Part of the Cool Sites weekly series!

Like most of us, I have only just recently (about a year ago) began to use web2.0 tools in my classes. It wasn’t easy at first. There is a myriad of tools at our disposal and new ones keep emerging at such speed that it’s enough to make your head spin. So, when I choose a tool to use I always try to think of what my students can get out of it, how tool A is more beneficial to them instead of tools B, C or D. I have tried quite a number of tools and I’m sure I’ll try many more, but at the moment my personal favourites are:

English Central – I love this site, because it allows my students to practice their speaking/reading skills, providing them with immediate feedback. HERE you can check the sort of assignment I give them.

Glogster – I guess this is already an old favourite of many of us. My students love the possibility of putting text, images, audio and video together in one place. HERE are some glogs they created.

Animoto – Simply brilliant! You upload your photos (and now even short videos!), add some text and music, let Animoto work its magic and you’re given back a wonderful video that you can post anywhere. No fuss, no muss! HERE are some examples.

GoAnimate – The possibilities are endless. From digital storytelling to book reports or simple vocabulary practice, you think it and GoAnimate will bring it to life! HERE are some of my students’ animations.

MyStudiyo – Great tool to easily create multimedia quizzes. I usually get my students to create the quizzes themselves and then use an interactive board to get the whole class to try out the quizzes. HERE is one.

Vocaroo – I use it  to give my students extra practice on their reading and speaking skills. They record themselves as many times as they want and then just post or e-mail me their recordings. Here are some examples.

VoiceThread – A recent favourite. Great tool for collaborative projects and to provide students with their own niche where they can practice and interact. HERE is my first project.

Last, but not least – Livetyping – It allows me to witness my students’ writing process, showing me what they corrected and rearranged before submitting their final text.  HERE are some examples.

So here you have it, my favourite tools. Am Looking forward to reading about yours!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Shelly for giving me the honour to contribute for her Cool Sites series, and also to express my sincere gratitude for all that she does for all of us.

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Alexandra Francisco is an EFL teacher in Madeira, Portugal. She has been teaching for 15 years at the secondary level and has only recently began to be involved in the teacher training area, providing short (25 hours long) workshops on the use of web2.0 tools in EFL classes.

You can follow her web2.0 experiences at her tech blog: ZarcoEnglish – Tool of the day. You may also check her assignments blog and her students’ showcase.

Part of the Cool Sites weekly series!

Web 2.0 tools I’ve used so far…

Web 2.0 tools are great help to jazz up your classrooms, help students practice the language, motivate the digital natives with their own weapons and boost creativity. Nowadays the more I learn, the more motivated I become and I’d like to share the ones which I’ve been using.

Glogster is a great tool which helps the teacher and now with the edu option you can compile all the students’ works in one place. I’ve used glogster to assign homework, for a listening activity for pre reading. My students used glogsters for their presentations. You can see some of them here.

Animoto is one of the coolest things I’ve discovered. I have used it to raise awareness before an activity, revise vocabulary, and introduce a topic. My students also used it for their presentations. You can see some of them here.

Photopeach is also similar to Animoto and you can use beautiful slide shows with background music. An example of how I used it is here.

I used Voki to assign homework. You can also use it as your voice whenever you want.

Wallwisher is something I really enjoyed. I used it to help my students for their research on their project.

Eyeplorer is something that I used for the same purpose -to guide them in their research.

Bookr and Bubbler are great tools that the teachers and students can use in many ways. Here are some examples how we used them.

Wordle is a cute tool and I used it as word posters of the units and to preteach vocabulary. I also used it for a writing activity.

Bombay Tv is a great way to jazz up your classroom. I’ve used it to introduce the target language.

With the goodies of fodey.com I’ve sent some messages and set homework.

Authorstream is a great help. I publish my grammar explanations on my blog by uploading my PowerPoint presentations.

I’m trying to keep up with the new ones but there are so many. I really want to hear what else we can do with them so I’m looking forward to hearing your suggestions.

After preparing this list I came across with Pin Dax which is an online message board service and with an inspiration from Dodie Ainslie’s post. I decided to add this and hope to get some ideas for my notice board collaboration.

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My name is Eva Büyüksimkesyan. I’m an EFL teacher working in the same high school where I graduated from and it is a dream came true.

I’d like to thank Shelly Terrell for this great opportunity. This is my first guest post and I feel so honored to be asked to do that. She is a great inspiration for all of us and I admire her motivation and enthusiasm. Shelly, you are such a great support and inspiration.Thank you…

Since I stepped into this great virtual world, I’ve been learning loads of things from all of you. So I want to thank everybody from my PLN and hope to increase the number to learn, share and work together….

