Inspired by Russell Stannard's suggestion in the video shared previously in this blog, today I created a little screencast for my Intermediate students after having worked with Past Tenses. The aim is to give my students the chance to hear the explanation as many times they see fit.

Another awesome tool to work with WRITING. http://typewith.me/HOW DOES IT WORK?You create a document and then invite others to co-edit it. Each author has a different colour and can collaborate all at the same time. There is also a chat box participants can use to exchange ideas. After the text is ready, you can save it as PDF or a word file.This is my trial with @janetbianchini . We built a story together.Another feature I liked was the TIME SLIDER button at the top. By clicking that, you can see how the text was built, word by word.Free online screen recorderAs I wanted to try it out, I sent an invitation via twitter and in less than 3 minutes, Janet Bianchini and Marisa Constantinides joined me. Check out Marisa's contributions in pink. Txs, Janet and Marisa.

Found this tool yesterday and quite like it. http://www.fliptext.org/You can type any text and they flip it for you. It's a pity they don't provide you with an embed code, therefore, you have to copy and then past the flipped text to use it.HOW CAN WE USE THIS SITE WITH STUDENTS?Type a series of questions, flip the text . Ask students to copy the text in their notebooks as fast as they can. Then students use the questions to ask each other .Type any text with target vocabulary / structure and ask students to copy it in their notebooks. Then, ask them to underline the recent words they've learned.

I've posted about http://memorizenow.com recently but hadn't had a chance to try it with my students. Yesterday, we had a great opportunity. My aim was to present new expressions of frequency and help my students memorize the chunks (once in a while, every so often, every now and again, more often than not, occasionally)Last year, while teaching the same lesson I noticed, students understood the expressions but failed in memorizing the full chunks (once + in + a + while) , as a result didn't use them very often and couldn't remember them in the written test. I first elicited from sts the adverbs of frequency they already knew (always, usually, never ...) and asked them to talk about their present habits using them (in pairs).Then, I called their attention to an exercise in the book where the new expressions of frequency were highlighted in BOLD I used a flipchart page (image on the left /promethean board) to have my students guess the degree of frequency for each expression by going to the board and dragging the expression to the right column. If they were right, an audio clip saying YEAH (sound file) played automatically, if they were wrong, the word would go back to its original position. After the expressions had been placed in the right columns (lower frequency, higher frequency) we drilled the expressions and asked sts to copy the list in their notebooks.I assigned one expression per student and asked each of them to write a sentence about their habits using them. While students were writing, I opened MEMORIZENOW Each student dictated a sentence with the adverb of frequency as I typed it in the MemorizeNow text box. After typing, I asked each student to read their sentence aloud. Then, I clicked MEMORIZE in the site and a few words from the sentences disappeared. Once again, I asked different students to read the same sentences aloud. Again and again, by clicking on the arrows, more and more words disappeared making it more challenging for students to remember all the sentences. Finally, I clicked LETTERS , and only the first letter of each word appeared. Students were then challenged to read the sentences again. (They did it beautifully)I asked students to write down all the sentences they could remember.  By clicking on the arrow, different words disappear from the sentence.  By clicking on LETTERS, only the first letter of each word appears.Instead of only drilling the expressions isolatedly, I think this memorization exercise is more successful if 1. the sentences are meaningful to sts, 2. expressions are contextualised.To learn how to use MEMORIZENOW, watch this great TUTORIAL by Demogirl .

Just found PAPER.LI via Demogirl's Youtube ChannelYou can make a newspaper from your twitter feed and visualize your own tweets and people you follow in a different format. http://paper.li/anamariacult

This last week, a colleague of mine, Estela, shared an amazing glogster she had come accross. This very creative teacher, webname sunrise651 (I'd love to find who this teacher is), from Bulgaria, has created several GLOGSTER posters to provide links to her students to study vocabulary and grammar.Instead of providing  our students with a boring list of links, making a glogster poster linking to exercises and other glog pages is simply brilliant. http://sunrise651.edu.glogster.com/glogs/sortedBy/date/?offset=30A Glog to provide exercises and games about FOOD:http://sunrise651.edu.glogster.com/food/ A Glog with links to Grammar exercises:http://sunrise651.edu.glogster.com/present-simple/

A fantastic presentation to watch. Watch up to the end when he talks about education. REALLY WORTH WATCHING. It's also a perfect example of using media to help presentations.Talk "How web video powers innovation"Click VIEW SUBTITLES to select the language.

