Do you like playing with your webcam taking different pictures?WEBCAM TOYS lets you use your webcam to take photos with 60 different effects. I had a great time trying it out. No need to download anything or to create an account. Just, click and SMILE.This is the slideshow I've put together to show some of the effects available. What can we use this for?Use photos to personalize your teaching material.Use fun photos for your profiles.Use it to take pictures of students making different facial expressions to teach FEELINGS.Or JUST HAVE FUN !!!!!!

Bags packed and thrilled to be visiting Liverpool for the first time, attending IATEFL and meeting so many wonderful teachers I've had contact with via web. I wanted to test an app I learned about for easy blogging with the Ipad, BLOGSY. Let's see if it delivers what it promises. While in the UK for the IATEFL conference, I'll be trying to post as often as I can using my iPad, so I was looking for something practical which allows me to add several features to the posts. From what I've noticed, while writing your blog post you have access to you iPad images, Flickr, picasa, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo . This is a list of HOW-TO videos to get started. http://blogsyapp.com/  Posted with Blogsy

This is not a promotional post. However, it is a description of tools you can use with students which are VERY PRACTICAL for creating online content.The tools I'm about to describe are all SNACKTOOLS from one single website.FIRST, let's start looking at the different widgets you can create for free.SnackTools | Free web apps & blog and website widgets via kwout1. PHOTOSNACK - create slideshows with pics from facebook, flickr, photobucket or from your computer. http://www.photosnack.com/   How do I use slideshows with students?- showcase students' work by creating slideshows and embedding it in a class blog or send to parents via e-mail.- present vocabulary to students by adding captions to each picture.- ask students to create slideshows with vocabulary they have learned doing their own research on a topic.- for digital storytelling - students can create slideshows telling a story.2. PODSNACK - create playlists with MP3 recordings you make or with youtube videos.http://www.podsnack.com/  How do I use podcasts or video playlists with students?- ask students to record dialogues using their cell phones and send the mp3 files to you. Aggregate all recordings to one playlist and share with parents or publish it in a class blog.- create an audio Webquest where students have to find different information by listening to different podcasts.- for the flipped classroom - aggregate video lessons per unit in a playlist and share it with students.- video-record students role playing dialogues and organize them into the same playlist.- as a listening dictation - use the website to record students reading sentences they have created and send playlist as a listening dictation for homework.3. TUBESNACK - very similar to podsnack. For video playlists. http://www.tubesnack.com/4. POLLSNACK - create polls, surveys and personality quizzes. http://www.pollsnack.com/ How do I use Polls and Surveys with students?- use surveys at the beginning of the semester to get to know students better.- use polls to give students the chance to choose an activity for the following class.- create surveys about topics students have been discussing.- ask students to create their own polls and surveys and present the results to class.5. FLIPSNACK - transform word and PDF files into e-books / flipbooks.http://www.flipsnack.com/ . How do I use e-books with students?- collect student's drawings and written work on a word/pdf file. Use FLIPSNACK to transform it into an e-book to share it with parents.- for storytelling: have groups of students collaboratively create a story during the school year. Then students add images or photos to their story (word / pdf file). At the end of the term, each group publishes their story as a flipbook.6. SLIDESNACK - add voice to your ppt presentations and then share (you can export to Youtube). Slidesnack doesn't record on Google Chrome, try Firefox instead.  http://www.slidesnack.com/ How can I use this tool with students?- if you create tutorials using ppt, add your voice to them by creating a slidecast.- for storytelling: sts can write a story, then create a ppt with images to illustrate the story, then they can record themselves narrating their own stories.- students can record about themselves as an introduction to an online course.- students can record themselves reporting after having developed a project.- students can record themselves talking about what they have learned that year.7. NOTIFYSNACK - create notification bars for your website or class blog.http://www.notifysnack.com/NotifySnack | Examples via kwoutHow can I use this tool with students?- create alerts for class blogs before important dates and tests.- add greeting alerts to school blogs on important dates.- invite students to contribute to the class blog by suggesting beautiful sentences to be added each week.

