Category Archives: ONLINE TOOLS

PENZU – a journal in the clouds

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PENZU is one of my favourite tools for writing. It is an online diary that encourages everyday writing. This diary might be used for taking notes, writing private thoughts, or daily diary entries. An entry can be emailed or kept private. It is possible to attach photos to every entry. There are several options for teachers for example – making comment which will be sent to the author’s mail box instantly, printing an entry or exporting in pdf or another text file. several screenshots from my penzu.

 

Entries submitted by my students

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THINGLINK – bring more life to your presentation

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My Higher ESOL  students are getting ready for their presentations.

I was thinking what other options apart from a good old power point I could recommend.

THINGLINK? ThingLink helps to create images linked with music, video, text, images, etc.

Presentations may be shared via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or kept totally private.

If you want to see this very short presentation click on the link. CROSS COUNTRY SKIING

CROSS COUNTRY SKIING presentation – example

 

 

VOICETHREAD

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VOICETHREAD is a web-based application that allows you to place different media such as images, videos, documents, and link them to the audio file presentation. An excellent way of making your students talk or write about the picture, document, ppt etc.

Describe the picture

Click the link if you want to hear what the students were saying. VOICETHREAD – describe the picture

VISUAL DICTIONARIES

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What do Snappy Words, Graphwords or Wordvis have in common? They are all visual dictionaries? They help you find the meanings of words and draw connections to associated words. You can easily see the meaning of each by simply placing the mouse cursor over it. Since I like SHARING, I looked SHARE up – see the pictures

http://www.snappywords.com/

LEXIPEDIA

 

http://graphwords.com/

http://www.lexipedia.com/

http://www.visuwords.com/

http://wordvis.com/

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

 

SNAPPY WORDS

GRAPHWORDS

LINOIT – finally organised!!!!!

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This is a fantastic tool that can be used as a  personal cork-board; easily talking to your Google calendar and sending reminders of what you have to do to your email box. YOU CAN USE IT WITH YOUR STUDENTS. I’ve started using it with my NC ESOL for EMPLOYABILITY (pic 1) and DPSI (pic 2). Jill, Mark and Ula don’t know yet what is waiting for them – but I’m planning to use it with SCP ESOL as well (pic 3). AND IT’S FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There’s also a paid option for these teachers who want to have more control and know who was this cheeky student that had peeled off the sticky note reminding about the exam. But, since we don’t have cheeky students, a free plan is more than enough. You share this interactive notice board with your classes and you won’t have any more excuses “Test? So we have a test today?!!”

LINGRO – THE “WOW!!!!!” DICTIONARY

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Go to http://lingro.com/ and paste the web address into the box and LINGRO 

 

Choose the language options (there are 11 languages available, including German, Polish, Spanish Russian, Dutch and Chinese) and click 

The webpage will open. Click on any word that you don’t know and read the meaning. You can add your translation and you can make your own vocabulary list. 

 

From the creators of LINGRO:

“Knowledge and information essential to human communication and interaction should be free and accessible to everyone. This is why we created the most comprehensive set of free dictionaries available under open licenses so that anyone can contribute, download, redistribute, and modify the dictionaries for their own needs. These licenses guarantee that they will always remain free and useful to society.”

LIVE BINDERS – AN ABSOLUTE MUST

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I’ve just discovered an amazing tool you can use for collecting resources and organising them neatly in sections and on virtual shelves. You have access to binders of other teachers and educators from all over the world for free. LiveBinders – http://www.livebinders.com/ offers a free and a paid plans. A free option gives you access to unlimited binders and unlimited shelves and up to 100 MB storage (files are usually websites with activities or docs so they don’t take up a lot of space). A paid option for educators costs around £9.00 a year and offers you bigger space– 500MB, plus you can upload your private files (pdfs, docs etc). It also allows you to make your binders totally private or share them only with people you choose. The best option for me is that you can share them with other people and you can use other people’s binders if you need some ideas. 

MY STUDY LIFE PLANNER – online cloud planner

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ONLINE TOOL

For those feeling overwhelmed with various classes, assignments, tests My Study Life might be an excellent idea. It is a free cloud planner for students and teachers. It stores different classes together with various assignments, homework, revision and exams. Classes, tasks and exams are integrated to show not only the information for the class, task or exam but also related information such as the tasks due for a class. Currently, My Study Life is in beta testing and there are already numerous new features and improvements waiting including My Study life on Androids and iPhones in 2013. It’s on windows phones already. Make your students plan their study lives – no more forgotten homework assignments, deadlines and important dates. The only thing you/they need to do is sign up on https://www.mystudylife.com/ AND IT’S FREE!!!!

WORDLE for teaching vocabulary

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Get students thinking about the vocabulary they are studying. Try http://www.wordle.net/ and create “word clouds” with words – from the text, new vocabulary, prompts for discussion, grouping activities etc.