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.

I have been creating  edtech materials for young and very young learners with my kindergarten kids for the last three years at my school. Daisy and Drago is the very first animation that has been drawn, coloured, animated and dubbed by children in the world. You can watch the second part of this animation, "Daisy, Drago and the Magic Wand" here. Last year, we created "Bubble and Pebble" digital games which were drawn, coloured, dubbed and inspired by kindergarten children. Those digital games are, again the very first digital games in the world that were created for children by children. You can play them here. And today, "Bubble and Pebble" digital story is on and avaliable on Apple Store!! It’s the very first interactive book which is drawn, animated and dubbed by children in the world. I proudly present it here! Yay! I would like to thank Demet Küyük very much for her constant help, hard work and doing a great job as the developer of this app.

Summer holiday is already over and it’s school time for many of us again. If you are thinking of integrating technology into your lessons this year,  here are some ideas to start the new year with some techie icebreaker and warmer tools. Ask children to create their biographies on Animoto which is a video maker with music, text, pictures and transitions.  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. Create a Vyou video and let children ask you questions about you or the lesson. Encourage children to create their own videos, brainstorm about the questions that children can ask each other in the classroom. Listen to the questions and the answers in the classroom when they are ready.  TodaysMeet 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. 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!! 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. 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. Create a private online social network with Yammer which brings Twitter and Facebook together. Ask children to introduce themselves, talk about their summer holidays, post pictures, decide on the classroom rules. What about creating  a collaborative online board using Wallwisher 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. Use Tricider as a brainstorming tool where children can answer the questions and also vote for each other’s statements or where they can go against them writing why. Ask questions to children and decide on the classroom rules all together.   Create a quiz slide show about you or your lesson with Photopeach where you can include music, pictures and text. This is an another way to talk about school, rules, ourselves and our lessons. Create a quiz with EasyTestMaker to see what the children remember from the previous years.  Ask children to interview each other using a simple voice recording tool, Vocaroo.  Online surveys or polls can be an interesting and a fun way to get to know our kids better, to learn their opinions about school,learning English or what activities they enjoy doing in class. SurveyMonkey and PollDaddy can be two good choices. 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 assignment for the summer, you can ask them to leave their comments on Voicethread by using different commenting styles.  Enjoy the new 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. Click here to learn about Rasmussen College.

If you are looking for different ways to practice writing skills of your students, here is an interesting tool to do this. ThankUz is a tool to write online "Thank you" card and send it to others. After signing up, click on create and it will take you to a page where you can write your card. You can choose to change the color and the hand written style of your card by clicking on the panel below. Play with the note type and choose the one that is suitable to you. You can also add a picture on your card which makes this tool more fun! When you create your card, the words that you can write are already on it. You just change some parts of it and send it that way. If you like, you can delete the ready card and you start it over with a blank page. When you finish, send it with an email, Facebook or Twitter. You can also get the link to share it that way. Here are some ways to use it in education: Ask children to write a "Thank You" card. Children can create cards to celebrate birthdays, New Year and send them to each other. When you finish reading a story, children can send cards to the characters using this tool. Write a note to children and ask them to answer you back using this tool. Children can write short stories using this tool. Ask children to write a note to their parents/grandparents to ask for New Year presents. ThankUz makes writing and reading fun and rewarding for our students with easy to use style and with its stylish themes.I am sure it will be fun for us as well.

Brainstorming and voting for ideas/projects are one of the activities that we often do in and out of the classroom. If you would like to put two of these features together in an online platform, you should meet with Tricider. This is a web based tool that helps you brainstorm around an idea, go for or against it and vote for the best solution. Enter your question or a topic that you would like to be discussed, brainstormed your students. You can add more details and explanations to your question. When you are done, share the link with your students and invite them to participate in the discussion. You can also post it on social media sites. Now, they can add their ideas, vote for the ones that they like the best, go for an idea or go against it by adding their reasons. The tool allows us to add pictures, links and text to support our ideas. When everyone has shared their ideas, you can collect the results. You can also decide when to finish the voting/brainstorming or you can add reward to the ones that participate. Some ideas to use this tool in and out of the classroom: Create a poll for students on any topic. If you are planning a trip to a place with your students, let them decide on it together. Students can brainstorm words or phrases on a certain theme. Let children debate on a certain topic. We can get feedback from our students about our lessons.  Set a task for your students and let them brainstorm for solutions and they vote for the best solution. I believe this is a cool tool for collecting ideas, brainstorming and collaborating with your students.