By SIDDARTHAThis week, in one of the EDMODO groups I'm a member of, a teacher asked suggestions of Android apps for English Language Teaching. I know many people blog about IPHONE/ IPAD apps and it's not that simple to select good apps for a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) approach.Here in Brazil, specially with well-off teenagers iphones are very popular. However, what about all these other devices our students carry in their bags, not to say on their hands all the time? Once schools invest in providing free wifi to students, there's a lot we can do with the devices that belong to them. As a teacher, I've decided to invest in an ipad and an android cell phone in order to be well acquainted with both systems. The best source of suggested Android apps, in my opinion, is Richard Byrne's blog http://www.android4schools.com/  .Nevertheless, I've started a collaborative list of ANDROID APPS FOR ELT.http://list.ly/l/6a4Android apps for ELTView more lists from Ana MenezesWould you help me enrich this list?  TO CONTRIBUTE, just click ADD TO LIST and paste the URL from the android app you suggest.

I've just started a unit with a group of EFL teenage students about Education. In order to help them learn about how different school can be in other countries (or not), I'd love to have students from different countries participate in our VOICETHREAD.Do you have teenage students? Do you have teenagers at home who could give us a hand?To add a video-response and participate in our project, click COMMENT and record a video message, please.These are some questions students can answer:- What kind of secondary school do you go to? (private / state school)- Do you like it?- How many students are there in your class?- How many hours a day do you stay at school?- What kind of subjects do you like best?- Can you choose what subjects to take?- Do you have to wear a uniform?- Can you describe the sitting arrangement in your classroom? ( in a U shape, in lines, in groups)- And the classes? Does the teacher do most of the talking or do you work mostly in groups?- Do students stay in the same room the whole school period or do they move to different rooms according to the subject?- Is discipline very strict?If you have teenage students and wish to join our project, you can record the whole class using your own voicethread account and have different students come to the webcam and answer the questions (an in-class activity) or you can set it as homework and students record themselves individually. What do you think? We would love to hear from you.

I love tools which are a surprise to me. Thinglink is one of these tools. When I first saw it, I imagined just a few ways to use it in class. However, the more time goes by, teachers have been doing amazing things with the tool. An example is the one brought below created by Daniela Tomatis, an EFL teacher in Italy who I admire a lot, and her students.Her blog: http://themachinegoeson.blogspot.com.br/They've created a REVISION BOARD adding links to audio recordings, videos and online exercises to a drawing.I asked Daniela a bit more about it:She says,"The drawing was made by a very creative girl, Clara (Daniela Becchio's daughter) !We gave her some instructions, basically that we wanted something like a bookcase.Then, we linked the different parts of the picture to a digital source.We wanted to give students:- a complete digital version of the curriculum.- a possibility to revise for the exam autonomously ( that's why we provided both the written and the oral version of the stories, for example)- suggestions on how to practice grammar and vocabulary.- examples of student-created content ( "my grammar book""personal coursebook")- a possibility to check their material, in case they missed some lessons during the school year.Our aim was also to help them with pronunciation, to support parents and also to facilitate success for dyslexic students."

I was planning to propose an e-course for English teachers involving studies related to the use of mobile devices in the EFL classroom when I was contacted by a dear friend, Jennifer Verschoor.Last year, Jennifer devised and monitored an online course on the same topic and we had been thinking about developing a project together.Our collaboration in planning this online course has been quite interesting with once-a-week skype meetings, a google docs for our planning and little my little we've put together an online course for Brazilian and Argentine teachers.This is the poster we've been using to invite participants: If you're interested in joining us, the enrollment information can be found at the bottom of the online poster.

Imagine you want your students to read an article from a webpage or a blog post but don't want to rely on the internet. Imagine you want to share a text from the internet with your students but don't want all those images from ads.Imagine you want to print an article from a webpage but don't want to waste so much ink with images and ads.What can you do?I'd like to share one of my most used tools at the moment. I often assign readings to students and more and more good articles can be found online. However, relying on wifi connection is not something I can count on right now, unfortunately.This is what you can do:1. Download the google chrome extension PRINT FRIENDLY & PDF .2. Open the website/article you would like to share with your students.3. Click the Print Friendly & PDF extension.4. Delete the parts of the text which you think are not vital.5. Download the pdf file.6. Share the PDF file with students.Learn how it works.

