all at once—and finds all the hard words and phrases. Then, it simplifies with yellow highlights those hard words and phrases, helping learners understand the text. You can mouse over the highlighted words to see what the difficult word is. You can also go to settings and tailor it to your needs. You can get a permanent link for your text and share it with your learners.  When you are done, there are more activities that you can do with your text. You can print the list of the words with definitions or blanks. You can print a matching sheet, easy or a difficult quiz about your text.  This tool is great for teaching new vocabulary in a meaningful context. Student can also use this web tool for themselves to copy and paste a text if the text is difficult.  You can put all the Rewordify links of the stories on somewhere and students can access them any time they like. Here is a nice reading list with Rewordify links!  Image Source: Shutterstock

Slidepoint Website Slidepoint lets you create and deliver online presentations that do not require the Adobe Flash player to operate, and therefore work on any desktop or mobile device that supports html, css and javascript. What do you think of Slidepoint?

Storytelling is one of the most powerful art in language learning classes. It’s a great way to motivate kids and promote speaking in English at the same time. And, here is a very nice storytelling website that is called Smories. It is a collection of stories that are told by students themselves. You can listen to the stories and some of them even have subtitles that go along with the recording.  It is a motivating website for kids and the stories are lovely. This website is certainly an inspiration to many different stories in young learner classes. Ask students to listen to the stories and choose their favorite one. Assign them to listen to some stories and talk about the story, ask comprehension questions. Students can listen and write a summary of the story that they have listened. Students listen to a story and they illustrate it and create a book cover for it. Enjoy the stories! Image source: Shutterstock