Podcasting

I have been hearing about podcasts from quite some time now. But I have never given it a try, because I didn't really believe I could use it, due to my classroom's reality (huge number of students of all levels, focus on the written hability etc).

But on the last week, I've read, and listened, a lot about podcasts and I had a great idea on how to use it with my kind of classrooms.

There's a website called Kid's Fables, where everyone can publish their "fables". It's made especially for kids because fables are stories we can use to teach some values to children. But the more interesting is that it helps you write you fable, explaining what is this, what are the main stories elements and, the most interesting, it's not designed for ESL students, but there are a lot of stories from children all around the world. And if you check the website, you will see that there are stories from kids from all ages.

Thinking about how wonderful things this kind of stories can offer to my students, I thought about a project. The students could write their own fables and post them on this website. But after that, they could record themselves reading the stories that they have written, that is something the website doesn't offer, but we could publish it on our own wiki. This way, the students could practice the written, the speaking and the listening habilities (thinking that they would have to listen to their classmates' podcasts as well).

Well, all my students are on vacation, so I had to try the podcasting tools myself. I recorded myself reading some of the best fables I found on the website.
You don't have to sign up to use the first three tools I've used here. You just go to the website and record what you want. On the other three you have to register, because they use the concept of podcasting and publishing for an audience that wants to follow what you do.

Audiopal

"The lion and the donkey" was written by a 10 year-old girl from The United States. I have used Audiopal to record it. This is a very simple and easy tool to use, and the result is great!!

Vocaroo

"The owl and the donkey" was written by a 13 year-old girl from Italy. I have used Vocaroo to record it. I think this is not very good. It doesn't reduce the echo and the sounds around you when you are recording. But you can understand quite well what the person is saying.

Recordr

"The seagull, the pelican and the duck" was written by an 8 year-old boy from Singapore. This is another great tool because the recording sound is very clear and it has another advantage. You can record not only your voice, but a video of yourself reading your story.

Podomatic

"The puppy and his bone" was written by an 8 year-old child from The United States. I've used Podomatic to record it. It's simple and easy to use: it organizes the recording system on a step-by-step way. And in the end, it offers you different players designs to embed it to your blog. It's just a little complicated to find your recording when you return to the website, but after a few clicks you end up finding it. hehehehe

Aviary

"The baby leopard and the baby monkey" was written by a 9 year old boy from Canada. This tool was the hardest one to use. And I really mean it! But it doesn't mean that I didn't like it! I loved it! It's like a professional studio. You have a large number of things you can do with your recording: you can add other sounds, you can cut it, you can mix different sounds and recordings and a lot more. It's just wonderful!! I didn't do too much because my internet conection was very bad. Even though, the result is excellent! The sound is clear and I've added some effects to make it cooler.

Audioboo

"The panther and the bell" was written by four 9 year-old children from the United States, as well. I've used Audioboo to record it. It's another simple and easy tool, and it uses the same system of podcasts sequence as I described in the Podomatic section, what is something useful when you want to know everything that one specific person is publishing.

Creating Videos

I have already said before that I love videos! I love to create, to edit and everything related to them. A tool that I've had contact with some time ago is Animoto. This time, I'm posting here a video I've created to ilustrate the contrast between Past Simple and Past Continuous. The only thing that gets in the way is the limited time we have: 30 seconds. If you want more, you have to pay for it. Because of that, I'm posting here another video I've created, this time using JayCut. This tool is a little more complicated than the other one. And by complicated I mean that it's more difficult to manage the pictures, the sounds, the effects etc. The result seems a little boring, but it's because I didn't find how to make the effects to appear on the video after it's published. But the result is very good, as well!

I think that a good way of using this 2 videos with my students would be , first, asking them to watch and to pay attention on the sequences of the events. The Animoto video would go fisrt, and then the JayCut video. After that, they would have to watch it again, paying attention on the structure of the sentences. The next step would be to complete the last sentence, each student would have to think of something to complete it. And on the last step they would have, in pairs, to create at least two sentences using both Tenses.

