Week 13

Hi everyone,

This time I'm writing to tell you about some really good and useful technology tools that I liked.

Bingo board maker- this tool enablrs you to create bingo boards and use them in class. It is a magnificant tool and pupils love it, since it is a game. This is absolutely a very good tool for vocabulary practice and provides learning English in a fun way. You can add pictures at any topic that you want as well as writing a suitable text. Try it!

http://www.toolsforeducators.com/bingo/

The crossword puzzle maker- this is also an amazing tool to teach and practice vocabulary through a game. You can choose any topic that you want, for example: animals, food, clothing, family, body parts and even add some pictures or text as clues. You should definitely try it!

http://www.toolsforeducators.com/crossword/

Week 10

Hi everyone,

I would like to tell you about a really great research tool that I would definitelly use- Google Scholar. Using this tool you will be able to find easily academic articles! And not only that, you can even find peer reviewed articles, journals and more. 

I truly believe that college students can really enjoy this tool which will facilitate them in their studies. Google Scholae enables you to search for different sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and much more - just according its relevance to you!

Try it and you will enjoy using it!

Week 6

Hi everyone,

This week I will write about five technology tools that may help you to teach speaking or writing skills in class. Here are the five tools that I liked the most:

1. Spelling Bee website- this website enables students to learn vocabulary and spelling in different levels, according to their own pace.The pupils listen to stories and then spell words from these stories. I really loved this website bacause the words they learn and spell are within a certain context (from a certain story) and this makes it easier to understand the words and spell them. Here is the link:

http://www.learner.org/interactives/spelling/index.html

2. The story maker website is also a wonderfool tool to improve writing skills among our pupils. I liked the fact that it provides the opportunity to choose between three different types of stories, so each one can choose what he likes and prefers the most. Then, the pupils can write about their favorite story using this website. Link: 

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/make-your-own/story-maker

3. SMS Genarator- I think this tool can be useful for practice writing skills in class. Using it the pupils can create an imaginary dialogue between two fictional characters or between two characters in a book they have read and it is really nice since it developes the pupils imagination while writing. Link: 

http://www.classtools.net/SMS/

4. Story Jumper- this tool enables the pupils to create their own story. I liked this tool since it  teaches kids to do so just in simple 7 steps! Link: http://www.storyjumper.com/

5. Spelling city- another winderful tool to teach writing- spelling is using this website: http://www.spellingcity.com/

I loved the fact it offers learning vocabulary, writing and spelling through games, learning activities, word games and much more!

Hope you will find these tools as effective and useful :)

Week 4

Hi everyone,

When I explored the tools presented in this week I was fascianating!

Images are really a great, useful and magnificent tool to use in class and I believe that it is much clearer as well as easier to understand than just using words. 

As a tracher, I meet a lot of pupils who are visual learners and pictures are a great solution for them to understand the material learned better.

I liked the most the photofunia tool, which is not only using pictures but it also a tool engaged to play! I am sure the the pupils will love it. I also liked the tool of EFL picture sets and "pixabay". I entered these sites and on "pixabay" I saw such a beautiful, clear, clean and high quality pictures that I will definitely like to use during my lessons. In addition, The EFL picture sets provide a lot of pictures in different topics that can help us, English teachers, in class. We can use them as flashcards or even to play a game! There is no doubt that there lots of things we can do with these great tools in order to facilitate the learning of our pupils.

Week 3

This week I was untroduced to many different technology tools that can be used in class. Some of the tools that I liked the most are: Quizlet, FlipSnack and Wordle. 

I chose to create my own set of flashcards using Quizlet in order to teach my fourth year pupils new words. Since now we are learning about the weather, this is the link to the my set of flashcards on quizlet:https://quizlet.com/128534114/weather-flash-cards/
I chose to use quizlet because I think it is a very useful tool to teach vocabulary or anything else in an easy and fun way. Quizlet allows not only to see the words but also to hear them, to see the translation and a suitable picture. The pupils can also play games, chech their spelling of the vocabulary learned and be tested on the words. I am really happy for using this tool and I think that the other tools that I mentioned before are very useful and effective too.

FlipSnack is an online flipping book software that allows to convert PDF documents into Flash page flip digital publications. It's the good idea for those who would like to embed a book, magazine, catalog, newspaper, portfolio or any other kind of document into a website or blog.

Wordle is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. What you need to do is paste in a text. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text - This means that the more frequent a word is in the text, the larger it will appear in the cloud. In addition, you can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, project them in class on the board or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Hope you will also like to use these tools.

Hi everyone,

It was fascinating to read technology in education blogs and I really want to share the information 

with all of you.

The Cool Cat Teacher blog is mainly about encouraging teachers to improve education. I really liked the post about note taking- What makes “good notes.” What do they write down? How should notes look? If you think that note taking skills are just automatic, you are wrong. The writer advices teachers to encourage pupils to use visual note taking, means to draw instead of using words only. She also writes that the Using symbols, notes and such can help connect ideas in powerful ways. 

The Edudemic blog aims to connect education and technology. I enjoyed reading the interesting post about the best ways to use Google in the classroom. We all know that Google is a source of information but it is not only that. It also enables us to use lots of tools that can improve our lessons in the classroom. A very good idea that I read about in this post was to use Google in order to organize and create, for instance you can create a calendar that your students, their parents, and other classrooms can have access to. There, you can set up Assignments deadlines, tasks, and event notifications. In addition, you can indicate times you are available for student-teacher conferences. Moreover, teachers can use Google docs for having students to create collaborate on a paper, play or other project. It can also allow teachers to see a writing project in progress so they can recognize where students may get stuck.

The last blog that I chose is Klein spiration blog. I liked the post about the app that makes group work manageable. According to this post, group projects help students develop life-long skills, particularly strong communication skills and ability to take responsibility and ownership of their contribution. This magnificent app is called Ignite Teaching and by using it, students can work together with several people from the class. In addition, teachers are able to see to what extent each pupil has contributed to the project.

I learned all these great ideas from reading the posts in these blogs, hope you enjoyed reading it and expanded your knowledge regarding technology in education.

 

Hi everyone,

My name is Sigal and I'm a fourth year student on Levinsky. I have started to work as an English teacher this year and I'm very glad and happy to do so. I have learned a lot during this year and I am sure that I will continue learning lots pf interesting things.

I am very curious about what we are going to learn on this course because I really want to improve my knowledge regarding the use of technology. I think that especially nowadays, it is essential to learn how to use the tools of technology in order to engage our students to learn English and any other subject.

Hope we all will enjoy learning, Sigal.