If you are looking for a new way to add fun and interactivity in your reading, literacy or storytelling lessons, here is the Character Scrapbook from Scholastic.   This web based tool helps you to analyze your character in a book or a story that you have read. By writing down the answers of the questions, you can write the details of the characters. First, you create your book character by choosing the eyes, hair, mouth … and the clothes. Then you add some more details and your reflections about the story. They are: Ten things I know about my character, the words that describe him, the details about his appearance, the facts about his personality, the challenges he faced and the accomplishments that he has achieved.   When you are done you can print it out. How to use this tool: This tool is a great replacement for a book report. Group the students and each group can create a scrapbook for different characters in a book. Instead of writing about a character that they have read, they can use this tool to create their characters. They can create their own story by using this tool. Students can create their own imaginary character scrapbook in groups. Then, they come together and create a story involving all the characters that they have created. This tool is a great way to extend the knowledge that they know about the book and the characters. Have fun!

"There are only three questions in life: What do you want to do, why do you want to do it, with whom do you want to share it?" from the writing of a 16th century yogi … Time flies and a six week of summer holiday unplugged draws to an end. It’s time for me to go back to work and blogging again. Let’s start with the good news! I’ve always been a fan of Shutterstock which stores ultra-high quality and professional images in their websites. And, this year, I am thrilled to announce that I have partnered with them. Their pictures are sure to make my posts stand out! So, tomorrow, come back again to watch this blog for new blog series, tech tips and new web tools and apps that you can integrate into your teaching. We have just started!! Image Source: Shutterstock.

As you may know, I and my colleague Demet Küyük have been developing mobile applications that are created by children. You can check several of them here! This year, we are developing a new educational mobile application which will be a digital storytelling app that will be student - generated.  So, if your students are 6 to 11 years old and if you would like to be a part of this iPhone/iPad/Android application with your students, please mail me here: ozge_karaoglu@hotmail.com  I will be sending you the details on a seperate e-mail.  We are looking forward to collaborating with you! Image Source: ShutterStock

I am a fan of diaries! I consider them as a way of reflecting the things that we have experienced and the record of our lives! Good news! With the developing technologies, today we can keep our diaries online as well. There are different tools that you can keep an online diary, and here is my latest favorite one, Current! Current allows you to keep an online diary where you can only write 140 characters per entry which makes this tool fun and easy for our students.  It is free and you simply write your entry and save it! Here are a few ideas to use this tool in class: Ask your students to write what they have learnt everyday using this tool. 140 characters is sure to motivate them! Students can write the reflections of the day, their projects or the week. When they year ends, they can follow their progression. Students can write the 140 character of a story every day! If you get one account for class, everyday one student can be responsible for summarizing the lesson. Or, you can write a collaborative story that will be built on! Students can keep a diary for summer time to share their reflections of their holidays. Current will be another cool and favorite tool of mine. Hope you like it too! Image Source: ShutterStock  

If you are looking for a way to motivate kids to read more, here is a cool website for that!  Reading Rewards is a tool to keep track of what and how much you are reading. You can find the books that you are reading from Amazon (like that you can create your online library) and add them in your reading log. Then, every day you write the minutes and the number of the pages that you have read. If you like, you can add your reviews and your rate with your comments on your log. You can create a wish list of the books that you would like to read too.  Also, as you read, you earn RR miles which you can spend by getting a Joke or Riddle of the day. Or, parents/teachers can add some rewards as well! You also earn badges as you read books. The first badge is the Newbie Logger! That’s super cool! First of all, it is a great way to motivate kids to read. Teachers can create their own classes and moderate how much the students are reading. Teacher can also set goals for students.   It is also a great way for kids to compare themselves with others on how much reading they do. They can also recommend books to each other. Great networking for kids! I really like the way teachers/parents can set some rewards for kids. The rewards can be a day without homework, or a few extra minutes to spend with thei r tablets.   Picture Source: Shutterstock

