Fotobabble's talking photos can be our trump card!

Fotobabble allows its users to add voice to photos very easily and quickly. How amazing can this be? I got excited about it from the very first moment and I knew that I would send lots of Fotobabble's talking pictures to my friends and family. If you tell me that you are not tempted at all, I will not believe you! So we can imagine that if we like Fotobabble so much, our students will love it! Most of our students, especially secondary ones have already a Facebook account, Instagram account, twitter and others of which I might not have heard. They are used to uploading photos and they love it. Fotobabble takes pictures to the next step. Instead of writing comments under them we can actually record ourselves talking about them. The possibilities of what we can do with talking pictures in the classroom are countless but first I think it is important to understand how Fotobabble works.

How does Fotobabble work?

Fotobabble is free but we need to create an account. First, we visit Fotobabble's site http://www.fotobabble.com and then we click on the "sign up" button, we fill in the required details and our account is ready to use!

Image 1

Once we have made an account we can create Fotobabbles very easily and quickly following three main steps.

1.Upload a picture.
If we look at the image above, we can see that there are 3 ways to upload a picture. We can upload a picture from our computer. Secondly, we can sign into our Facebook and use one of our pictures there and finally, we can paste in the URLof an image that we have found on the Internet (we should be careful with copyright issues).

2.Record ourselves.
Once we have uploaded a picture we have to wait a few seconds because we need the Adobe Flash player to connect with our browser so that we can start recording. Then we click on the "Allow" button and we can click on "record" (Image 2). When we are done we can click on "Play" and check if we like our recording. If we are satisfied we can choose to make it private and then click on "Save'.

Image 2

3.Share the fotobabble.

We have got all the options for sharing on the right part of the site (look at Image 2). The easiest way is to copy the link of our fotobabble and send it via email. Of course, we can share it on Facebook, Twitter etc finally we can embed it on websites by copying its embed code. Keep in mind that when we embed into a blog we can change the size of our fotobabble from the width and height.

One more detail about Fotobabble

If we go onto the "My fotobabble section" we can see all the fotobabbles that we have created which we can edit or delete. For more details check Russell Stannard's teacher training video Fotobabble-get your students speaking .

What activities or tasks can we do with Fotobabble?

Fotobabble is definitely one of my favourites web tools. We can use it to make our students speak either in classroom or at their home about whatever we want. Below are some of the ideas which I hope you find useful.

Speaking

• Students can use their own photos to talk about themselves, their best friends, families, pets, their houses, their village, their town etc.
• We can ask them to take photos while being on holidays or during weekends and ask them to talk about these.
• Students can talk about educational excursions, visits to museums, zoos etc
• We can choose a topic (robots, sports, their favourite singer, athlete, country, city, myth etc) and ask them to use relevant pictures from the Internet. There are tens of billions of photos out there so why not to use them? 
• Students can comment on topics they have heard in the news or talk about books, comics and movies.
• Our students can choose a photo they would like to talk about or they can invent a story pretending to be someone famous, a foreigner, eyewitness of a burglary, someone applying for a job or talk about other imaginary situations.
• They can choose a photo and sing an appropriate song for it.
• They can try to guess what their classmates are doing in their pictures.

I am sure that our students will be something more than willing to talk about their own photos or photos they have found on their own. Speaking will become more meaningful and personal. A good idea is to ask our students to create a blog where they can embed all the fotobabbles they create. In this way they will have a personal collection of fotobabbles which will remind them of what they have achieved. In addition, they will have the chance to show these to their family not only to their teacher and I hope this will motivate them to work even harder. At the same time listening to themselves speaking will boost their confidence.

Vocabulary

• We can make our own fotobabbles to talk about the topic of our next unit.
• Our students can find pictures which describe the meaning of the new vocabulary and make a story trying to use these words as many times as they can.They can do the same with idioms.

Colourful pictures and our students effort to make the recordings can make our vocabulary activities more memorable.

Miscellaneous

• There are many schools in Greece who have pen pal relationship with schools in Europe or America. So it would be great for our students to exchange fotobabbles with them.
• If this is not possible, students in the same school but in different classes can exchange fotobabbles.