I don't know if this idea would work out, but as I said, it's just and idea. Maybe next year I will give it a try!!

Discovering Screencasts

I have discovered screencasts recently and since then I've tried  a lot of different things. But I didn't try to give my students a feedback over something using this kind of tool.

The video I'm posting here is the first one I've ever recorded in this area. The students that made the posters I show in the video are starting to study English now, so this is not the video I will show them, and that's the reason I intend to do another version in Portuguese (and have fun a bit more creating screencasts).

The screencasting world is something I really want to explore a whole lot more and  be sure that you will hear from me, and screencasts, soon!! :)

Surveys: Getting to know your students

I've heard from a teacher, some time ago, that the only songs he/she would bring to the classroom were the ones he/she liked, because he/she was the one that would have to listen to it over and over again. Ok, I agree that sometimes it's really boring to listen to a song you don't like many times. But I don't think we should simply ignore our students preferences. Let's just remember that motivation is a clue word when talking about learning.

Well, I do as I say. Because of that, every time I start with a new class, at the first class, I ask my students to fill in a form, answering about several things they prefer. The only problem I've always had was how to check the results after that. I used to spend so much time putting the results into graphics using MS Word (I'm not a good fan of MS Excel, so I used to suffer a lot!!).

But today, I discovered paradise!! I discovered Obsurvey!! This is an online tool that you can use to create your surveys, from basic ones, to bigger ones, like mine!! And after the survey is done, and your students have answered that, the website collects the responses and gives you the graphics just the way you want them: in the shapes you want, you can save, print, publish, whatever you want!!

I got so excited that I didn't even saw the time passing while I was transforming my old paper survey into an online survey!!

Please, take a look at that!! Feel free to answer the survey, to suggest other questions or simply add a comment about that!!

Brainstorming

Some time ago, when I was in college, a teacher of mine told me about Mind Maps. At that time, I didn't like it very much, even after she showed our class how we could use it in classroom. Some years have passed and here are the Mind Maps in my life again. But now I can see perfectly how wonderful this tool can be.

The teacher I talked about made me work with a web tool to create Mind Maps, but I completly forgot what was that. I just remember that it was ugly, just simple lines, black and white. Well, I want to show you something that will catch your student's attention a little bit more. I'm talking about Mindomo. This is a web tool you can use to create Mind Maps. But it offers a lot of resources, even if you are a free user. You can add colors to your text boxes, you can add pictures, videos, hyperlinks, notes and a lot more.

I've created one Mind Map to use as a Brainstorming activity about Second Conditional Sentences. You can use this to make students think about some possible situations, and they would, at the same time, practice the grammar structure before they know how it is structured. It would work perfectly if you had  a projector in class.

The only bad thing about this tool is that it can't be embed to the blog. But you can print the screen and add it as picture, as I did here. I recommend you try it yourself!!!

More avatars

I said before that I really love photos. And avatars are kinda like photos too, not taken, but created. So, I love to work with avatars as well!!

This week I've discovered two tools to create avatars. The two of them are pretty easy to use and, after the avatar is created, both of the websites send the avatar to your e-mail.

This is important because, in case you decide to ask your students to create  the avatars, you can ask them to send to your e-mail after it's done and you'll have the student's production as quickly as they're finished. Besides creation, you can use these tools for descriptions too. You can ask the students to describe each others avatars orally. This way, they would practise not only the subject you're teaching, but they would improve the skpeaking hability.

Oh, and the best thing about this websites is that you don't have even to sign up to start the fun!!

Here are my two avatars I've created using Face Your Manga and Doppel Me. Give it a try too!! You'll love it!!

Using Face Your Manga

Using Doppel Me

A book on Bookr

As I said on the previous post, I love to take pictures!! But I don't like just to take them, I like to appreciate good pictures too. I think a picture can say more than a lot of words. That's why I want to share two things with you on this post.