It’s September and we’re back to school again.  This year, if you do not want your students to use only pencil and paper, here are some ideas and tools that can enhance your lessons with some technology. Evernote is one of the my favorite web tool/app ever!  You can create different folders for different lessons and take notes by writing text, audio and images. If you are using Evernote on your phone or on your tablet, then you can immediately take the pictures or record your voice as you are listening to a lecture. In class, we can motivate our students to keep record of their learning by taking notes all throughout the year. Like that, Evernote will be their e-portolfio and a great showcase or feedback of what they have learnt in a year. Evernote can be a better replacement and more eco-friendly when compared to a paper-based portfolio.   Edmodo is a mixture of Facebook and Twitter but it’s been designed for classroom use. With Edmodo, you can create a class and invite your students to join in. You and your students can write text, share links, videos, make comments. You can also create a class calendar, assignments, create quizzes and send them to your students. Edmodo can be a great back channel that you can collaborate with your students outside the classroom.  Google Docs is an online word processing tool. The best part about Google Docs is that you can work on a word document collaboratively online. Students can easily work together on group homework or they can brainstorm together on ideas. Also, teachers can give immediate feedback on their students’ written assignments. Class Dojo is a system where you can monitor your students’ behavior throughout the day using your tablet, phone or computer. As a teacher, you create your classroom and adjust student’s behavior points.  When a student is off the task, you can take away the points and when they are on the task, they can get points. By the end of the day, you can see the graphic of how well or bad the students’ behavior is. Your students can also get badges and parents can monitor their progress as well. Class Dojo is a just a great way for monitoring behavior and motivating the students. Powtoon can be a good replacement for PowerPoint this year in our classrooms. It simply allows you to create online presentation and animated videos, then you can upload them on Youtube immediately. Students and teachers can share their ideas and stories, present new information or ideas for discussions using this tool. We can challenge our students with this tool and get rid of the boredom of PPTs.  Penzu is an online diary. You can create class journals for each of your student, leave inline comments on their diaries. You can also create and send assignments  with due dates to your students. Penzu is a great tool that students can keep to improve their writing throughout the year or record a summary of what they have learned in the lessons.  Socrative is a student response system that empowers teachers to collect data from their students. To use this tool, students need to have an access to a browser, phone or a tablet. This tool/app is a set up where you can immediately create multiple choice questions, exit cards, polls, questions with pictures or short answers. The answers that you get from the students will be visible immediately on your screen and this will be a great feedback for us if the students have understood the lesson or not.  TodaysMeet is a service for hosting backchannel discussions in the classroom. Once you create your room, students will need access to the room through their phones, tablets or computers. This tool can be used for real-time discussion during a class watching a video or someone presenting; or it can be used as a tool to poll students quickly, or as a forum where students can anonymously ask questions. 

Easy Tweets is a cool website that I have found out lately.The website finds interesting and real tweets at your language level easy, medium, or difficult. It uses the word lists from Cambridge University’s English Vocabulary Profile project which lists more than 15,000 of the most common English words, ranked by difficulty level.  Go to the website, choose easy/medium or difficult, then write the keyword that you would like to find tweets about, then you can enjoy reading the tweets. If you think that a tweet is inappropriate, click on the flag and it will be deleted forever. This tool can be used with upper levels and that’s great for teachers if you are looking for and using authentic materials in your classes. Picture Source: ShutterStock

I love word clouds! And Wordle is certainly a long time favorite of mine. Here is another word cloud generator if you are interested! You can copy and paste text or you can enter a URL to see the word cloud of the website. It’s a great first day introduction tool. You can create your own word cloud about you and show it to your students to make guesses or make them create their word clouds about their feelings or themselves. Picture Source: Shutterstock

Sound of text is an online text-to-speech tool that allows you to listen and download the MP3 audio from Google translate. Without signing up, simply type what you would like to hear, up to 100 characters. After hitting the submit button, you will be able to listen to what you have written in many languages. This simple tool is a great way to practice speaking and writing in different languages, as well it will help us and our kids to practice spelling and pronunciation.   Picture Source: ShutterStock  

Here is a simple and a very effective tool that we can use with our learners. Meet ShortText. ShortText allows you post text online, with minimum fuss. You can also insert a picture and a video into your post as well. When you’re done, simply click on the create URL button to get your online page. You don’t need to sign up or sign in and this is what makes this tool more powerful to use with our students.  You can also make your post private and allow comments which make interaction better. The only con is that once you publish your text, you won’t be able to edit it. You will have to create another page. It also has a Chrome extension and a Firefox Add-on that will make it easier to post for us. This tool is great for instant blogging, writing an essay, creating party invitations, provide information on any topic, creative writing with a picture or a video, creating your one page website. Hope you and your students enjoy! Picture Source: Shutterstock  

Wheel Decide is a web tool that will help you to make choices in your classroom easier. It lets you write your own choices and the wheel will show you the choices that you have written. Then, you can spin the wheel and you will get one of the choices that you have written. This tool can be used as a student selector. Write your students’ names and find a random student to answer your questions or to present in the class. Instead of writing the student names, we can write some target words that we want to study with our students. We can play spelling games, sentence formation or hot seat games. We can also write questions for kids to answer and they can work in pairs and answer the question that they have read. Thanks to Yasemin Bayraktar for this cool tool! We learn everyday from each other! Picture Source: ShutterStock  

This is just a quick post to say that I have put together a couple of instructional pages on how to use the Track Changes and Comment features in Pages (Mac) when doing collaborative writing work in class. At the end of the instructions, there is an editing and proofreading checklist for children to use as part of this process. I would try to embed the code but I think it won’t work so well due to the size of the window, so here is the link to where I have uploaded this to Scribd. Feel free to use this in any way you like if it is useful to you. Authored by suzievesper. Hosted by Edublogs.