Category Archives: ELT

Bubblr

Bubblr lets you use Flickr images to create stories. Type tags and select pictures into your storyboard. Add as many frames as you need and place bubbles showing the story and the dialogue between the characters appearing in the pictures.

Once the story is finished… publish it! Share it through facebook, send it by email or paste it in your blog or website! It is a good tool to work on given situations appointed by the teacher… for example: “Create a Bubblr with a story related to a situation at an airport”. Type the tag “airport”, or “airport lounge”, or “passengers” and use the pictures you have in the appearing library

audioBoo

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Time to say your thoughts instead of writing them down. AudioBoo has been created for users to create short audioclips and publish them online… brief thoughts and ideas to share with the rest of the world, or the rest of our classmates! Our Batxillerat/K12 students can register with their Tweeter accounts, and share thoughts about what they see in a given outdoors route, or what they watch on the TV/Listen to on the radio regarding some specific event, conflict or any other piece of news.

Bombay TV & B Movie TV

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This is good fun… and learn!!

Bombay TV is a nice and catchy website where we can add text to short Bollywood clips… amazing to foster oral and written skills, as well as vocabulary and accuracy.
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Choose a clip containing different scenes, with typical bollywood actors and stories… traditional, religious, modern…

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Add text into the clip: You can either write it down, record your voice or use the text to speech tool. All three ways incorporate your message into the clip, in text or soundtrack.

Have your students watch the clips, choose the most suitable one and then ask them to add a short story which matches the pictures… easy and engaging!

You can embed the clip or send it to others… share your work!

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If you or your students are not Bollywood fans… try B Movie TV… the same interface, but related to those old movies from the 50’s… good fun as well!

Real English in Youtube

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Have a look at this site. Real English shows very nice videos covering different communicative aspects as well as some grammar elements practiced orally. It’s a free site with a great amount of videos to be freely used in your classroom… andthey are catchy, believe me!

There are exercises combined with the clips, so practice before and after the clip is granted. Definitely worth a look!

Pic·Lits

Easy and simple… but very rewarding!

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Pic·Lits is a very simple online application to create visual poems… choose one of the pictures, Pic·Lits gives you a set of words related to the image… choose, and simply drag and drop to create your visual poem. Once the words are there, they can be modified to fit sentence agreement.

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You can also work outof your own imagination and create a visual poem choosing your own words… but don’t you think it is more challenging if your students have to create a poem out of a set of words?

Domo Animate

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Time for the youngest! Domo animate is a very beautiful site where kids can create their own animated stories, a bit like ZimmerTwins.

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A very intuitive interface lets you choose characters, background, messages, music and effects. just click and place the item in the scene.

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Once the item/character is in the scene, it can acquire movement, expression, it can perform actions… just click and choose!

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Keep adding scenes until the story is finished, and then publish it!

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It’s really easy… make sure kids think of the story before they start editing, once they are familiar with the application. You can embed it in your website, your blog, or you can email it to people… parents?

Enjoy it!!

Protagonize

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Incredible website to enrich writing skills, even for those who want to go further into writing full length stories. Protagonize is meant for those who want to write a story and want to share it with the rest of the world, or just with a tiny bunch.

Collaborative stories have room here… start with an introduction and a first chapter, decide if this chapter can also be modified, invite people to a private writing party or just leave it open to everyone. people participating in the creative process can add their own chapters and maybe edit and modify the others… give instructions on what you want the other people (your pupils?) to do, or let their imagination wander free.

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A  very clear interface, maybe not very catchy for primary education, where you choose the kind of text you want to write. You can add an introduction where you can let out an idea of the story you are writing, or maybe the instructions for participants.

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Decide wheter the story you are about to start is going to be your own individual work (students could create their own accounts and therefore work on their stories on their own), or you want to start a collaborative story, whereby a group of people/pupils will collaborate in the creative process chapter after chapter.

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If you prefer to play as you write, if you want to create an adventure, click on Addventure and start a story which will branch out into different plots which will take the reader into different developments of the story…  probably extra work,  but extremely catchy and motivating!! Your pupils can make groups and each of these groups can create a development of the story you create, or each student of the group can develop the story they have begun cooperatively in a different way.

What are you waiting for? Sign up and start writing!!!