British Council Turkey and well-known children’s storybook writers from Turkey and the UK have come together to produce free stories and resources for students and teachers of English. Well-known writers; Sevim Ak from Turkey and Sophie Smiley and Guy Bass from the UK have produced a series of 12 stories on themes of interest to Turkish young learners which have been kept short enough to serve as ideal classroom or homework material. The resource kits have been designed me, Merve Oflaz and Aylin Köyalan. Each story forms part of a ‘kit’ which also includes downloadable activities based on the story for students to complete either in class or at home. The kits also include detailed notes for the teachers to support them in exploiting the materials. You can download the kits here. We will have more downloadable kits in very near future.  It’s been so great to be involved in that project with other good names in ELT. The materials that we have created are unique, fun and creative. I hope you will enjoy reading the stories and exploring the kits. I am looking forward to your feedback!!

inSkilled Website inSkilled lets you collect, analyse and share what you find online. Current categories include Business, Art & Design, Social Science, Technology, Environment, Science, Practical Skills and Industries. Visual presentation of links. What do you think of inSkilled?

BuildYourWild Self is a cool tool to create avatars using different animal parts and attaching them in a human body. Children can easily create a wild creature  following simple steps. The best part about this tool is that you don’t need to sign up. Start with choosing the human body and browse through the different parts that you can add such as nose, hair, legs, arms etc.Then add some animals ears, bottoms, tails, backsides, arms , face and headgear. As you choose the body parts, you can also hear the sounds of the animals. When it is over, choose a background and click I’m done. Congrats! You have created your first wild self. It gives you all the information about your new wild self. Print it out or mail it to others. and, here are some ideas for you how to use this tool with your students: Ask children to create their wild selves and write about what they can and what they can’t do. Children can create a story about their new wild selves. Show different wild selves and children can try to guess which animal parts you have used. Print out some wild selves, as children describe their animals, the rest of the class try to create the same one as it is in the picture. Children can describe their animals. Children create a zoo photo album with their wild selves and their descriptions. They can even create their own "wild self zoo" on the bulletin board. Children can write more about the animals that they have used on their wild selves. Each child shows their wild selves, imitate their animals and rest of the class asks  some questions about them. Show them a wild self picture, give them the beginning of the story and ask them to write or tell the rest of it. This tool will be great fun for primary as it colorful, fun to play with and engaging. Enjoy! Image Source: ShutterStock  

Muvizu Website Muvizu is free 3D animation software (for non-commercial and educational use) Easily make 3D animated movies. The Muvizu website and 3D application allow you to upload your creations straight to YouTube. What do you think of Muvizu?

Last week in my appclass, we  celebrated our favorite teachers at school by telling our love to them!! For this, we have used Phoster which is also my favorite poster maker on the app market. They were also very nice to give us promo codes for my app class.  The task was simple for the kids. I asked them to take their favorite teacher’s pictures before coming to my class. In class, we took turns in talking about why we chose that teacher to be on our poster. We talked about our reasons. It was nice to hear from kids how they can express their feelings and what they really expect from the teachers. After brainstorming, they wrote what they would like to add to your poster as texts. Then, they started working on their tablets with their app. With Phoster, they chose their poster style, add their text and pictures, then saved their poster on their picture gallery. They showed their posters to each other and everyone voted for the best poster design! After they finish, I ask them to upload their posters on our Edmodo group and then write their reflections for this week on Evernote. What worked? This week, more students preferred to record their voices as they use Evernote.  The task was just enough for 60 minutes. All students completed their tasks before they leave the class. Phoster is a really nice app to create posters. Kids like exploring different poster styles. What could be better: Kids should see at least an example of the outcome. Visual learners will benefit from that!! I really enjoyed this lesson! I can’t wait for the next one!

This was where my digital journey had begun … This may be a beginning for you too! Electronic Village Online Sessions are five-week collaborative and hands on virtual courses & discussions that engage hundreds of educators every year. They are completely free and a great opportunity for professional development and connect with other teachers all over the world. This year, I will be moderating the "Crafting the e-Perfect Textbook" online course with many great and big names in ELT. If you would like to outline, design, and complete 1 chapter of an e-textbook that meets your learners’ needs and can be used yearly with a few edits and updates, our online course is the right one for you!! The registration starts on Jan 6, 2014. Don’t miss the opportunity, and share the joy! Image Source: ShutterStock

Tizmos Website Tizmos, for teachers, lets you share resources with your students using visual bookmarks. You can organize your resources by grade level, subject or project. What do you think of Tizmos?