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education | Video on TED.com via kwoutTake some minutes to watch this INSPIRING VIDEO.Quotations from the video to think about:"Children will learn to do what they want to learn to do." "A teacher who can be replaced by a machine, should be.""If children have interest then education happens.""There was photographic recall inside the children and I suspect it's because they were discussing with each other." "Education is a self-organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenom."(a self-organizing system is one where the system structure appears without explicit intervention from outside the system)

Apart from a few days ago, I had never tried to use the many cell phones we have available in the classroom to engage students. What I did was pretty simple, I asked my students to create mini dialogues with language we had just practised and then use their cell phones to record themselves performing it . Finally they would have to send the recording to me. I can't say it was a complete success but it sure got me thinking how to best use these mini computers our students seem to carry wherever they go.This post aims at sharing a few articles and videos I've collected about the topicCELL PHONES IN THE CLASSROOMARTICLES                                                                                                                                                  From Toy to Tool Using Cell phones as teaching and learning toolsHow to use Cell Phones to teach EnglishVIDEOSBuild your own custom video playlist at embedr.com

While browsing through my PLN in twitter, found this site MYONEPAGE suggested by @ozge to make online business cards where you can include links to your twitter, facebook, e-mail, web site and so on.After you create your card, there's even an embed code for publishing. How do you like it?http://myonepage.com/anamariacult

Sharing a simple Study Guide I've created for my students. It has links to various grammar and vocabulary exercises, ppts used in class and a video.

Yesterday, while talking to Andréa Borges, I showed her Joe Dale's blog which has concise posts full of links and wonderful ideas. That reminded me of a video from Teachers TV I watched some time ago where they show Joe Dale teaching French to his students. To watch the same video in Teachers TV, click on the link belowhttp://www.teachers.tv/videos/improving-your-presentations

I had alredy seen this tool via Russell Stannard @russell1955 but had never given it a go.It's incredibly simple, you register freely, and click to create your recording. Choose the option of the audio, give it a title and start recording. You can listen to a preview before publishing. As soon as it's published you're offered an embed code for publishing. During the sketcast you can record yourself while you draw and type.My trial was something simple to talk about my nuclear family HOW CAN WE USE THIS SITE WITH STUDENTS?have students record sketchcasts and describe their families, their bedroom, their house, a town scene, their city.students can also talk about any given topic you propose while they scribble.for groups, you can create a channel where all students can add their sketches.To learn more about SKETCAST, watch Russell Stannard's TUTORIAL

I decided to share one of the most pleasant activities I've been doing lately: TAI CHI CHUAN.Last year, during my cancer treatment, I was looking for some sort of meditation when I luckily found my old tai chi master. The movements are very smooth, gentle to the body and great for the soul. Specially when you're suffering the stress of such a serious disease, the peace of mind you get from the practise of TAI CHI , was exactly what I had been searching for.This is the trailer of a movie to be released "Masters of Heaven and Earth" 

I've always liked WALLWISHER, however, due to the limit of characters you can type on the sticky notes, if you want your students to write lengthy texts then Wallwisher won't work. I had been looking for a similar tool with more space for writing.STIXY serves the purpose. You can create a wall where several people can collaborate and share notes (long texts), photos, links and documents.Stixy: For Flexible Online Creation Collaboration and Sharing via kwoutWatch the TUTORIAL to learn more.Project developed by a colleague of mine, Polyana Vida, where students described their bedrooms.

A dense talk (by Sir Ken Robinson) made visually simple by the medium of animation.Can't we do the same in our classes, change the way we present, involve our students senses and minds?A MUST-WATCH.