You can read more about Eva’s use of technology in the classroom on her blog, A Journey From TEFL or find her on Twitter, @evab2001.

December 1st edition!

My guilty pleasure is…. Twitter… as you can tell by this weekly series, What Did They Tweet?

Kid’s Digital Stories

@JohnMikulski’s students have created beautiful digital stories using Storybird. Storybird is one of my favorite applications that you can read about here! John describes the project which has students write a short story in which the protagonist discovers something he/she would have been better off not knowing. Please read the stories and leave these students comments on their stories. Below was one of many of my favorites!

The Tower on Storybird

Using Scenarios in Your E-learning

This brilliant Slideshare presentation provides a wonderful reflection of how we design our instruction. Although the focus is on e-learning, this really relates to the instructional design of all courses. Cathy Moore challenges us to reflect on our instructional methods to answer the question, “Are we teaching our students to solve problems?” This presentation was tweeted by @EthanKuniyoshi.

View more documents from Cathy Moore.

Project Peace for Students

@ddeubel has created an international global project for students everywhere! If you are looking for an easy project to connect your students with other schools worldwide, then you may want to check out the details here. Join the ning, choose 1 of 8 songs about peace, download the song cards, have students decorate them, then make a video! Here’s an example of one of the video projects.

Find more videos like this on PROJECT PEACE

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference

One extremely valuable part of Second Life is the various free conferences you get to attend. @barbsaka, an amazing educator who has attended several Second Life conferences, tweeted about the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference taking place on March 12-13, 2010. Last year, over 3800 educators attended the event. Below is an example of what you can expect. If you feel comfortable with your Second Life skills, the conference is looking for volunteers, paper submissions, and presentation proposals. If you are new to Second Life, please join the SLife is Life ning where you will find educators like @barbsaka and me willing to show you around.

Dec. 4th Students Save the Rainforest!

This Friday, December 4th, at 12:25pm GMT, your students and you have the opportunity to ask Javier Dril Bustamente, a native of the rainforest, questions about saving the rainforest via twitcam. DM @chickensaltash to participate in the project. This will be a wonderful opportunity to get students involved in a project that helps them reflect about their responsibility to protect the planet.

Add the people in this post to your PLN by using this mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!

ddeubel, JohnMikulski, ethankuniyoshi, barbsaka, chickensaltash, larryferlazzo, kalinagoenglish

If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• Monthly Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• Monthly Tweets by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenges:

Leave a comment for the children’s stories or have your students leave a comment! Join many of the other collaborative projects in this post! Attend the free Virtual Worlds Conference in March!

What do you think of these tweets? Leave a comment below!

Collaboration has become the key concept to learn and engage ourselves through web. Web tools offer us the opportunity to collaborate and learn from each other; so this week, I would like to share my top collaborative tools for Shelly’s Cool Sites Series.

Palbee is a free online service that allows you to set up online video meetings with your friends or colleagues. You also have a whiteboard and it lets you draw, write texts, highlight or erase using different tools. Wetoku is similar to Palbee though you can set video meeting with one person, you can consider Wetoku as an easy interview tool.

Springnote is a web notebook service based on a wiki. You can create your own personal notebook or you can collaborate with others using group notebooks. You can create pages, share links and your bookmarks or share your files. Webnote and Writeboard are similar tools to take notes on net and share and make changes together. We have used Writeboard with Shelly while creating our proposal for IATEFL this year, it really worked!!

Wallwisher is an online and collaborative notice board maker. You can make announcements, lists, share your bookmarks with others or create together. You can add pictures, videos or give links. You can write anything you want to write on post-its and you can do more than that. Have a look at Nik Peachey’s Wallwisher as a great collaboration example.Stixy is a similar tool. You can try it too.

CoSketch lets you visualize and share your ideas as images using a whiteboard with others. You can upload pictures and draw on it, add shapes, you can draw at the same time with others and you can save your sketch as an image to embed it to your blog. DabbleBoard can be considered as a similar site. It’s another collaboration tool based on a whiteboard.

Wiggio is an online toolkit that lets you work in groups easily. You can send emails, text messages,voice mails. It makes it easy to share files and polls. You can set video conferences and also keep shared calendar, keep track of group’s tasks and resources.

Mindmeister is an online collaborative mind mapping tool that you can brainstorm with others real-time. You can create your own mind map on a award winning interface or share your mind maps with your friends or collaborate with others to create a collaborative one. Here is a good example with many other collaborative tools that you can use.

I hope you enjoy all the tools! And don’t forget to check Shelly’s cool sites every week.

