If you have heard of Siri, you know that it is one of the features of iPhone, she is a program who has her own personality and humor. Here is a pretty cool and a fun web tool to create fake Siri messages. Simply, go to the web tool, write your text, and don’t forget to write "Me:… or Siri:…" at the beginning of your sentences. It gives you an image file of your fake conversation, just like it would appear on your phone. You can download, get a link or get the embed code for your blog. Here are some ideas on how we can use this tool with our students: Give students a topic and ask them to create Siri messages about that topic. Give the Siri messages blank and ask children to complete them. Give the Siri and a famous person’s dialogue in a jumbled order and ask students to put them in order. Make Siri give advices or recommendations to children. Write an idiom and ask students to be Siri and answer it in a humours way. If you like this tool, try also creating fake text messages. Image Source: ShutterStock        

After my previous post, here is another tool to create fake accounts and this time, it’s on Twitter. First, go to this link and write your Twitter conversation. Here is an example: TheWolf: I like eating little children. Little Red Riding Hood:@theWolf Don’t eat children, eat ice-cream please. When you’re done, you can customize your fake Twitter stream. You can write the full names, upload pictures, change colors, the background image and many more things. When it’s finished, you will see the Twitter stream.  Here are a few ideas to use Fake Twitter in class: Ask students to create a fake dialogue between two story characters. Students can create a Twitter stream to ask questions to inventors or important people in history. Students can ask questions to each other and answer them. They can create a Twitter stream with the new vocabulary or the grammar that they have learnt.   In groups, they can try to create the funniest stream about a topic. Tweets can be in a jumbled order and they can put them in order and write them using this tool.  If you like this tool, try this one as well. Picture Source: ShutterStock

iBooks Author Website Create stunning iBooks textbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. Start with one of the Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. Add your own text and images with drag-and-drop ease. What do you think of iBooks Author?

As we are saying goodbye to October, here are my favourite posts from this month. Enjoy the throwback! Boo to You keeps the Halloween spirit goes on in and out of our classes. Read my AppClass series and learn how I am using mLearning in my class with kids. Are We Ready for BYOT? and My AppClass. One of my favourite web tools lately, read more about it here: Reading Log for Kids.  Do you remember my Call for this App Project? Do please contact me! Also, don’t forget to try Fake Tweet Builder and Fake Siri. They have great potential in class! Witching you a happy Halloween!

Studio Sketchpad Website Studio SketchPad uses Processing.js, a programming language for creating animations and interactions for the open web. Prepare example sketches (with comments) for your students to work with. They can follow along step-by-step, and re-render the sketch at any point along the way. What do you think of Studio Sketchpad?

In the previous week, in my Appclass , we have used Tellagami app. It’s a free, fun and a neat app that can be used with elementary level students. It lets you create and design your own avatar, add a background image and record your voice. When you finish, your 30 second video is ready to share. You can share your videos via email or get a link, share it on Facebook or Twitter. You can also view your videos on Tellagami’s website as well.  At the beginning of the lesson, I talked about what I expected the kids to do and explained the app. I didn’t want the kids to use their apps immediately and record their voices spontaneously; so first of all, I asked the kids to write ten things about themselves; e.g.their names, likes and dislikes, where they live etc. on their worksheets. When they finished, I asked them to work on their apps and create their avatars and record their voices. When they are done, they have shared their Tellagami’s via link and also posted them on our Edmodo page.  What worked? The app is very easy to use so you don’t need to explain it to the kids in detail. They like discovering the apps themselves. They pick up how the app works easily. It is great that you can save your video in your picture gallery and access it later. Suggestions for a better lesson: As they have to record their voices using the app, they wanted to find a quiet place which was difficult to find!!! It took a very long time for some of the kids to write 10 things about themselves. As they are EFL students, they had some tiny mistakes as well so some of them couldn’t complete the task. I had some wifi issues, so some of them couldn’t share their Tellagami videos but they posted their video links later on Edmodo.  As a post activity, I asked the kids to write their reflections o Evernote. Here is one of the Tellagami videos: Overall, I and the students like this app! But still, we need time to create the culture of BYOT process and mLearning.   

