Blog & Teach

If you are familiar with Facebook, here’s a nice and easy way to create your own social network: Ning :

With a few mouse clicks, you can create your network of EFL teachers, or of teachers interested in ICT, for example:

Take part in forums, upload files, images and videos, and share all your knowledge through an easy method of communication.

We’ll be probably creating an ELT Ning shortly. If you are faster, just let us know and we’ll join your network!

Have your students glued to their chairs in front of the screens as they practise their typing skills and subsequently learn a lot of vocabulary. Typeracer is a free Internet application where students test their typing speed and challenge their colleagues to see who’s the fastest in the group. It’s online, it’s easy and catchy. Have a look!

Do you remember ZimmerTwins? There’s a tutorial in this blog. It was a very good example of Internet resources that foster creativity and help students to improve their writing skills. we are going to see some other possibilities we can find in the www.

Short Stories is a very simple application in edu365

Teachers and students upload sets of 3, 6 or 9 pictures, and they are stored for their use within the application. You only need to choose the set of pictures, and order them as you like, write the story, be it short, long, complex or simple and have it printed. It is a very simple tool basically for primary students, with direct tangible results. You ca also record voice to be played. Stories cannot be stored yet, although this feature will be available very soon.

Bookr lets you create your own picture books out of the photographs you have previously uploaded in flickr. Even though it is more of a photo album than a book, it can be used by your students to make albums of the school trips or more visual projects they can carry out. Here’s an example from a couple of pages of a very simple but nice book:

Bubblr creates comic strips out of the whole flickr archive. add bubbles and create the stories that your imagination can produce. Primary school students will love it. They can also upload their own pictures.

These easy and rewarding tools show us writing activities are not only limited to pen-to-paper drills.

This is a good way to teach things! Visually, and with a very easy script. The Lefever brothers have created a series of videos with easy explanations on diverse issues, mostly ICT related. Information is easy and the pace is not too fast. Students will easily undertand it. You can find them in their own Youtube page

Why not trying to create similar presentations with our students?

Here’s a video on how podcasting works:

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This one is a very clear explanation on blogging:

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Cooking recipes are a source of resources for language teachers. iFood’s.tv gives you both the instructions and ingredients, as well as a video where you watch the chef showing you the way to cook the meal properly. The units are not metric, they are US, but it’s good!

If you really think the future in ICT-based English teaching is in Web 2.0. Your website is Go2Web20.net

The most extense directory of 2.0 websites. Collaboration, creativity, sharing and learning in a nutshell. Make sure you visit it!

DefineItFast.com is the fastest dictionary on the Net. It gives you different possibilities and the search is really quick.