Limitations to think about

The main limitation is our students security. We can teach them how to make their photos private but still on the homepage of Fotobabble we can not predict what the content will be. The same danger runs when our students will be searching for pictures on the Internet. However, we can deal with these if we and their parents guide and monitor them through the whole process. We can also make a class account if our students are under 13, therefore, not allowed to open an account. Another issue is the lack of interaction because fotobabbles are monologues. Of course, we can not have everything! Other kinds of speaking activities can promote dialogues and real interaction. Furthermore, if we have many learners we will need much time to give feedback to all of them and we will not be able to listen to every fotobabble during classroom time. We can have them work in pairs and correct each other but still we will have to address each of our students individually. Thus, we should manage our time carefully!

Why I say yes to Fotobabble

• Our students will be creative and make something which they will own.
• They can develop their own interests which can help them become more autonomous learners.
• It is fun and can make students willing and more confident to speak.
• It can help them to practice pronunciation and develop fluency.
• It is free, easy to use and time saving.

One last thought 

 Most of our students will practice and record themselves many times before actually saving their fotobabble. This can help them develop accuracy while speaking, however, we should be sure that they do not have unrealistic expectations. It is important to let them know that in oral speech people tend to make pauses to think, they do mistakes and they produce incomplete sentences or even words sometimes. So, no one expect them to talk like robots. For a change we can ask them to brainstorm or talk about a topic just for half a minute and save their first try. There are lots of different activities that we can do using Fotobabble, I am sure that you will also have come up with quite a few by now! 

I wish you happy fotobabbles!

Printscreens from Fotobabble

Word clouds are appealing and can be useful as well, thanks to Wordle!

Wordle can help us turn texts into word clouds. We can do this very easily and quickly simply by visiting http://www.wordle.net. The site is free and no membership or account is required. Once, we are on the page we can click on the "Create" button and then a box appears where we can paste any text we have already copied or type words, sentences or text (Image 1). Then we click on the "Go" button and a word cloud is created instanlty (Image 2). The site requires the Java programme which can be downloaded very easily.

Image 1

Image 2

How does Wordle work?

What Wordle does is to create word clouds by distributing the words randomly all around. The more frequently a word occurs in our texts the larger it appears in our word cloud. Look for example at the above word cloud. The text I have typed is: "Look at the dog named George barking and jumping all around. How silly is George the dog. " The most frequent words are "George", "dog" and "the" which appear larger in contrast to the other words.

Why does Wordle stand out from the other web tools which allow us to create word clouds?

Wordle is special because it is easily costumisable. Once we created the word cloud there are four categories: language, font, layout and colour which can help us recreate our cloud according to our teaching aims. Below you can find some of the most important choices offered in each category which can make our lives easier.
Language: I believe that the choices make all words lower case, make all the words upper case, guess case for each word, remove common words can permit us to create appropriate clouds so that we can ask our students to either indicate which words should be written with capital letters and which with small letters or in cases we have removed the common words (which are usually functional words like the, in, and etc) we can ask them to recreate the sentences.
Layout: Choices like all horizontal and any which way can make our word clouds easily to be read or suitable for tasks where our students have to categorize the words in it respectively.
Colour: Apart from the colour options offered we can easily costumise colours so that for example we can choose a nude colour for the majority of the words and intense ones for the words we want to stress.

Other important tips

Right click on a word can delete it from the word cloud.
When we create or paste a text we can keep words connected simple by using a tilde between them.

Finally, we can either print our clouds or by clicking on "Print " we can choose to save them as PDF files. Another option is to save our cloud by clicking on "Publish to Gallery" (there are many already made word clouds there available for us to use) then copying the embed code assigned to our cloud if we want to embed it on a web page.

Ideas for classroom practice

First days of class

• We can ask our students to use adjectives or/and nouns (including toponyms) to describe England or their school.
• We can ask them to use adjectives and describe how they want their teacher to be. We can also create a similar word cloud.
• They can make word clouds with their expectations from our lessons or refer to their learning difficulties (grammar, past tense, speaking, prepositions).