Mathematics Coaching Consortium Website The Mathematics Coaching Consortium provides resource for teachers including lessons, lesson plans and powerpoints, pacing guides and study guides. What do you think of the Mathematics Coaching Consortium?

I love working on poetry with my kids! In my next post, I will be writing about how we have used some apps to create our own acrostic poems in appclass. In the meantime, here is a great web tool to write  poems. TweetMagnets gives you many words to write a poem, you simply drag and drop  the words on the blue area under the page. You can write up to 120 words. If you need more words, you can swap the words anytime by clicking the widgets on the bottom of the page. When you finish writing your poem, submit it and you will see it live on TwittMagnets twitter feed. Here are some ideas to use this tool:  Students can work in groups and write their short poems. Vote for the best poems.  Students can write poems for different topics or feelings. Ask students to come up as many sentences as they can using the words. Write a poem as a whole class and turn it into a school project.  Enjoy the creativity in class! Image Source: ShutterStock

Everything is going better in my appclass. the kids know what to do, how we proceed, they are managing their times better, they know the expectations. When we finish our tasks, they write their reflections on evernote, and I don’t have to remind them!! Appclass life is cool And this week,  we have worked on acrostic poems. After a quick poll, we decided to write acrostic poems with our names. We brainstormed on vocabulary and found some words that we can use while writing our poems.   Here is Melodi’s example: And here is what she has written: My favorite color is green Evernote is green Lolipop is pink Other color is blue Door is blue. It’s about you! I am happy to see how children have internalized the evernote =) When we have finished our acrostic poems, we used the app InstaQuote and we have created beautiful text pictures for our poems. See what Talia has done with the app below. After they created using their text pictures, they used the app Tellagami which is my far favorite app. They uploaded their text pictures at the background and recorded their voices reading their poems.  What worked: The apps worked! We didn’t have any problems with downloading, recording or saving the pictures on our tablets. We were alone in the library and we had two reading books empty so they used those two places to record their voices. The activity was just enough for 55 minutes! Everyone completed their activity.  Suggestions: Schools should certainly provide wifi for everyone and it should be fast!! Here are two of our Tellagami videos with our apps: Picture Source: ShutterStock

DreamPie Website DreamPie is a Python shell which is designed to be reliable and fun and bring you a great interactive Python experience. The window is divided into the history box, which lets you view previous commands and their output, and the code box, where you write your code. What do you think of DreamPie?

I am a big fan of using QR codes with students. They are fun, engaging and you can hide pictures, links, audio, text in QR codes and create many activities. Here is another QR code maker that I have come across today. QR voice is a qr code maker with a text to speech application hidden in it. You simply write your sentence, choose your langauge. (It has nearly all spoken languages)  and Qr Voice turns your text into an audio. Then you can download it and share it with other. Here are some ideas to use this in class: Create the QR codes of a story and hang them around the class. Ask students to walk around, decode the codes and try to put the story in the right order. Students can create QR codes by writing a different ending to a story that you have read. Hang them around, students walk around and choose the best and the most creative QR code. Ask students to create QR codes and leave messages for specila days. It can be done for birthdays. Create the QR codes of a dialogue and students decode and put the dialogues in the correct order. For more ideas, please read:   Hmm .. QR Codes Stay techie!

Online Python Tutor Website Online Python Tutor supports the core Python 2.5 language, with no module imports or file I/O and can be used as a platform for creating programming tutorials. Can also be useful for debugging code. Completed examples inlcudes as well as practice exercises. What do you think of Online Python Tutor?