The first thing is a video about how a musician composed a song based on a photo that he saw on a newspaper. You can watch the video below (the composer tells the song's story in Portuguese, but you can read about it HERE). The song is really perfect!!

The reason I'm posting this video and talking about photos is because I believe that a picture can awake some feelings on us and this feelings can make we produce and learn better.

After this brief explanation, here's the second thing I wanted to talk about. It's a book I've created using Bookr. Bookr allows you to create picture books using photos available at Flickr. I've heard about it some time ago, but I've never tried it, so this is my first one!

I think it's a good idea to use this tool with the students to make them see , literally, what they're learning. Sometimes we stay in front of them trying to make them understand the new words. Sometimes we just translate the words. But the worst of all is that, most of these times, the students forget those words as soon as they get home. By using pictures with subtitles created by them, the chances that they won't forget the new words' meanings are higher. The negative points that I see about using Bookr is that when the person deletes  the picture, it disappears from your book. And when you search for a picture about something, everything can appear! So, we have to be careful to use it with children!

Slideshow + quizz: is it possible??

I love to take pictures and recently I've discovered PhotoPeach, a tool to create slideshows. But what I didn't know is that I can create quizzes using the same tool. It's simple and quick.

After watching some quizzes, I've created my first one!! It's almost halloween and I'm teaching prepositions of place, so I decided to unite the two topics in one. Well, the idea is very good, but it's not quite my own. The pictures I've used in the slideshow I took from Lanternfish, a website with a lof of teacher resources. I think this quizz can be used in a class as a consolidation exercise, because it's very simple and quick. But the most important, kids will like to discover the monsters' positions while listening to a spooky song!!

It's easy to write movies.

Have you ever thought of being a movie director?? Well, at BombayTV you can at least be the story's writer. This is a website that offers you the opportunity to create subtitles and add them to the movies. It's very, very simple!! The bad news are that you can use just the videos the website offers, but the good news are that they are very "interesting" hehehehe. To understand what I'm talking about, you just have to watch the one I've subtitled here.

I think this tool can be used at shcool in a funny way. You can work with your students' imagination to create the story they want. And working like this you can motivate them to write in English, something they are not big fans of. I have not used it yet, but maybe I will give it a try next semester.

Video animations

After some time without posting anything, I'm here again to talk about animations!! These are things that I really like to work with! You can watch two video animations that I've created using different tools.
The two tools can be used the same way. I'm going to tell you what I did with my students: I proposed them a theme and they had to create an animation about this theme. They had to talk about feelings, but I think it can be used to talk about almost everything!! In my case, since I dind't have computer for every student, they created it at home on a coletive account I've created for their class. But if you have a lab or something like that it can be used at school. It would work even better.
The first animation I'm posting here was created using Xtranormal. This is the one I've used with my students. It's simple to use and the results are great! The bad things are that all the instructions are in English (it can be good if you're working with advanced students, but lower level students tend to have problems to understand them), and the voices the website offers are really mechanical, the characters end sounding like robbots. But children don't care about that at all!! :)

The second one was created using GoAnimate. This was my first trial using it and I loved it even more than Xtranormal! You can spend hours and hours playing with it!! You can choose different scenaries and characaters and effects and sounds and a lot of things!!! I think students would feel a lot more comfortable using GoAnimate than Xtranormal. Watch the result of my frist experience using it!!

GoAnimate.com: Where are you? by Cecília@fb

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Halloween Party invitation using Fotobabble!

Hi everybody!

I was looking for an interesting way to invite my students's parents to the Halloween party the school is organizing and I discovered Fotobabble! 

Ok, the situation is hypothetical, but it's an interesting way to use the resources Fotobabble can offer you. Another option for this hypothetical situation would be asking the students to record their own voices on the invitation web card.

Teachers, enjoy the tip!

New Widgets: speaking avatars and Chatboxes!!