Most of us tend to ask lots of these orally but now we can use Wordle for a change and make our lessons more interesting and colourful. Students will be more engaged and will get to create something of their own from the very first day. We can use these word clouds as posters to decorate our classrooms. In addition, in our first days we usually have plenty of time so we can give our students the time to explore Wordle.

Reading skills

• Wordle can help us do pre-reading activities. We can make a word cloud with difficult words including in the following reading exercise and ask them to predict their meaning. Something else that we can do is to make a word cloud with the whole following text and ask them to tell us (predicting from the most common words) what they think the text will be about. Finally, we can make word clouds with words summarising the main ideas of the following text and ask our students to brainstorm and talk about these.
• We can also do some post reading activities focusing on the vocabulary and grammar of the text. For example, we can ask our students to make clouds with the words they do not know or with difficult words. They can make clouds with synonyms or antonyms of particular words in the text or find the compound words, collocations, motion verbs, regular or irregular verbs, cohesion words. Our students can make sentences with the above as homework.
• They can work in groups and use the most common words of the text to make a story

Writing skills

• We can give our students two word clouds generated by texts on the same topic but the first will be formal and the second informal. This is a way to make them realise the different writing styles by actually letting them discovering the distinguishing features by themselves.
• We can give them essays that other students have produced and ask them to compare these. They might find spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes, repeated words, limited vocabulary etc.
• Our students can also work in groups and brainstorm on the topic of the essay.

Vocabulary

• We can make a revision on the vocabulary. After each chapter they can work in groups and make word clouds with words they have learnt and liked the most. We can use these word clouds to decorate our classrooms and as a reminder of what they have achieved.
• We can have them match words, find collocations. For example, we can type everyday habitual activities like take a shower, brush my teeth etc and ask them to match them.
• We can give them a new word and make clouds with every word they associate with it (Image 3).

Image 3

Grammar

• We can use Wordle to make a revision or to present new grammatical points. For example, we can create a word cloud with sentences including "used to + infinitive" and "I am getting used to + gerund" and ask our students to recreate these (Image 4).

Image 4

Special occasions

• Our students can make word clouds with happy birthday wishes when one of their classmates has his birthday.
• They can make clouds to describe Christmas or Easter.

Some limitations to bear in mind

The main problem is that we can not edit the word clouds once they had been created. Our word clouds will be lost if we try to refresh the page or return back to the box. So we will have to rewrite the text or paste it again! This can be very frustrating and very time consuming so we need to warn our students about this and keep reminding this to ourselves.

Why I do suggest Wordle

Wordle can be very appealing which can make our students willing to participate. In addition, it can help students who have a visual learning style and others who love collaborating with each other. Moreover, our activities will be more memorable since students will be more engaged and creative. It is also important to remember that to generate a word cloud once you have come up with the words takes not even a second! So let's give our students this time to produce word clouds, I am sure that they will love it!

Printscreens from Wordle

Vocaroo- a voice recording site which can transform the concept of homework!

Vocaroo is one of the simplest voice recording sites on the internet! We do not have to download or install anything neither to create an account to use it. We only need to have internet connection and a computer with microphone. Then, we can go to http://vocaroo.com page, literally click on one button and start recording instantly. Finally, we can save, share or embed our recordings extremely quickly and easily. Vocaroo is free and by far the most easiest to use tool I have ever seen.

How can we use Vocaroo?