Simple and useful tool for teachers and students. Let's imagine you want your students to carry out a research by finding bits of information from different websites. We all know how distracting surfing the net is, and here comes in FUR.LY. With FUR.LY , you add the URLs you wish your students to use and grab one URL generated by the site which guides students through the suggested sites.To test, I grabbed some interesting sites to develop writing I had bookmarked previously and generated a FUR.LY Url to share via twitter.http://fur.ly/2hr7This is how it looks, you can see the page navigator at the top.

This is a simple tutorial to show my trainees how to use Showbeyond to develop projects with their students. With Showbeyond, you add the images you want, record the narration for each image and then share it with the world.A colleague of mine, told me she wanted to develop a project with daily routine and I guess a great tool they could use is SHOWBEYOND. This is my sample story.

Want to send e-mails, text messages and voice messages to a group of friends?Want to set up chat rooms and conference calls for your group?Want to share files so that other group members can collaborate with you?You can do all of this and more using WIGGIO. I've just learned about it via a tweet from @ShellTerrell and would love to start testing it. The possibilities are great for groups you can create for friends, family, co-workers, your students , all in one place.Watch the TUTORIAL and learn more about it.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k63qSH5cwsk&feature=related 

Sharing a project developed by a friend and a Cultura EDtech member, Roberta Righetto. She invited her beginner students to create their own monsters , write a description , recorded each student and shared the project in a glog.Grammar topic: it's got .....  / Vocabulary topic: parts of the body.

The first time I heard about LYRICS TRAINING was a few weeks ago via Roberta Righetto. I bookmarked it but didn't try it out until some days ago after watching Russell Stannard's fantastic tutorial. First, you choose the language you want to practise (Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, German) then you select the song, the level (easy, medium and expert)and finally start completing the gaps as you listen to the song. The idea is pretty simple, however it's great fun listening, watching  the video clip and trying to understand the missing word. An additional feature is the way you can control the song, if you type the wrong word it doesn't accept and the song stops, to listen to that part of the song again all you have to do is clik ENTER. You listen again and again until you get the word right and the song continues. Let me tell you a secret: I had SO MUCH FUN, I ended up trying 3 or 4 songs just for the fun of it.Wonderful  LISTENING and SPELLING practice. Students can try it out at home,or you can use it in class as warmer on an IWB by showing it to the whole class and asking different students to use the keyboard to complete the gaps.This is a little tutorial I've created to show to students.

I feel thrilled when my students use our Edmodo group to ask me questions about content. It's proof they've accepted it as  a powerful communication tool. Yesterday, a student of mine sent me his doubts about S.Past, Present Perfect and Present Perfect Continuous. He sent me his questions in Portuguese, nevertheless, I liked the fact he called for help.So, how can I help him? If I don't want to wait until next class and talk to him face to face (and I believe he doesn't either) I need to answer him as quickly as I can. Traditionally, I would type in a written explanation which would be quite long, I imagine. So which tool could I use? I thought of sending him a video message where he could see me and hear me but then I wouldn't have the written sentences to show him the different tenses. I then remembered SKETCHCAST , a great tool I've posted previously.This is the answer I sent him today. The tool is incredibly easy to use, no downloads, all you need is your microphone and internet connection. Then you can send your explanation via e-mail or grab the embed for publishing. Learn more about SKETCHCAST with Russell Stannard's tutorial.

This last week, I learned about http://www.alexsclass.com , a perfect example of meaningful technology integration. Very beautiful work being developed, I wish I could be a student in this class. :)This same teacher, Alex, used PURPLEMASH to have students create drawings and a newpaper based on the content they were studying. http://www.alexsclass.com/tag/purplemash/purplemash via kwoutWatch this video to learn more about PURPLEMASHI haven't explored it yet and will be posting about my trials this coming week.

Found out about ENGLISH ATTACK via facebook yesterday.Another fantastic site to suggest to our students. ENGLISH ATTACK, has a selection of movie snippets which students can learn from. First, they pre-teach some vocabulary (words + definitions) necessary for the understanding of the scene, then you watch the scene and move on to the interactive exercises (very cool!).If you have an Interactive White Board in class, you can use it as a whole class activity. You can also take students to the school lab to work with a selected scene or a scene of their choice.