Monday, February 14, 2011

Bookr, Bubble Joy, Acapela TV

There are some real gems in Ozge's latest blog for Valentines Day. However, some of them are not only useful for you to express your love to your lover, but also offer you, as an English teacher, an opportunity to change your traditional teaching way in the English language classroom.


1. The first one is BooKr, in which  you make your own photobook; you choose a title for it and you search images based on tags (from flickr) and you drag and drop them in the book pages. You can add as many pages as you want and you can write a description or title underneath them. Then, you can publish the book for the rest of the users to see, you can send it to your email and embed it to your blog.


Here is my photobook: 








In the language classroom, we could have students create their own books and write about them developing the feeling of learners' involvment and at the same time offering an opportunity to practice their writing and speaking skills (could work in pairs or small groups). Also, teachers can use this, creating their own book and giving to the students to work with. Also, teachers can upload pictures of the classroom on flickr and have students make their books using them, writing about their reflections at the very end of the course. 


Also, there are others' comments on BooKr: (classroom discussion)



Bookr is a site for creating your own photobook. Starting with searching pics from flickr's enormous database you can upload them to your photobook(everyone's photos could be uploaded in Flickr). Add the title and the author's name and then add  subtitle description. Some of its features include blog sharing. It could be used as an excellent tool for short and simple projects for younger learners.  An interesting project could be a creation  of a photoalbum of their favourite pet or their family or their favourite job. A presenattion could follow so all the social and language skills are practiced.

Bookr is a tool that you can use to create your photobooks using flickr images.  Once you drag on the images you like, you can add some texts, or comments.  You can also adjust the position of the image (up and down), and you delete the images if you are not happy with it.  After you finish the photobook, you can embed it into your blog or your website.

Students can create their own photobooks about their hometowns or any place they went to and introduce them to their classmates.  


 it is convient for students/teachers to make presentations. There are plenty of resources that students can refer to when they try to find their pictures. It is easy to find pictures that you want and drag it into your photobook. 


BooKr: This is a tool that allows us to create our own photobooks by combining pictures with texts. There is a large data base for pictures. For instance, you can choose your topic and include it on the cover of your book. In addition, you can describle the photos or even create a whole story. The site can arise student's interest and ccreativity.




2: the second one is Bubble Joy
This site gives you the opportunity to create your own video greeting card. It's free and easy, you record yourself using your webcam and you can add a message and send the link to the one you want via your email account. Very easy and straight forward. Just one minute available for recording, pretty short.


In an ELT class: you can broaden the field of greeting to whatever you want, it could be a means of sharing information between students or recording oneself talking about a topic for a minute and sending it to the teacher as homework on speaking (practising speaking under time limits - for exams for example).


Classroom discussion: 
 A site to create your own greeting card. Requires a webcam and imagination. Record yourself speaking up to 60 sec(short for a speech enough for a wish!!). Ideal for using it with younger learners to practice their speaking skills. Self recording is beneficial for both the learner and the teacher. In the end you can add a background and sent the link via e-mail or tweet the link.

 It is the website that help you make the short time vedio and produce the web link that you can send to your freinds through email. 
As for the ELT classroom activities, it can motivate the students at young age to practice their speeking for real life use. The teacher can design a task to ask the students to make a wishing vedio. The students need to decide what to say with their pairs( practice listening, speaking and communicative skills ).Then they make the vedio together. By doing this, ss are motivated to practice.


3. the last one is Acapela TV
It is a funny website where you can just choose character (mainly an animation one) you like and type a short text. After that, the cartoon will repeat what you've just said in a humorous and funny way! 








There is a variety of languages to choose from as well as different accents like American and British ones;  

Students can use this as dairies to practice their speaking skills. 







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