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.