1.	Well, we simply open Vocaroo page.
2.	We click on the “Click to Record” button and as soon as we click on this, Vocaroo is going to request permission to access our microphone and camera. Then, we have to click on “allow”.
3.	As soon as we click on "Allow", Vocaroo will immediately start recording what we are saying. We should bear in mind that we can do recordings up to 5 minutes.
4.	When we are finished, we can click on “Click to Stop” button.
5.	Then we can review our recording and if we are satisfied with it we can save it.
6.	Another option is to share it via email or embed it onto websites, blogs. We can also download it as MP3.
	If you need more details about how to use Vocaroo, you can visit Russell Stannard's teacher training video . Reasons for us to use Vocaroo! First of all, Vocaroo is free and easy to use, really easy. So, it is suitable for inexperienced in technology teachers and for intermediate and pre-intermediate level students. I know that when it comes to technology, we as teachers feel the need to have full control of the web tools and Vocaroo can make us feel secure and confident. Furthermore, have you ever been worried that our students are not given many opportunities to speak in class because of the limited classroom time? How many times have you struggled to give all of your students the chance to practice speaking? Vocaroo can help us transcend our classrooms' borders and have our students do audio recordings while being at their homes. They will have the chance to practice more on their pronunciation, grammar, to develop their listening and speaking skills, their fluency and gain some confidence before the next time they will be requested to speak in front of the whole classroom. What is more, Vocaroo can establish a connection between what we do in class and our students homework. To become more explicit, we can work on the above skills and language knowledge in our classrooms and prepare them for the recording they will have to make at their homes (I will refer to this again later on). Homework might become more meaningful and pleasant as well. I remember recording myself singing songs in Greek and English using my cassette recorder. Nowadays, thanks to technology things are easier and many of our students might like the idea of recording themselves, pretending to be singers or sports journalists. Our students might develop their own interests and become more autonomous and by doing something interesting they can become more motivated. Finally, it is extremely easy for our students to send their recordings to us and we can also easily make recordings which will function as feedback and send these to them. In this way, we can have a more personal relationship with our students and address their needs individually. Activities and tasks with Vocaroo! Grammar We can use Vocaroo to help our students practice past simple. For example, we can ask them to do a recording and refer to what they did yesterday, over the weekend or during their Christmas holidays. Vocabulary We can work on the already taught vocabulary. For example, in every chapter there is a vocabulary build up section. We can choose some key words or difficult ones like idioms and make a recording by simply saying these words. Afterwards, we can send it to our students and ask them to write down the words they heard and make their own recordings by producing correct sentences which reveal the meaning of these words. Finally, we can send individual feedback to each one of our students indicating the areas they have to work on.  Speaking In our classes we usually deal with topic areas like family, professions, pets, friends etc.We usually make a warm-up by showing them some pictures and then we help them remember some relevant words. We then make some questions to initiate a dialogue and help them speak. Unfortunately, the time we have is very limited, thus, I believe it is essential to use Vocaroo and ask our students to record themselves at home while talking about their best friend, their pets etc. We can give them some questions as a guideline.  Another idea is to have them talk about their favourite food, book, or city. You can present these recordings in your class and ask from their classmates to guess what they are talking about. Of course, if our number of students is big we might not have the time to do this. In addition, you can have them occasionally talk about anything they want or even create imaginary stories. Finally, our students can record themselves reading the text we have done in classroom. I sure that most of them will go through the recording process many times till they feel satisfied.  Communicate with our students We can use Vocaroo to inform our absent students about what we covered in the lesson they missed and give them instructions for their homework. Our students can say to us what they have not understood. Some things to consider Vocaroo can be a very good tool but there are some things we have to bear in mind. First of all, if our group of students is big then we will have to devote a lot of time to listen to each recording. Now from the part of our students, they have to speak quite loudly and close to the microphone. This can be frustrated at the beginning because they might not be used to the idea of recording themselves. Nevertheless they can try again and again when being alone at their homes and overcome that problem. Another issue is that there is no interaction, no communication since the students produce monologues. To deal with this, we can ask them to work in pairs and assign them roles like interviewer and interviewee so that they will have to listen to each other and answer properly.  I like Vocaroo because it gives our students the chance to speak. I used to hate it when my teachers planned extra teaching hours for speaking only a week before the exams and expected from me to speak confidently and fluently. Let's give our students the chance to practice on speaking and communicate with us through recordings. Our lesson can be so much different, funnier and more personal than the other school subjects. This is one of the advantages of being a language teacher! So, let's make the other teachers feel jealous of us! Printscreens from Vocaroo

Triptico- a tool that can trigger your imagination and bring fun to your classroom!