These days, the job market is really challenging and competitive even for the native speakers. The more we educate ourselves about how to be more effective and progressive teachers, the better our chances are of landing positions that reward us both intellectually and financially. And job fairs are great opportunities for finding a new position. Here is the first and only job fair that will take place in Istanbul, Turkey. If you are a native speaker, living in Turkey or if you want to come and live in Istanbul; here is the link.  Join us and maybe we can work at the same school together!

In the  previous week; with my appclass, we worked on creating our own stickman stories. I had mentioned about DrawaStickMan before on my blog. It is kind a creative storytelling website where you draw a stickman and play the story according to the directions. It has two different episodes and a game. For the class, we downloaded the DrawaStickMan app. It is both available both on Appstore and GooglePlay. First, the kids played the games, some of them had already downloaded the both episodes and they played them both. We talked and brainstormed what could happen if there was a new episode. Then, I asked the kids to write a new episode for Stickman.   When they finished writing their stories, they wrote their reflections and their stories on Evernote. It is great that they came up with so many creative ideas!!  Here is one of my favorite stories: Stick girl is in the library. Draw a book for the Stick Girl. Book is soooo big and Stick Girl goes in the book. In the book, there is a lion. Lion eats the Stick Girl but in lion’s tummy, she kills the lion. She wins.  Another one: The stickman is in the jungle. He sees an elephant. You draw a trampoline and jump on the elephant. Then elephant is hungry and you draw a hamburger and give it to the elephant. Then he sees a stick girl and he loves her. You draw a flower and give it to her. You draw a heart. They are happy and walking on the beach. What worked: The kids loved the app! Some of them had played the game before so they moved on the activity quicker. They are full of ideas but some of them still needed some support. I told some of the kids that they could also record their voices on Evernote and they told that they had already figured it out and recorded their voices. Great!!  What could be better? I could have asked them to use another app to draw and write their story but they would take more time. Again, I had two students who hadn’t downloaded the app before, they don’t check Edmodo often, but this time they wanted to take note on the app that we will be doing in the following week. They are improving. and certainly, wifi is a must in BYOD classes! 

If you want to add fun and joy to your lesson with some music, here is a great web tool for this! It’s called LyricsGaps. With this tool, you can watch and listen a song, fill in the gaps of the lyrics using different tools. There are hundreds of songs that you can choose from in different languages. When you find your song, you choose a game mode. It can be karaoke, where students sing the song in a karaoke mode. You can choose the quiz, where the lyrics of the songs are in a multiple quiz form. Here, students listen and choose the correct words in the lyrics. Or, you can choose a level among beginner, intermediate or expert and the lyrics of the words come again like a quiz where the words are in a drop down menu. As the students listen to the song, they choose the right words.  You can also create a teacher’s account and create your own quizzes for your students with the words that you have chosen. When you are done, you can share the customized quiz with your students.  Also, when you click on any word, it gives you the definition of it which makes this tool much better! How to use this tool: Choose different level of songs for your students and let them try different game modes. Let your students create their own games modes for each other.  Have a kareoke party in class! Enjoy singing and listening the songs!  Image Source: ShutterStock

Codepad Website Codepad is an online compiler/interpreter for executing and sharing programs. Several languages are including: C, C++, D, Haskell, Lua, OCaml, PHP, Perl, Plain Text, Python, Ruby Scheme and Tel. After running your code you are given a short URL to share. What do you think of Codepad?

On Wednesday, it was the Children’s Right Day. We have been celebrating this day at my school with children.   And, for my appclass, we have decided to create posters for that day with some lines. For this week, I was looking for an app that we can use to create posters. Actually, Phoster is my favorite poster app but for this week, we have decided to use APoster!.  First of all, we have talked about children’s rights and brainstormed about it. Then, they have written what they think about the day, what rights children have or should have and written their thoughts. While they were writing their ideas,  I walked around and moderated what they were doing. When they have designed what they were going to include on their posters, they have worked on their tablets  with Aposter app. They have designed and added their sentences. When they finished, they saved their posters on their picture gallery. They walked around and checked each other’s posters and they chose the best one. They have also written their reflections on evernote and attached their posters as well.  What worked: The children liked writing about their rights.  Creating a poster was less challenging for them so they finished their task early. They could save their posters to their picture gallery. The app also offers sharing the poster via different social media platforms.  What could be better: Some apps are visible when you choose "Only for iPad or iPhone" so some kids couldn’t download the app. This is something that I need to teach kids. The app is neat and tidy but the children find it a little bit difficult to navigate. For next week, we will be using another poster maker. Can’t wait!!