Did you like the movie Avatar?? Did you have the feeling that having your own avatar somewhere else wasn't a bad idea?? Ok, you can realize part of your dreams by using Voki. You cannot have your avatar walking around like in the  movie but you can make your web avatar speaks using your own voice!! Isn't that amazing?? You upload your avatars in every website you sign up, but using Voki you can give them an especial charm!!

From all the tools I've tried so far, Glogster and this one were the ones that I liked most!!! I haven't discovered how I'm gonna use it in the classroom yet, but as soon as I have the chance, I will try something... just wait to see it!!! hehehe

To see and listen to my Voki, just look for this picture on the page...

The Best Of Me via kwout

Other interesting widget I have just tried out is a chat box. I was given two choices to work with: CBox and Chatroll. But I think the second one is way much better!! It allows you to change everything you want on the appearance in a simple way, which means that you don't have to be an internet master to work with it. On CBox you have to understand some codes to change the appearance and I'm not familiar with those codes.
Please, look for this chat box on the page and feel free to talk to me!!

The Best Of Me via kwout

PPTs, Videos, Word and PDF files... things all the teachers have used some day!!!

If you are a teacher and you have never used a ppt presentation during a class, you're a freak at the teaching world!! hehehehe Take it easy, I'm jut kidding!! I'm saying that because it's an easy tool that offers a lot of things which allows you to make your class a little less boring. But pay attention! The long presentations with a lot of text in just one slide can cause the opposite effect and you can end your class talking only to yourself!!

At this post, I'm showing you some easy tools you can use to post your ppt presentations on your blog. Here I'm posting two presentations I've already used in class: the first one has some Portuguese text because it was made to use in a 6th grade class at a private school to explain how we use  Personal Pronouns; the second one is a song I've played for my 9th grade students  at the same school to show how the conditional clauses appear in the English Language (they only saw the lyrics on the presentation after listening to the song and completing the gaps), but the sound didn't appear on the presentation, I don't know why :(. I uploaded them using Slideboom and Slideshare, two interesting websites that I've known for a while.

Personal Pronouns

View more presentations or Upload your own.

Joan Osbourne - One of us

View more presentations from Cecifm.

After working with songs, the students want to know what it is about and most of the time I help them to figure it out with me. But sometimes I'm short of time and I use videos with the subtitles in Portuguese, like this one you can see here (it's the same song I've used on the ppt presentation). You can find this kind of videos on Youtube.





Finally, I'm posting a Word document I uploaded using Scribd. It's a short grammar explanation about Simple Past, a list of regular and irregular verbs and some exercises on the theme. I just have to add that this is not how I like to work, but the school where I was working demanded that and I had to do what they asked for. But there are some teachers who like to go that way, so enjoy it!!

Simple Past

Widgets are superb!!

I've made some changes in the appearence of this blog by adding some widgets. And I have to say that I really loved these things!!! I tried really hard not to pollute my blog with all the interesting things you can add to it. I added some widgtes for you to follow what I'm publishing on Twitter (on the sidebar) and on my other blog on Posterous (at the end of this blog). And I also added a counter and something that I want you to answer... please take a look at the left side of this post to discover!!

The Best Of Me via kwout

The Best Of Me via kwout

The Best Of Me via kwout

The Best Of Me via kwout

Ah, I forgot to say that I've used the Widgets that I could find at Blogger and at WidgetBox. I really liked this last website because you can create a large number of widgets just the way you want them to be!

Be your own webmaster!

                                                       Do you want to be a webmaster?? 

It's cool to work with fonts... you can be your own webmaster and improve your blog to the point where people will consider you a real pro!! You can post scroll messages, like I did above, with a little help from The Blog de César [ayuda].

LiveTyping.com

PS: Ok, I tried to use LiveTyping, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong...  on the first picture's appearance it works, but you get out of the page and come back again and it isn't working anymore... I hope someone could help me with that. What am I doing wrong??

A playlist for you to shake it up!!