Triptico is a tool which I would highly recommend to any language teacher in my country. It is very easy to download it and works in any brand of Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) and with any kind of software you use. I am sure that nowadays most of you have already been asked to use an Interactive Whiteboard in your classrooms or if not, well, then you should get prepared because Interactive Whiteboards are in fashion lately. Triptico can transform IWB and makes us see it from another perspective. Phrases like "it often doesn't work the way I want it to work" can occur less frequently. Of course, when it comes to technology we should always expect the anticipated and never get frustrated when this occurs. So, Triptico can make things easier and give us the chance to get used to IWB. What is more, we can use it even without IWB as long as we have a computer and a projector. This was enough to make me download and give Triptico a try but what actually fascinated it me and convinced me to use it in my classrooms was its variety of resources which are costumisable. We can use these resources and make them do what we want to do depending on our students needs. These are just frameworks with no limits but our own imagination.

How can we download it?

As I have already said, first we have to download it. It is free! Of course, you can choose to subscribe and pay 15 pounds for one year if you want to take advantage of more resources. You can download it really easily, just visit the website here click on the" individual user" button and on the next page make sure you scroll down and click on the Triptico download icon. Triptico uses Adobe Air so if you have not installed this in your computer, you will need to download it. This will happen almost automatically when you click on the Triptico download icon which will let you know if you need to download or update Adobe Air. Then save and run the application. That was all!

About Triptico and how it works

Once you have downloaded it, you will see that Triptico offers four categories of resources (see Image 1) : tools, timers, selectors and quizzes. In total the application is constituted of around 20 different resources

•  which can promote vocabulary, grammar and text oriented activities ( "Word Magnets", "Order sorter"). 
•  Timers which can help us keep time for our activities, breaks and make class funnier and more appealing.
• Selectors can help you manage group work by actually making the groups.
• Finally there are some games/quizzes which can be fun and formative at the same time ( "Find Ten", What's the question?").

I will focus on the "Word Magnets" which is one of the most popular tool of triptico.

Image 1

Word Magnets

You click on the "Word Magnets" option and then you have two choices:

1. either to create a new board
2. or load a saved board

Let's assume that this is the first time we use Word Magnets, therefore, we will click on "create a new board". 

1. Afterwards, we can copy a text from somewhere and paste it there and then we choose a background (among 42 choices: triangles, two boxes, many boxes, arrows showing process, letters of the alphabet, graphs) and our text will be broken up into words randomly allocated on the board which our students will be able to move like refrigerator magnets. We can colour these magnets or change their size.
2. Alternatively, we don not have to copy and paste a text but we can simply overlook the steps copy paste and choose a background and create an empty board where we can add words immediately as magnets.

We can save the board we have made for future use!

What can we do with Word Magnets?

There is no limit when it comes to this tool so feel free to be creative and challenge yourselves. Here are some ideas:

•  If we copy and paste some text we can ask our students to move around the magnets and create it from the beginning. Our students will have to focus both on sentence structure and meaning at the same time, thus, the activity has a purpose and becomes memorable.
•  Furthermore, there is flexibility since we have to decide how to use the text. For example we can work on the grammar of the text or on the vocabulary. We can delete some words and ask our students to replace them with another one or we can check if they can remember the word that we deleted. Moreover, we can create sentences with spelling and grammar mistakes and ask them to correct these or we can ask them to establish cohesion in our text by creating words like nevertheless, on the contrary etc.

• In addition, if we choose not to copy and paste some text, we can choose the background which divides the screen into 2 parts and make 2 lists with singular and plural, countable and uncountable nouns, words with positive or negative meaning. 
• We can make a revision on participles, idioms, regular and irregular verbs.
• We can further divide the board into more parts or boxes and work on parts of speech or give our students one noun for example and ask them to create the equivalent verb or adjective.
• We can match synonyms.
• Another idea is to use the letters of the alphabet background to make a revision of the taught vocabulary.
• We can make family trees.
• There is also the possibility to upload a picture and have our students come up with words describing this particular picture. 
• We can present the process of the recycling by using the background with the arrows showing process or we can ask them to make a recipe.
• Finally, we can have fun with the boxes and ask them to create magnets with what they need to shop from the supermarket or what they want to take with them when they will travel to England.

Downsides

• Keep in mind that the text we aim to copy and paste should be short in order for the students to have enough space to work.
• We have to monitor the whole activity and make sure that only one student interacts with the board and the others have to wait for their turn.

