Creative Commons

If you wonder what Creative Commons is, you can watch this enlightening video:

Video and photo sharing

In this site, you can upload photographs and videos of your own.

I've uploaded one:



It'd be a good idea to see some in your blogs!

Glogster

With GLOGSTER, students can create online posters. They can upload photographs, sentences, images, animations, videos and music. It is also possible to create link buttons to other Glogs or to any other web site

Students can practice the following skills: reading and writing.

We can ask our students to make a poster about:

• special dates, such as spring or Easter
• famous people
• their best friend
• a shared experienced with friends (picnic)
• their country (pictures, songs, videos)


Tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80NISdsoouE

Here's mine. I made a poster with some of my blogs, a kind of e-portfolio. If you place the cursor on "Glogster" you will see the option to view the poster "full size".
When you click on an image, it will take you to the site.

Voice tools

The new AudioPal widget allows users to add dialogue to any website, blog, or social network page. The embeddable widget can be customized with your own voice, or one of many text-to-speech voices. 

AudioPal is easy to update and adds another layer of communication to your website. 

AudioPal is completely free. Ready to make your own? Click here to get AudioPal! 

Skill: speaking
If your students are working with blogs, you may ask them to record, not write, a post about any topic dealt with in class.

Drawback: it starts automatically.

SEARCH ENGINE

search-cube is a visual search engine that presents web search results in a unique, three-dimensional cube interface. It shows previews of up to ninety-six websites, videos and images.

search-cube requires that you have Javascript enabled and Flash Player version 9 or higher installed for your web browser.

Surveys

SurveyPirate is a FREE application that enables you to create, post and publish your own surveys.

GRAMMAR GAMES

British Council Learn English - go4english.com. offers a wide variety of word games designed to help students develop their English language

BBC's Skillswise offers factsheets, worksheets, quizzes and games. It's an excellent resource!

Grammar Ninja is a fun game for students to play. There are three levels. If the answers are correct, students can continue the game, but if they answer incorrectly the words explode.

Mighty Education Systems: teacher, student and classroom resources: Tools for Educators offers free worksheet generators, printables makers and a host of programs for teachers to make resources for lessons, lesson plans and printable materials for classes.

Top 100 Interactive Educational Games: games for children that can be applied to elementary levels.

Widget: the news

This widget shows a random front page from a UK newspaper. Updates daily.

Wdiget: grammar

Grammar Girl is the kind of widget students may enjoy. I offers grammar tips and examples to test students' knowlege.

SOME MORE GADGETS

GOOGLE MAP

If you wanted to add a google map to your blog, you'll just have to visit http://maps.google.com/, register with your gmail account, and copy the embedding code they offer you.

It's easy!


BLOG'S TRANSLATORS

As you can see, I've embedded the Google multi-lingual translator, just go to: http://translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=es&sl=en&tl=es and copy the html code. After that paste it in your blog!

Below, there's another one, just as good!

HUMAN CALENDAR

I've run into this gadget, the human calendar. Isn't it funny?

You can find it at: http://www.humancalendar.com/portable.php



As you can see, you can embed it in your blog or web page.

TESTS AND QUIZZES

With ProProfs you can create a free quizz for you classroom and embed it in your blog

It is perfect for making your own quiz, online tests, training, recruitment, exams, trivia or just plain fun quizzes!

HERE you will find ideas about how to use this quizz maker in the classroom.

Watch the following presentation and learn a little more about ProProfs:

ProProfs Quiz School: Create and share quizzes

Here's one I made for one of my courses:

Possibility and probability » fun quizzes

WRITING

BOOKR is a web tool that allows you to create and share pohotobooks with images from flickr.

Students can write their stories, save them and send them by mail to their teacher or even publish them in their blogs.

1. Use the built-in search to find pictures on Flickr.
2. Provide a title for your book.
3. When you find a picture you like, just click on it and it will be added to a page in your book. Repeat for each page.
4. When you’re satisfied with the book you’ve produced just hit the Publish this book button or send it by mail.
   

Here's an example:

Photo editing

For those who enjoy playing around with photos, here's a web-page worth visiting. It shows 28 different online resources where You can change, enhance and make funny photo editing without knowing and program like Photoshop.

Some of the tools on here would be great in the hands of students for media literacy activities, deconstructing media conventions and advertisting by creating original magazine covers, motivational posters, etc.

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/services/28-online-photo-editing-websites-to-have-fun-with/

I did this one with :- ) FunPhotoBox

Here's another one at http://www.hetemeel.com/einsteinform.php:

TAG CLOUDS

What's a tag cloud?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"A tag cloud or word cloud .... is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag."

I will list some of the sites I've found:

1. http://www.wordsift.com/ This page shows the most frequent words of the Academic Word List in the Academic Corpus. Sublist 1 contains the most frequent words in the AWL. Sublist 2 contains the next most frequent words, and so on.

1. http://taggalaxy.de/ words move around in space, as if they were planets.

1. http://tagcrowd.com/ : you may make your own tag cloud from any text and visualiza word frequency.

1. http://www.wordle.net/ : you can generate “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. Here's an example, created with the content in this blog:
   

• There are many applications in the classroom. Some teachers use it for vocabulary words or brainstorming.
• You can also paste the text of an article in order to 1) predict the text or 2) analyse the topic after reading it.
• Entering a speech and analysing the ideas in it.

ANIMATION

The following site lets you draw a person and then turns your drawing to a bunch of dancing people having a good time.

http://roxik.com/pictaps/

Students can:

• Go to the site
• Draw a person
• Get the embedding code and post the animation in their blogs
• Describe in writing what he/she is doing, what he/she looks like. It would also be interesting to say what is going on in the animation.
  

Here's mine:

RECORDING

Viewpoint is an audio and video repository that allows you to record your audio/viedo online using your microphone or webcam, or upload existing media.

These media itmes can then be linked from other sites or embedded inside your own web pages/blogs. Note that this product has been developed for educational purposes only.

It is anteresting site to explore!

SENDING VOICE MESSAGES

Send sythesized messages to anyone by BlindSpeak

Originally developed as a proof-of-concept for a bigger project created by Resorb Networks, Inc. - BlindSpeak® allows users to send synthesized messages through the web. The service has a wide arrange of uses, from sending a unique "happy birthday" message to your friend - to sending a more serious, anonymous message to someone.

Students can use it to check pronunciation.