Özge is an EFL teacher and a teacher trainer in Istanbul,Turkey. She is also the educational coordinator, script and screenplay writer of “Yes,I Speak English” DVD series in America.

Visit her blog: http://ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org/ Follow her on Twitter:@ozge

This has been an honor for me to write as a guest blogger on Shelly Terrell’s wonderful blog! I would like to thank her for this opportunity,her inspiring ideas, motivating words and lovely smile. She is forever a favourite on my PLN and real life!!

Thanksgiving edition!

Have you ever come across a tweet you wanted to share? Check out this weekly series, What Did They Tweet? to discover valuable resources! Once again I have changed the format to provide you with the best way to see the resources. Please leave a comment to let me know if you prefer this format!

Tweetsgiving

What better way to celebrate this tweet series and Thanksgiving than by participating in Tweetsgiving! For more information, read this post. Basically, you tweet what you are most grateful for between Nov. 24th through Nov. 26th and use the hashtag, #tweetsgiving. You can also donate to the Epic Change organization which puts the proceeds to helping underprivileged students around the world as the video shows below. This event shared by @willrich45.

TweetsGiving 2009 from LittlePurpleCow Productions on Vimeo.

Student Cyberbullying Project

A great way to teach students about cyberbullying was tweeted by @technologytoday who had his students create a Wetpaint website dedicated to cyberbullying resources. The students displayed several powerful images and videos dedicated to stopping cyberbullying. Additionally, the students included a discussion forum!

Creating Phrases in Wordle & Screen Capture

Wordle is an amazing educational tool and @cheimi10 shared an incredible tip via Twitter. Read his post to find out how to create phrases in Wordle. I’ve included his video tutorial on how to screen capture the Wordle, because it is one of the best video tutorials I have seen!

A Quote for Educators

I’m adding my own tweet to the mix, because it included an image from Anne Hodgson’s presentation at the BESIG conference in Poland. I have included Anne’s slide which includes this quote by her co-author, Carole Eilerton, “Break a lesson into pebbles that the teaching and learning stream washes over and polishes.”

Dilbert & Twitter

Simfin tweeted this hilarious Dilbert comic about Twitter!

New Father Alert!

Our great friend, @TamasLorincz, announced he became a new father to a baby girl, Sophie! Stay tuned for his Twitter pics and baby tweets! Don’t forget to congratulate him!

Add the people in this post to your PLN by using this mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!

willrich45, technologytoday, cheimi10, simfin, annehodg, tamaslorincz, larryferlazzo, kalinagoenglish

If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe for free to receive regular updates!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• Monthly Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• Monthly Tweets by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenge:

What are you thankful for? Why not share on Twitter with #tweetsgiving?!

What do you think of these tweets? Leave a comment below!

Every week, I share my favorite finds in this weekly series! Test these tools out. If you want instant access to these fantastic websites connect with me on Google reader!

Cutting Edge Technology Wiki

David Kapuler has created an amazing wiki dedicated to various Web 2.0 technologies. The wiki provides information on various tools, such as nings, blogs, and PLNs (personal learning networks). Below is one of the resources I discovered on the website, a video about PLNs. My favorite part of the wiki is that David has included his 6 free e-books that are amazing resources of various technologies.

Google Image Swirl

Google does it again with Image Swirl, a search engine for locating various images. Below is an example of what the image results were for my favorite artist, Marc Chagall, but really you have to try it out. The search engine is easy to use and highly visual. For more information read David Kapuler’s review and Richard Byrne’s review.

100 Twitter Tools for Students

Accredited Online Colleges has created a list of 100 Twitter tutorials and tools. The resources are geared towards students but can easily be used by educators new to Twitter. Categories include finding people, research, study breaks, discussions, building relationships, careers, and more.

Elearning & Web 2.0 Tools

Mindomono is a new mindmapping tool that has incredible features, such as embedding, adding images, adding links, and more! My favorite is the E-learning and Web 2.0 Tools mindmap created by Jesper Isaksson.

Language Links Library

Find over 100 fantastic links for learning languages at the CALL4ALL website. Categories include lists of text to speech sites, language podcasts, language learning blogs, language learning software, and more! There are various finds for teachers and students learning English or any other language.

Even More Cool Links

• For a list of cool websites, check out Ozge Karaoglu’s series, Faves of the Week!

Challenge:

Leave a comment below of a way you could use one of these tools or websites in the classroom!

You may want to subscribe for free to receive regular updates, leave a quick comment of how one of these tools helped you, tweet this, or share this series with your Personal Learning Network (PLN) through your RSS reader or Delicious account.

Third week of November edition!