Why I do suggest Word Magnets

First of all, I think Word Magnets is appropriate for English language teachers in Greece. All of us, have to work on grammar and vocabulary and devote a large part of our class time to these. Directors, our students parents and even our students sometimes expect from us to do only grammar. Word Magnet can give us the chance to teach English grammar in a funnier and efficient way for the below reasons.

• Promotes interaction and collaboration. We can work with whole classes or divide them into groups.
• It is visually and orally appealing and students have the chance to move around the classroom. So students with different learning styles can have the chance to benefit from our lesson.
• Students can create their own magnets, so the activity becomes personalized and more memorable. Apart from creativity, motivation is also promoted.

Why I do suggest Triptico

Word magnets is only one of the resources that Triptico can offer. There are many other tools which are all easily usable and adaptable according to our students level of English and needs. It is free and available for all of us. One last tip I want to give is to have a look at the Timers and Selectors. We can use them to keep time of our activities in class or to make groups. I would use them with funny tasks in class so that I can increase my students anticipation and create a playful and pleasant atmosphere in my class. Smalls details can make the difference! 

Have fun with Triptico! 

Printscreens from Triptico

Dvolver can be a nice start!

ICT in ELT may sound complicated for many English language teachers. I was worried that ICT may result in wasting so much of our precious classroom time on explaining to our students how to use web tools rather than allowing time for them to actually use these. However, Dvolver-movie maker seems to be a nice start for inexperienced teachers like me as well as for students who are not yet introduced to web tools. It is very easy to use, simply by following clear steps. Dvolver can give us and our students the chance to get used to using web tools in class before moving on to more complicated web tools and apps.

What is Dvolver?

Dvolver is a great tool to easily create short animation movies online. There is no need to register on the site since it is free. You get to choose backgrounds, characters, add dialogue bubbles and background music to accompany your movie and when you are done you can choose among embedding your story in a blog, posting the link or sharing the story by e-mail.

How can we use Dvolver? 

1. First, we need to select one background (among 15 choices) and a sky (among 12 choices) for our story.

2. Then, select a plot which will determine how the two characters will interact. We have four choices:

a) Rendez-vous: The two characters enter the scene from opposite sides, they talk to each other and then they leave the way they came.

b) Pick-up: The two characters enter from opposite sides, they converse and leave together.

c) Chase: The two characters chase each other back and forth across the scene, they converse and chase each other again back and forth the scene.

d) Soliloquou: It is a monologue. One character enters, speaks and leaves.


3. Afterwards, we can choose one or up to two characters among 33 choices.
















4. The next step is to add dialogue bubbles up to three for each character and each scene. There is a limit 100text characters per character's line and we can have up to three scenes for each movie.

5. Then we can choose a background music for our story. We also have the choice to add two more scenes. If we do not want, we can click on the "finish button". Then, we give our story a tittle and name the director of the move and, finally, we can either click on the "preview" button and watch our movie or share it with the ways I wrote above.

One of the good features of Dvolver that makes it so easy is that if we are not happy with what we have done we can just click on the "back" button which it does not undo anything but allows us to change what we have done. For more details about Dvolver check Russell Stannard's teacher training video .

What kind of activities can we do with it?

I believe Dvolver is appropriate for elementary school students whose level of English is quite good and for lower secondary school students. The more I explore Dvolver, the more potentials it seems to have. Here are some ideas I would like share with you.

Very first day of class

• You can introduce yourself to your students.
• You can ask your students to introduce themselves. If there are many students you can ask them to make a video at home introducing themselves and in the next lesson you can have the class guess who created which video.
• Use the character's to establish "do's or do not's " for your class.

Post-reading activities

• Check their understanding of a text by asking them to transform it into a movie (be careful of the limitations of Dvolver which I will mention later on).
• Ask them to summarize what they have read or give an alternative ending to it.

Writing activities

• You can ask your students to make a video about smoking or other topic areas and have the characters disagree with each other. This can be a kind of pre-writing activity for a persuasive essay.

Speaking activities

• Ask your students to make a video about Christmas or holidays at home which they will present and talk about in the next class. The video can help them feel safe while talking in the classroom and make them elaborate further on their topic.

