Category Archives: Resources

Voicethread and my students

Create your own stuff, Resources, Slides, Speaking, Writing, Writing skill, , , , , , ,

I’ve been meaning to use this tool for  quite a long time but  the right time never seemed to come.

I think this little dialogue performed by my most elementary students is a nice way of showing you what Voicethread is. VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways – using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam).

I want to thank María Sánchez and Rocío Ibias in the first dialogue and Eva Bedia and Ainhoa Nuevo in the second (from IES  Cesar Rodríguez – Grado) for their enthusiam. Thanks girls, I would never  have done it without you!

To use Voicethread you need to register but it only takes a minute and it can help you a lot improve your speaking and writing abilities. How ?

  • You can  record yourself describing pictures
  • You can  add comments to photographs
  • You can tell a story using different pictures

It also has a lot of potential for teachers.

  • I intend to use it for debates on issues: by asking students either to record themselves or  type their own ideas
  • I have already used it to record students doing role-plays

I’m sure you have plenty of ideas to use VoiceThread. Why don’t you share them with us ? Please, send a post if you want to contribute with your own ideas.

Want to learn English through music? Lyrics Training helps you

Audio, In the Computer Room, Listening, Music, Resources, , , , ,

Do you want to learn English and/or French, Italian, German… through music? Well, if this is so, this is your place. This cool site is called Lyrics Training and it’s just amazing and hear this ,free to use!

This is how it works: at the bottom on the right-hand side you can see some lyrics, choose according to your level. There are three: easy, medium and hard. Then, when the window with the song you’ve chosen opens up, choose your mode; again, there are three, beginner,(fill in the blanks10%), intermediate (25%) and expert (full lyrics).

Now, this is what you’ll see if you choose  the song Tell him  in the beginner mode.  One of the best things is that if you get to a word and you can’t understand it or if it goes too fast, it will stop until the blank has been filled. The song literally WAITS for YOU!!!

But there’s even more. If you click on HELP at the bottom you can see what else the programme can do for you. Let’s imagine that you want to listen to the same line again, press Backspace, and if you are still unable to understand the word, don’t worry, just press TAB and the word will be written for you. Aren’t you dying to give it a go!!

Fur.ly: URL Shortening

freeware, Resources,
Now that I’m working in a high school this little tool Fur.ly I’m going to show you is more necessary than ever.
I still like to take my students, from time to time ,to the Computers Room to do some interactive exercises or to see a video but especially with the younger ones some kind of guidance is necessary so they don’t end up visiting sites you have absolutely no intention of them visiting.
What this little tool does is to replace different url into one , so when you take your students to the lab they have no excuse to get lost in the web of webs. It’s a free service and requires no registration. You copy and paste all the links you want to share one by one and then click on “GO” , and what you get is one single url .
 

 

 

 

and this is what you get

 

Now, the image above shows what Fur.ly looks like. At the top you can see a small bar displaying how many sites you can visit , there are also navigating arrows and a drop down menu.

I’m sure that if you’re not a teacher and you’re reading this you can still find lots of possibilities to use Fur.ly when sharing sites with your friends