Category Archives: Create your own stuff

Tag Galaxy: Flikr Images to create a 3D photo-sphere

21 February 2013Create your own stuff, Pictures, Speakingonlinetools, picturesCristina Cabal

Do you know anyone, especially students, who would not rather have a lesson spiced up with pictures? Now, this is an amazing tool to work with and just plain fun! Tag Galaxy appeals to all visual students and it helps spice up a boring lesson. Have I just said” boring lessons”??? Sorry! a slip of the tongue!!

How does it work? Easy peasy! You enter a tag – I wrote Hobbies- and as soon as you click GO , you will see a 3D galaxy with lots of planets of different sizes. The biggest one is for my Tag ( in this case Hobbies) and the smaller planets will be words related to the keyword orbiting around my keyword

At this point you might click on another planet to combine words ( Hobbies+ books) and form a new galaxy.

Click on the big planet and see your picture collection , straight from Flikr assembling.

Spin the globe with the mouse. Click to select a picture and get a close -up. Cool!

Tag Galaxy in the classroom: I’m sure my students will be delighted to watch the whole process but leaving aside the cool part, I think using this wonderful tool can be highly motivating for my students.

♥ At the moment I’m teaching Simple Past tense to my Elementary students and I’m planning to use it to do some speaking with the structure:

When did you last….? (play football)

I last( played football )( three weeks ago) + the follow up questions.

♥It could also work for Picture Description

♥Writing Skills: Students are given the beginning of a story such as: it was a stormy night … Students write “storm” as the keyword and the picures will help them spark their creativity.

Retelling a text using Wordle

4 February 2013Create your own stuff, Speakingmethodology, onlinetools, reading, speaking, word cloudCristina Cabal

This is not the first time I have used this strategy to invite my students to do some speaking but it is the first time I have used it with absolute beginners. It has taken me sometime to bring myself to do this kind of activity with my 12-year-old absolute beginners. I am always afraid the task may seem to them like a high mountain to climb, but they have been studying with me for four months now and I feel they are up to the challenge.

I really feel that I can insist, until the cows come home, English is not only about learning grammar, but if students are not actively taking a role in their education, there is little I can do.

So I have used a text, they had previously worked with, to ask them to retell the story. The text was about Education and it told the story of two children Eduardo from Angola and Nabyrye from Uganda. Easy text and all about present simple, which is what they have been studying. Two texts, so great to do pair work!

I have used a tool I have used other times, Wordle, to create Word Clouds to help students remember the story and retell it.

Two useful tricks when using Wordle

♥ If you want a word to be bigger than the rest, just type it twice.

♥ Insert (~ ) between the words you want to keep together.

I have posted about Wordle to revise vocabulary here and to do a Writing Activity here

Have a nice week!!

PictureTrail: Customizable Slide Show Maker

24 January 2013Create your own stuff, Pictures, Slides, Speaking, Vocabularyfilms, fun, onlinetools, slides, speakingCristina Cabal

I have discovered this amazing site to work with slides that I cannot wait to share with you. It is just amazing the variety it offers to create slides, choosing from a variety of skins, borders, glitters, backgrounds…etc. The only thing you need to do is upload your pictures and have fun. It is also possible, as you have probably noticed 😉 to embed your slides.

How am I going to use it in my classes? Nothing to write home about really; my students are working with TV programmes so I thought to find images from different Spanish programmes and do some speaking. The instructions are in the form of a slide too, so that they can do this exercise at home again and do some more practice before exams.

By the way, the site is called PictureTrail.

films

QR Codes in Education Part 1

13 December 2012Create your own stuff, freeware, Resources, Tutorialonlinetools, QR, studentsCristina Cabal

My intention when I started writing this article was to show how I was planning to integrate QR Codes in my classes but then I realized that there was much explaining to do before this article served its purpose. I am familiar with QR codes but I wondered if my readers were. For this reason, I have decided to split this post into two.Here you’ll find the theory , and in QRCodes Part 2 (coming shortly) you’ll see some of my ideas to introduce them in the classroom, or rather as homework ,as students in Spain aren’t allowed to bring their mobile devices to the school.

It was not that long ago when I saw for the first time a QR Code . I remember I was in Ikea and thought … what the heck is this? And then I thought … Do I really want to know? And then some time later…. But are they really here to stay?Now, it’s crystal clear to me that QR codes are here to stay and I am only beginning to test their potencial in education.

But what is a QR code ? QR is short for Quick Response (they can be read quickly by a mobile phone)They are white and black barcode squares that can be easily generated and that allow you to encode text , urls, images and audio files among other things – lately they have become more sophisticated as you will see below. Now you can only begin to imagine the possibilities for education.

But how do we generate a QR code?

GENERATING A SIMPLE QR CODE

Nothing could be easier. If you google “QR code generator” you’ll find lots . The ones below are just some of them:
Kaywa QR Code ( it allows you to encode URLs, text (160 characters), phone numbers,sms.

GO QR.Me (same as above but it allows you to encode 300 characters)

CUSTOMISING YOUR QR CODE

Now, we all know about QR codes: they are black and white squares, containing encoded data. Boring, isn’t it? Why don’t we decorate and make our QR code more stylish ?

QRstuff is definitely my favourite

VisualLead lets you integrate a QR Code into an image , blending QR Codes with a design or image of your choice

Now , we have created our QR code. What’s next?

GETTING A QR Code Reader

Lots of modern phones can read QR codes but first you need to download a QR reader/scanner. For example , in my mobile I have installed AT&T Code Scanner but there are lots of them you can download for free. For iPhone, Scan is a good one, and for Android there’s QR Droid.

HOW TO SCAN A QR CODE

To scan the codes, all you need is a mobile device with a camera, and a QR code reader or scanner app to interpret the data in the code. Open your QR reader on your phone or ipod and center the QR code within the frame provided and let the magic begin!

Holding your breath for Part 2?