Have you ever come across a tweet that you really wanted to discuss and share with others? Here are the ones that grabbed my attention this week. Check out the rest of this weekly series, What Did They Tweet? to discover some valuable resources and links! Go to the original mindmap!

Kids Videos to Help the Environment

Getting children involved in solving world problems is always a fantastic idea! Therefore, I really enjoyed these infomercials by first graders who list ways to help the environment. I discovered these videos through Stacy Bodin, a wonderful sharer of resources. Below is one video, but I recommend you watch the rest of the videos by visiting @grade1′s website.

10 Ways to be an Inspirational Teacher

In this brilliant post, Terry Freedman, delineates 10 ways to be inspirational. These are what Terry suggests, please read his post for an explanation of each!

1. Throw out the syllabus, at least one lesson a week
2. If throwing out the syllabus for a day is too risky, then throw it out for 10 minutes
3. Use the pupils
4. Use a photo
5. Turn the tables
6. Work with other teachers
7. Invest time in reading
8. Definitely visit other schools to see what they’re up to
9. Go to conferences
10. Join a club

Spoken Word Podcasts

Giselda dos Santos shared this link to Spoken Word podcasts. I am a proponent of podcast resources for learning, because a majority of students have Ipods. This makes this technology very accessible to a majority of our learners. Moreover, there are several free podcast resources available for education. Spoken Word is one of these databases that has a variety of podcasts, vodcasts (videos), and slidecasts available on various topics. I urge you to explore this website!

Video Games & Learning

Carl Dowse tweeted this slide show presentation, Video Games The Learning Revolution Tesol France, by Paul Maglione. One of the reasons I enjoyed this tweet so much was because I wasn’t able to make the presentation. I think gaming is growing as an accepted tool for learning. I have read various stances on the issue and think debate is warranted on the topic. Do you believe video games are useful learning tools? Look at Paul’s slide show and see if you feel any differently!

Stephen Fry’s Take on Social Media

Sue Lyon-Jones tweeted this post on Stephen Fry’s take on social media. Although Stephen Fry is an actor, I think he has a lot of insight on the new generation of students who will grow up with social media. Read the rest of the article to find out more and watch part two of the interview!

Add the people in this post to your PLN by using this mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!

stacybodin, terryfreedman, carldowse, paulmaglione, giseldasantos, esolcourses, larryferlazzo, kalinagoenglish

On the mindmap, click on the earth icons to follow the links to the Twitter profiles, blogs or websites! You can also make this mindmap smaller or larger and move it around. If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe for free to receive regular updates!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• Monthly Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• Monthly Tweets by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenge:

Share the list of 10 ways to be inspirational with fellow teachers or have your students create their own infomercials to improve the environment!

Do you believe video games are useful educational tools? Leave a comment below!

Every week, I share my favorite finds in this weekly series! Test these tools out. If you want instant access to these fantastic websites connect with me on Google reader!

IGNITE: A New Way to Present

In a previous post, I shared my Pecha Kucha Youtube playlist. I now have added an IGNITE playlist. IGNITE is Tim O’Reilly’s adaption of a Pecha Kucha except the entire presentation is only 5 minutes. I found this IGNITE video, Adapting with Technology, by Mark Argo on the Speed Geek Learning website which was tweeted by Diana Dell. Find more great IGNITE presentations by visiting the Speed Geek Learning website.

PinDax: Online Message Board

Sign-up for the free message board tool, PinDax! This message board service allows you to embed sticky notes with videos and audio files. You can also access your message board on your smartphone or embed it in a blog! Below is the demo board displayed on the website! Have fun exploring! A similar tool to Wallwisher, with a better design and features.

Kindersite

While attending the Virtual Round Table Conference, I learned about Kindersite. Educators and parents can register for free and have access to various tools for young learners learning various languages from English to French. These resources include comic strips, games, lullabies, songs, stories, and more.

Planbook Edu for Creating Online Lesson Plans

PlanbookEdu is a tool for online lesson planning. Register for a the free basic service and have access to the premium service for 30 days! Some of the features include the ability to attach files, check spelling, export to Word or PDF, access from anywhere, and share with others. The template looks very easy to use and I believe this is a great tool to get educators to lesson plan. Each year, educators repeat the same lessons so this tool with additionally save an educator lesson planning time in the long run.

Google Wave Index of Education Waves

Have you got Google Wave fever? I do and have added several people to various education waves. However, you can follow various education waves yourself by visiting the Wave Education Index. There are several waves listed to choose from, including some of my favorites:

Even More Cool Links

• For a list of cool websites, check out Ozge Karaoglu’s series, Faves of the Week!