Google Blocky Website Blockly is a web-based, graphical programming language. Users can drag blocks together to build an application. No typing required. Still in development mode. What do you think of Blocky?

If you like Animoto and use it to create videos, you may want to give a try to PicoVico as well. Just like Animoto, it is a web tool to create a video with your pictures. After signing up, you choose a video style, upload your pictures, add text, choose your music, add a few details and wait for your video to be rendered. When the video is ready nearly in two minutes, you can share your video via different social media tools or you can also download your video. It is neat and quick. I like different options for video creation. Here are a few ideas to use this tool in class: Students can create an advertisement of an object, film or a book that they have just read. If you go on a field trip, ask students to take pictures and create a video using those pictures later. Students can create a video of the things that they have done in holidays. The videos can be used for introducing school rules, families, what they like doing etc.  The things that we can do are limitless.. Image Source: ShutterStock

Here is a quick web tool to create polls using Youtube videos. It’s a pretty easy and a cool tool to use. Go to ClipChoose and get an account. Then, paste the Youtube video links that you want others to vote for. You can choose as many videos as you want. Make up a question for your poll, when you are done, share the link of your poll with others. They watch and answer your poll question.  Here are a few ideas to use this tool in class: Ask students to choose their favorite song. Students can create Youtube videos for a place that they would like to visit as a class. The others vote for using this tool. Students can advertise a book/ product by creating their Youtube videos and the rest of the class vote for it using this poll. Students vote for the best video and then you start a conversation in class about this video or why one is better than the other. This tool is a simple way to get quick feedback. 

JSLint Website JSLint is a JavaScript program that looks for problems in JavaScript programs. It is a code quality tool. JSLint can operate on JavaScript source, HTML source, CSS source, or JSON text. What do you think of JSLint?

Even you are an English teacher, you feel like, sometimes you need to ask a native speaker for the correct pronunciation of a word. There are many online dictionaries that read the words but my favorite tool is and will always be the "HowJsay". This is an online speaking dictionary of English word. The words are pre-recorded individually and this is not in a form of synthetic speech. Yay! You can hear the American and the British accent of the words with a clear voice. It is a very easy to use this tool. Write the word that you would like to hear the pronunciation. When you see the word in pink, move your mouse over the word and listen. You can create lists of up to 15 words. Write the words with a semi colon and click submit and practice your pronunciation. How can we use this tool in education: We should certainly make children learn about this tool, so while they are reading a story or working on vocabulary, they can use it. It would be good to introduce this tool to parents as well so that they can work with their children at home to practice newly learnt vocabulary even they have very limited English. This tool is sure to be one of your favourites!!

GameSalad Website GameSalad provides a platform for creators to rapidly design, publish and distribute original games. Create for a wide variety of platforms, including iOS, Android, HTML5, and Mac Desktop. What do you think of GameSalad?

November has been a long month! Here is a quick summary of what has happened in my blog this month: Here is a nice poll that you can create with Youtube Videos. If you like Animoto or Photopeach, you will love this post. We are having fun in my Appclass with my students. Read how we have celebrated the Children’s Right Day,  the most favorite and read blog post, how we have used Tellagami. Also read this creative storytelling activity.    If you like QR codes, here is one that you can create with voice.  Here is Twitter Magnets tool that will inspire you to write poems.  Would you like to work at a prestigious school in Istanbul, here is an opportunity for you! Goodbye November!