This is a link I would like to share with as many people as possible: 10 great tools for language teachers. Russell's presentation in Luxembourg with

Hi everyone! I've seen some posts already in our Posterous group. I want to encourage you to continue to explore the various tools that have been shared

Task 1. Read a short article and create a magazine cover which summarizes its message. The article I read was "Should You Flip Your Classroom?" by Ramsey Musallam.  My magazine cover is here: 

I used BigHugeLabs because the ReadWriteThink interactive tool that was suggested did not provide a magazine cover--just a flier, a newspaper, a booklet or a brochure.

It is difficult to get students to summarize what they read. They always want to write too little or way too much. This activity holds promise as a way to make summarizing more creative. Still, it seems more like a writing activity than a reading activity.

Task 2: Read a lesson plan about having students rewrite parts of a play they are reading (e.g., What would have happened if Romeo had received the letter?). Think what story I would use to adapt this to my teaching context, and how I would adapt the lesson plan.

I confess I cannot imagine using this idea with my classes. We don't read plays; the emphasis is on developing college-level reading skills (primarily informational texts: articles and textbooks). I don't like the idea of encouraging students to think that they can improve on Shakespeare (it actually says  in one suggested activity, "Act out the new, improved turning point...."). Maybe I am hopelessly old-fashioned. That said, there is a wealth of digital tools for creating plot diagrams, Venn diagrams, timelines, etc. here.

Bed time!

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Buket, I have thoroughly enjoyed your enthusiasm in this course and your stories. I really like what you said about the teacher being enthusiastic about using

Classdigitools - Week 5 - Task 1

Creating magazine covers to summarize texts

This week we are exploring new ways to enhance our students' reading skills. After having analysed this amazing lesson plan, we had to choose an article from a list provided by our moderators and summarize it in a magazine cover, newspaper page or brochure.
The articles were taken from Edutopia, a website published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation. I chose The virtual classroom redefines education and got really caught by the nature of the subject matter and the multimediality of its presentation.
I tried to summarize it using some of the tools suggested. First I used Fodey which allows users to generate a newspaper clipping image. Today's edition of The Blabber contained the following article:

Then I tried with the cover of a magazine using Big Huge Labs:

The third digital tool I used was ReadWriteThink. I created a flyer and loaded the pdf file on Google Docs.

Dear Chiyuki, Thanks for your effort:)))Here are my answers, Q1:My favourite tools are;Storybird(wonderful pictures for various settings in a story)ToonDoo

Dear Stael, Thanks a lot for your enthusiastic reply for collaboration:)))My students and my colleagues are eager to collaborate in a project:)We started our

Dear Dani, Thanks for sharing with us:))You are so lucky:)))I hope and wish to meet you all one day:)))Looking forward to more chances of collaborations with

Using Voki might be a great tool to try out in the classroom. Some general ideas on using it with students are recorded here. Some potential lesson ideas to incorporate other tools–Educreations This would be a great tool to have students use in order to practice their basic storytelling. Students could write a short story, making sure it had a beginning, middle and end. Then tell their story using Educreations and also have a blast using the drawing feature.

Another thought is to use Knovio as a way for students to present their art process. Students would need to capture at least 5 photos of their art work in progress. Then post these photos to Knovio and commentate through the slides on their experience.

Using Voki might be a great tool to try out in the classroom. Some general ideas on using it with students.

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Shelwyn Corrigan and Jens Kjaer Olsen are now friends

Interesting and wondering how Knovio would replace Powerpoint, Voicethread, etc. Good things to ponder.

Using Showbeyond.com to play with voice, photos, and story incorporation.

Dear Webheads, I need to insert a video (from YOUTUBE) in a slidehow, but apparently it's not working. I've downloaded it with Real Player and then tried to

Hi everyone, me again ... Some of us are having a very nice session and learning from one another. If we're not hearing from you then that's fine I hope you're

Hi everyone, me again ... Some of us are having a very nice session and learning from one another. If we're not hearing from you then that's fine I hope you're

As some of you won’t be able to attend the Regional Convention of Mextesol, and attendance to the workshop I will give is limited to 26 seats per session, here is the Gotta Getta Blog series workshop I will be sharing during the convention.

The topic is how to get your students talking using Fotobabble. The use of this application by beginning and advanced level students at university level is demonstrated in the workshop. However, Fotobabble is an online speaking application that can be applied to any age.

Check it out through the Google doc PPT here. Enjoy!

Please leave your responses to these discussion questions as a comment at the end of this post. Your comment will be approved as I read them but will not be visible immediately.
Discuss it, through this discussion forum here.
What are the pros?
What are the cons?

A Well, many of the tools had a limit of how many words, scenes, or sound files you could use. Some cartoons would really limit the amount of text. With a wiki