Location: http://www.flashcardmachine.com
This is an excellent tool which allows you to create your own flashcards containing pictures, words and/or definitions. You can print them off or work with them them online.
Watch the following PowerPoint tutorials to find out how to access and use Flashcard machine:
Signing up to Flashcard machine:
Signing up to flashcard machine PowerPoint tutorial
Using Flashcard machine:
Location: http://animoto.com
Animoto provides a great way of making a presentation or quick-fire flashcard quiz. You can make very professional-looking videos and include music, either from your own collection or from Animoto’s extensive library.
The PowerPoint presentation below explains how to create an Animoto quick-fire flashcard quiz. When you have finished viewing the presentation, click on the back arrow to return to the blog.
Here’s the Animoto video we created:
Location: www.voki.com
Voki is a tool for creating your own avatar (an animated picture of someone). You can personalise your avatar and record (or type in) the words you want it to speak.
1) How to use it:
PRIMARY:
SECONDARY:
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2) Teaching ideas
PRIMARY:
Use Voki to add a speaking and listening dimension to any writing activity. For example, if your pupils are writing about their likes and dislikes (as in the example below from Bugs World 3), they can record or key the sentences into Voki and hear them spoken. They can watch and listen to each other’s avatars.
Taken from Bugs World 3 by Elisenda Papiol and Maria Toth (Macmillan ELT)
Here’s an example we made:
SECONDARY:
Make dictations more student centred by getting them to record their own voices then transcribe what each other’s avatar is saying. Or extend a letter or email-writing activity by bringing it to life through an avatar! Here’s an example from Voices 1. Students are given the following writing task:
Taken from Voices 1 by Catherine McBeth (Macmillan ELT)
Here’s our example:
Location: www.xtimeline.com
Everything has a history. Virtually every topic that might appear in a coursebook units can be tied in with some kind of chronology of events. Creating a timeline is a good way of visualising how the history has evolved of anything from your favourite pop group to the World Cup or the mobile phone. Here’s a tutorial which takes you through the stages of creating a timeline with Xtimeline:
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Click here to see our full World Cup timeline, or here to see the one we created as an extension activity for the Olympic Games reading text in Voices 1.
Location: www.glogster.com
Glogster is a great way to bring projects to life. You can create a poster with text, images and even sound files. The tutorials below show how to create a ‘glog’:
PRIMARY:
Here’s an example of how a project task in a Primary coursebook can be presented using Glogster. This is the task…
Taken from Bugs World 3 by Elisenda Papiol and Maria Toth (Macmillan ELT)
…and here’s the glog we made:
Watch how we did it in the PowerPoint tutorial below:
SECONDARY:
Here’s an example of how a project task in a Secondary coursebook can be presented using Glogster.
The following tutorial shows students can create their project poster through Glogster, using mind maps to help plan the contents:
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Location: www.bubbl.us
Mind maps have many uses. They can be used to work on a reading text, with students asked to analyse the text to work on structure, which they can then apply to their own writing work.
Watch this tutorial to find out how to use Bubbl, then go to www.bubbl.us
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Location: www.toondoo.com
Toondoo is a great tool which allows you to create your own cartoons, complete with speech bubbles and captions. It can be found at www.toondoo.com
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Students can either create their own cartoons (possible around a certain grammar point) or fill in captions / speech bubbles in cartoons created by the teacher or their classmates.
Location: www.triptico.co.uk
PRIMARY:
Watch this PowerPoint presentation to find out how to locate and use Word Magnets, as well as some teaching ideas.
Word Magnets PointPoint tutorial
SECONDARY:
Watch this tutorial on how to locate Word Magnets on the www.triptico.co.uk site.
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The following tutorial suggests some more ideas for working with Word Magnets:
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Location: www.wordle.net
Wordle provides a novel way of working with a text, randomising the words into any number of different patterns such as the one above.
Why not use Wordle to get your students to predict the content of a reading text? Just type in the a few sentences and the programme will randomise them. Or challenge your students to predict sentences from the text with the words they see. Watch our Wordle tutorials for some more ideas.
PRIMARY:
Here’s an idea to use Wordle in order to get pupils to do some predicting work before reading a couple of texts (from Find Out! 5 by Mark Ormerod with Donna Shaw, Macmillan ELT):
SECONDARY:
This tutorial shows a similar idea using a Secondary text from the Voices 2 Student website:
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This tutorial looks at how to use the Text Tool option in the Macmillan digital books to blank out words and phrases. The advantages of this are numerous – for example, you can ask students to predict the content or title of a text by blanking out everything except a few words or phrases, create a gap-fill activity or do a ‘disappearing dialogue’. The example in the video is taken from the Voices 1 digibook.
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