New year is on the way and here are some tools to enjoy the last days of this year with your students! JibJab is an amazing site where you can place your face on different animated e-cards. Share this fun with Santa.   If you would like to chat with Santa, here he is the Santa bot, waiting for you to answer your questions.   If you are a gamer, here is an escape the room game. Help Santa escape from the room before someone sees him. Be quick!    ElfYourSelf  is a website that lets you create an elf of yourself. You upload your picture, create your mouth cut and choose your dance. When you finish it, you can download it or mail it to others. You can create up to five elves or you can get your Xmas elf name here. You have got something to say to Santa? He has got an email adress here. Let’s write and wait for his reply.   Make Santa jump, hop, dance, sing!! Write whatever you want and Santa does it for you on SimonSezSanta.   Visit Santa’s secret village in NorthPole and play games.   What about creating animated and personalized e-cards for others? Nice!   You can create a personalized Santa story for your kids. Here it comes!   What about creating a custom letter for Santa! You can film yourself or upload a picture and it to Santa’s mail.   Make your carol with Zefrank and share the joy!   How about following Santa on Twitter? Learn what he is into these days. You can play the songs with the Rain Deer Orchestra, squash their noses with your mouse or click the symbol on your keyboard.   Make your online snowflake and let it snow.   Are you on Santa’s good list?? If you want to learn, here you go!   Send an interactive ecard via OWorlds, decorate your gingerbread man,write your message and change your background.   Make your personalized Christmas card and share the joy with others. What about making your own virtual snowman! You can try this one here.   This calendar has a new animation for each day until Christmas! You can also try this one and solve a puzzle each day.   Decorate your Christmas tree here. and cheers to a happy New Year… Image Source: ShutterStock

ZippSlip Website ZippSlip enables schools and parents to fully process paper forms online, from any smartphone, tablet, or computer. All results are tracked and displayed by our cloud based app. What do you think of ZippSlip?

Dear all, As I am writing a book series for young learners at the moment, I won’t be able blog until March.  Till then, you can follow me and read my tweets here, also you can also join our EVO Course that will start next Monday. You can also reach me via my email : ozge_karaoglu@hotmail.com Take care! I’ll be right back! Picture Source: Shutterstock

OnlineCollegeCourses have compiled a list of free online resources where you can learn a programming language. Well worth having a look and seeing if there is anything suitable for you and/or your students!

Terakki Schools will be organizing the TELT conference on March 15 in Istanbul, Turkey. If you are already in Turkey, please join our conference. This year’s plenary speakers are Howard Gardner, the futurist Thomas Frey and Jim Scrivener.  For the rest of the wonderful line up of speakers, visit here: http://www.teltconference.com/ We are all looking forward to seeing you at the conference. 

Pixiclip is a new and a very neat tool for creating online sketches. Consider it like an online canvas where you can write or draw with a pencil or a marker, erase things, change colors and also add  pictures that you have uploaded before. As you are doing these things, you will also be able to record your voice or record yourself talking for three minutes. When you are done, you can keep your video private or public; and share it with other via social media. It is fast and easy and very user-friendly. A few ideas to u Great for storytelling! Ask your students to draw or tell a story using different pictures. Then they can share their stories.se this tool in class: Flip your lessons! You can summarize your lesson or explain a concept to your students. Great tool for feedback. Gather all the errors and the mistakes that your students have done and record your feedback using this tool. Students can use this tool for explaining things, talking about their projects or reflecting on their on learning! I loved this tool!! Image Sourse: Shutterstock

Three Ring Website Three Ring lets you quickly and easily digitize student work and build up a resource for authentic assessment in your classroom. What do you think of Three Ring?

Programr Website Programr lets you code, compile and run projects right in the browser in almost any language including the android and ios platforms. Share your projects and enter contests. What do you think of Programr?

PDFConverter Website PDFConverter provides a quick and easy way to convert PDF to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint and to create a PDF from literally any file. Maximum file size of 2MB. What do you think of PDFConverter?

SlideSpeech Website SlideSpeech transforms the way ideas are shared by reading the speaker notes in your own presentation using the latest text-to-speech technology. Works on computers, tablets and mobile phones. What do you think of SlideSpeech?

CourseSites Websites CourseSites is a hosted online course creation and facilitation service that empowers individual K-12 teachers, college and university instructors and community educators to host an entire course onine. What do you think of CourseSites?

HemingwayApp is a web tool to help you to analyze your writing, suggest changes and make your writing better.  This web tool does a few pretty interesting things. You can write or copy/paste a text on the tool. The web tool offers you some changes that will make your text better to read. It hightligts the hard and long sentences to read, overuse of  adverbs, passive voice, complex words or phrases. It also shows the readibility grade of your text.  A few ways to integrate into our classes: Great for students to check their writing before they hand it to the teachers. Good for EFL teachers who can check the readibility of a website or a text. Great tool for writer wannabes!  Try it today!

SBL Interactive Website SBLi lets you create and deliver multimedia scenarios for problem based learning on the Internet enabling your students to engage in a new education experience. What do you think of SBL Intereactive?

Text2Mindmap Website Text2Mindmap lets you create mindmaps by simply typing out your map and using the tab key to create the different levels. You can download as a pdf or image as well as saving or sharing. What do you think of Text 2 Mindmap?

PlagTracker Website PlagTracker is a unique checking algorithm that scans content for plagiarism. The system will find any content that has been plagiarized, along with a list of all the sources. What do you think of PlagTracker?

Course Builder Website Course Builder contains software and instructions for presenting your course material, which can include lessons, student activities, and assessments. To use Course Builder you should be familiar with HTML and JavaScript. What do you think of Course Builder?

Mightybell Website Mightybell lets you create colorful online groups. Choose a theme, make it public or invite only, and bring in your students with an easy series of invitations. What do you think of Mightybell?