Hello everybody!!

I think you're gonna love the playlist I'm posting here!

There are lots of good stuff: new, old, crazy, classic, from The Beatles to Lady Gaga!!! I know it seems a little bit strange, but my intention was to create a playlist for you to have fun while listening to all kinds of music!!! Some are good and some are not that good but you still won't stay sit down... so, "shake it up, baby now"!

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Recording my voice... cool!!

I'm now working with websites where I can record myself speaking. You can try it too!!

To record this first audio I used AudioPal: it's a very easy tool. I recorded myself reading a piece of a text called "The Breakup" that I found on the course book I've used last year with my students from 8th grade (the text was extracted from Teen Vogue).

The second audio I recorded using Vocaroo. I didn't like it at all!! The server was always down during the period I was trying to record (almost half an hour!!) and the final sound is horrible!! First I thought it was my microphone that was bad, but I did some other tests using AudioPal and I discovered that it was really Vocaroo's problem. You can check the result listening to a piece of a text called "Be a Better You" I've read from the same course book I've talked about above. It was extracted from Teen Magazine.

The last audio I recorded using Recordr. This one is very nice too! And you can record not only audio, but video as well. But I didn't record a video, just an audio file because I was not good-looking at that moment hehehe. The text I'm reading on the next audio was also in the course book I've used last year, but with my students from 9th grade and it was extracted from the book "Who Moved My Cheese?".

A gathering recorded by Cecifm  

The only thing I have to complain about all the three websites is that all of them allow you to record just a few seconds. If you are thinking about recording a longer text you can already give up because it's not possible. At least I couldn't discover how to do it. If you have discovered it, show me the way, please!

Working With Animated Gifs

Now it's time to talk about animated Gifs. For the ones who don't know what is this, Gifs are those little images that have movement. The most common  we can find on the net is that shinig  little symbol that indicates that something is new on a website.

I have already worked with Gifs, placing it in various places, but I didn't know how to create it. This is funnier than just use the ones you find!! Here there are some of the Gifs I've created using Loogix.com. You should create yours too!!

A litte train trip

The poster of a TV show that I love!!

A Beetle Meeting in Uberlândia

Sid, a character from the movie Ice Age

Vocabulary Games

Hi there!

Last semester I took my students to the school's lab. I wanted them to learn some new vocabulary related to what we were studying in the classroom.

Before the class, while I was searching for some online games, I've fond a website called Vocabulary Games and Resources. It's an excellent choice for those who have access to the internet in the classroom. It has all kinds of games and for all ages (they're separeted by grades).

Why don't you try it? My students (that are around 11-13 years old) loved the Hang Mouse and the Match Game. Which ones do you think your students will like?

Vocabulary Games and Resources via kwout 

PS: I've used Kwout.com to add this picture. But I didn't use the  favorites to  cut out the area, but an add-on to Firefox instead. It was easy and quick to install!

Working with photos again

It's the time to talk about slideshows! I've tried to make three presentations about School Subject using diffent websites. But I couldn't save it on RockYou.com, I don't know why. It showed an error message every time I tried to save the slideshow. Maybe it's a problem on their server. But the other two are here!!

The first one I've made using Slide.com.

 

The second one I've made using PictureTrail.com.

Have some fun editing your photos!

This first "remix" I've created using ImageChef.com and some photos I uploaded from my computer. This website is very interesting and I could spend all day long having fun with it! I think you should try it!! 

This is a photo of me at my chimney hehehehehe... I've also used ImageChef.com to edit this one.

This is an old me. I've used BeFunky.com to edit this photo.

And this is me again. Look, I'm glittering!!! I've used RockYou.com to create this effect.

Let's get it started!

Moving Beyond

Hi everybody!

This is my first post using Blogger. I hope it helps me with some projects I've been working on at my school.

And I hope you can also learn a little bit more about how I am when I'm not teaching!

I'll be back soon with some interesting posts!!

My blog's screenshot