Grammar, vocabulary

• Instead of drilling your students you can try presenting the new grammar points or vocabulary through Dvolver videos. Your students can create individually or in groups their own stories and practice on the new language in classroom or at their homes.

Good points of Dvolver

1. Membership is free.
2. Easy for the teacher and students to use. Clear instructions and technology skills to create a movie are minimal.
3. You can create stories really fast as long as you or your students come up with the dialogue.
4. Students tend to love animation stories so they will be happy to participate. Pleasant activities can promote students motivation.
5. Students can make their own stories, choose the background, the characters and make the dialogues. Hence, the activity will be quite personalized and there is a greater possibility that students remember the taught language.
6. English lesson becomes meaningful because students will have to make dialogues appropriate to the plot and the background that they have chosen.
7. Students creativity is also fostered.
8. Can enable collaboration.
9. The finished movie can be sent by e-mail to the teacher.

Some limitations to think about

1. Computers and internet are necessary. Fortunately, nowadays in Greece more and more schools give us the opportunity to often conduct our lessons in computer labs. So make sure you take advantage of this.
2. Big number of students. Even when there are enough computers for everyone, it may be hard to use Dvolver with many students. However, do not be disappointed, you can have them work in groups or at their homes. Remember that they can always send you the link of their movies.
3. You can only use two characters per scene, have three scenes in your movie and choose among four plots. 
4. You cannot embed voices and non verbal behavior is also limited.
5. Some characters or content choices might be inappropriate for classrooms. Characters are overtly sexual. Nevertheless, you can use it under supervision depending on your teaching context.

Tip to bear in mind when using Dvolver in Greece

I believe that it is essential to let your director and your students parents know about any web tools you might use in your classroom in advance. You should explain the reasons why you choose to implement that particular tool in your classroom and what you expect your learner to gain.

I say yes to Dvolver because it is a useful, fun and formative web tool.


Printscreens from Dvolver

What is Blogging? What is the big deal about Blogging?

I used to wonder...why would someone want to create a blog?

Then, the answer came with the YouTube video below which shows what we can do with blogs. You will be happy to see how easy things can become with the "click of a button". I hope you will embrace the idea of blogging and start your own blogs because as the video says "there is likely a group of people out there who want to hear what you have to say". I am surely one of them! So, happy blogging soon!

Useful Blogs-people with nice ideas!

Dear everyone,

 this is my first post. I want to present you some blogs which have been inspiring to me and quite helpful at this early stage of creating my blog. It is a good idea to explore these if you are also interesting in creating your own blog.
                                                 

Picture Source: Shutterstock

• Larry Ferlazzo's blog 
• Nik Peachey's blog
• Ozge Karaoglu's blog
• Vicky Loras's blog

I find Nik Peachey's blog quite useful. It was easy for me to navigate through his blog even though I am inexperienced in handling with blogs. His blog's organization and layout is simple and clear. Here are some of the most important features which I believe that have made his blog efficient. 

1. Blog Archive: It is a default gadget which enables us to give date stamp to each post we make so that we can use that we can organize our entries according to dates.
2. Labels: It is not a default gadget, we have to add it on our own. It allows us to search the blog for specific content and will bring up all the posts that any time have being made and are linked to that particular label, content. It enables easier and more dynamic searches for content on blogs.
3. Pages: One of the latest features of blogs which makes us feel that blogs are more like websites. Nik's blog is consisted of the "Home" page located at the top tab where we can find the posts he makes and other pages again at the top tab like "More articles" and "About Me"which are more fixed and are changed less frequently. So, it is easy to search for content and distinguish his posts from other kind of information. 

Apart from the above technicalities, you can also find interesting web tools to use in your classrooms and get informed about ICT matters. For me Nik's blog was very enlightening, I hope you will also find it useful. So, if you have not visited his blog yet, it is time to give it a try! What do you think?

Finally, for those of you who want to gain more details of how to construct a blog, have a look at Russell Stannard's teacher training videos website and in particular at his Blogger- start your own blog or get your students blogging video. Enjoy!