If you attended my talk during FAAPI 2015 in Cordoba, Argentina, you might be interested in exploring the links shared.These are the slides I usedThese are some of the links mentioned and used:infographic https://www.pinterest.com/pin/87186942760911404/video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a7NbUIr_iQ list of tools to flip your class http://list.ly/list/HAH-tools-for-flipping-your-class?feature=searchFlipped Classroom Field Guide http://www.cvm.umn.edu/facstaff/prod/groups/cvm/@pub/@cvm/@facstaff/documents/content/cvm_content_454476.pdfStudies supporting the Flipped Classroom Approach http://www.flippedclassroomworkshop.com/results-studies-supporting-benefits-of-flipped-classroom/ REFERENCES:BERGMAN, J.; SAMS, A. (2012) Flip your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. International Society for Technology in Education, USA.BISHOP, J. L.; VERLEGER, M. A. (2013) The Flipped Classroom: A Survey of the Research. American Society for Engineering Education. Available at http://www.studiesuccesho.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/flipped-classroom-artikel.pdfGUO, P. (2013) Optimal Video Length for Student Engagement. Available at http://blog.edx.org/optimal-video-length-student-engagement/PRINCE, M. (2004) Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research. In Journal of Engineering Education, 93(3), p. 223-231. Available at http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Papers/Prince_AL.pdfSome photos taken during the conference

"One can’t believe impossible things" said Alice. "I daresay you haven’t had much practice" said the queen. Writing has always been a challenging and an overwhelming task for the children. The interactive and fun way of doing this can make it a more positive experience and encourage them to write again.It’s a good way to focus on the sentence structure and how well the children choose their words. It also helps to use multimedia tools efficiently and improve creativity in writing and take it to a new level. Writeboard is web based document that you can work collaboratively and save your edits, roll on back to any version to compare changes. You can use it alone or with others. You name your writeboard, assign a password to it and mail it others so that you want to collaborate on it. Teacher can provide the first sentence of a story and children can write the rest of the story collaboratively using this tool.Before writing a story or doing a storytelling project, they can brainstorm ideas using this tool. OurStory is a tool to make your timeline by writing your stories and adding pictures, videos and text. You can send it others via mail or share it on different social networking sites. Children can create a timeline of someone famous, they can create timeline for a story that they have read or they can create timelines for historical events. StoryBird is site where you can create your own stories using existing drawings in a collaborative way. You start creating your book and you drag and drop your images from the gallery and write your text that go along with your images. You can change the colour of your background and you can move the characters move around the page. When you finish, you can publish it online and share it with others StoryBird is site where you can create your own stories using existing drawings in a collaborative way. You start creating your book and you drag and drop your images from the gallery and write your text that go along with your images. You can change the color of your background and you can move the characters move around the page. When you finish, you can publish it online and share it with others. StoryJumper is another tool to creat stories and publish them online. You can start a story from scratch or you can personalize a story of others. You can choose your background and the props that you want to use. You can also upload your own pictures and create your story using your photos. You can add text and as many pages as you want to your story. When you finish, you publish it and share it with others. Children can be given the same story to begin with. Children create their own stories on the same topic and share their stories with others, they can read a story and answer some questions about it or they can retell a story that they have read. MyStoryMaker allows you to create a story using different characters, settings and items to move  around on the story. As you build  your story using the  characters, Mystorymaker generates the text that you are going to use. When you finish, you can publish it and share it with others. You can also download it as a pdf file on your computer. TheStoryStarter provides more than 1 million story starters and prompts for all ages. This tool is great to start a narrative story.  Children can choose a starter that interests them and write their own stories. WhatifQuestions is a site that provides you "What if?" questions to generate your own story. Myths&Legends is  a site to create your own digital stories. You  can  choose interactive backgrounds, move objects around, change their sizes; you can also add  text, sound and record your voice while telling the story and share it with others. "You are not the same as you were before. You are much more… muchier now" said the Mad Hatter to Alice. 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.