Word clouds

Let's welcome Wordle (www.wordle.net) and Tagxedo (www.tagxedo.com). These two webpages help us to create word clouds. Maybe if you read the term you may think you don't know what it is, but if I show you some examples, you might change your opinion:

They're great, aren't they? If I were to present this tool to my students, I would do it at the end of the year and I would ask them to create a word cloud so as to express what they learnt all troughout the year and how they felt in the English lessons. First, they would have to write a short text with their opinions, feelings, ideas, etc. and then they would have to use Wordle or Tagxedo in order to make a word cloud. I would employ it in that way, what about you?

Voki

I want to present a really interesting and funny tool: VOKI (www.voki.com) Voki is a free service in which you can create speaking avatars. 

This instrument can be truly useful inside the classroom as students will be motivated as they can create their own characters, change their appearance and even make them speak with different voices. I think we can employ this tool when working with vocabulary, for instance. Students can be given words and asked to create Vokis so as to present the new terms to the rest of the class; it is funny and much more engaging than working with dictionaries.

I embed the official Voki tutorial just in case you want to try it (I definitely recommend it!)

The selfie phenomenon

Day after day we can find this selfie phenomenon in different social networks such as, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, among others. But... do you know what a salfie is? Fortunately, the Oxford Dictionary has provided a very clear definition for this term:

A selfie is a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media (Oxford Dictionary) 

Although this event is quite new and innovative, it is considered a very useful tool when teaching as students are constantly taking selfies and we can take advantage of this inside the classroom. These self- representations can be used for many different activities, as Jill Walker Rettberg did with her students from the University of Bergen "...I asked students to discuss what our selfies, taken together, would tell a future historian about what everyday life was like in 2014..." Let's read Jill's experience and let's start working and planning so as to introduce selfies in our lessons and make students feel motivated with this engaging and fashionable instrument. http://jilltxt.net/?p=4039