Challenge:

Use one of the tools! Leave a comment if you found the tip useful or if you noticed a problem with the tool! Join one of the education waves if you are on Google Wave!

You may want to subscribe for free to receive regular updates, leave a quick comment of how one of these tools helped you, tweet this, or share this series with your Personal Learning Network (PLN) through your RSS reader or Delicious account.

Second week of November edition!

Here are the tweets that grabbed my attention this week. Check out the rest of this weekly series, What Did They Tweet? to discover some valuable resources and links!

Videos to Bring Languages Alive

Ken Royal runs an incredible website which is updated daily with several interesting articles by various educators. In this piece, Isabelle Jones, shares advice on how to effectively use videos to motivate students to learn languages. Isabelle also lists many video search engines and video tools. Below is the video wall from one site mentioned, Blinkx, which is a highly visual search engine that allows students to view what world events are taking place in real time.

Skype an Author

Patrick Larkin is one of the most progressive principals I have met on Twitter. One way to motivate students to read is by allowing them to interview and speak with their favorite authors. This activity is possible if you follow Patrick’s link with instructions and a database to help you Skype an author in the classroom. Below is a video from the website that shows you a class’ interview with author, Mike Artell.

Online Safety Video for Students

During our #edchat discussion about teaching students how to make a positive digital footprint, Kyle Pace shared this video. In the video, a girl realizes that posting her picture on the Internet has consequences. This commercial could be used to spark a discussion with students on the implications of several online behaviors. This discussion should be a part of all schools!

The Iphone App that Makes a Difference

My Iphone is definitely helping me to stay on track of projects with the various apps that help me coordinate, organize, and collaborate. Now, my Iphone can help me make a difference. Neal Chambers shared this tweet about the Do Good app for the IPhone. Daily your Iphone will provide you with activities that several people are doing to make a difference for the day. One example has people using less water throughout the day.

Cooperative Learning VoiceThread

Paulo Simões and José Carlos, who are from Portugal, have created this collaborative Voicethread for anyone to join and leave comments! The topic they are exploring is “How can a microblog promote cooperative learning communities?” Please add a comment to the VoiceThread.

Add the people in this post to your PLN by using this mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!

kenroyal, icpjones, bhsprincipal, kylepace, nealchambers, pgsimoes, jctf, larryferlazzo, kalinagoenglish

On the mindmap, click on the earth icons to follow the links to the Twitter profiles, blogs or websites! You can also make this mindmap smaller or larger and move it around. If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe for free to receive regular updates!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• Monthly Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• Monthly Tweets by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenge:

Leave a comment on the VoiceThread!

Which of these tweets really inspired you? Leave a comment below!

Every week, I share my favorite finds in this weekly series! Don’t forget to test these tools out. If you want instant access to these fantastic websites connect with me on Google reader!

Teacher Training Videos

Have you ever wanted to show a video tutorial to your teachers? Have you ever needed a video tutorial on the best practices of using a tool? With Russell Stannard‘s site, Teacher Training Videos, you will find a video tutorial on several tools and topics. The videos are categorized into different sections. Now you can take charge of your own professional development or share the website with a teacher new to using technology or teaching English language learners!

Easy Wiki Tool

I love the ability to drag and drop boxes, which is why Intodit.com is the fastest and easiest tool to use to create a free wiki! It took me five minutes to sign-up, choose a template, and start dragging and dropping pictures, movies, widgets, and music. The space wiki shown displays the type of quality which can be achieved. I like this tool much more than PBworks and Wikispaces.

Youtube Channel: Pecha Kucha

I have been working on my Youtube Channel and have decided to share it with you. The latest playlist includes Pecha Kucha videos I recorded at the recent TESOL Paris conference. Watch amazing presentations from Lindsay Clandfield, Burcu Akyol, Ken Wilson, Jamie Keddie, Gavin Dudeney, and Penny Ur!  Categories include:

• Video Tutorials
• Twitter
• Education Technology
• Education Inspirational
• Pecha Kucha
• English Lessons

Zoho Integrated with Google

When Zoho first came out, several educators debated which was a better service Zoho documents or Google Docs. Both tools can be used by students to create PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, and word documents. Now, you can use both tools for free, because Zoho allows you to sign-up with your Google account and integrate your Google Docs. Matthias Heil gave me this tip!

Even More Cool Links

• For a list of cool websites, check out Ozge Karaoglu’s series, Faves of the Week!

Challenge:

Use one of the tools! Leave a comment if you found the tip useful or if you noticed a problem with the tool!

You may want to subscribe for free to receive regular updates, leave a quick comment of how one of these tools helped you, tweet this, or share this series with your Personal Learning Network (PLN) through your RSS reader or Delicious account.