My son's 18th Birthday!

A different post today and for a very special reason.

My eldest kid turns 18 today! I'm so happy and proud of the young man he has become. Though it's his birthday, I feel I have received from God the best gift of all: two wonderful sons, one now to become an adult. All these years, João Diogo has been my right hand, a real blessing in my life. I'm the happiest and the proudest mum in the world, but so unwilling to let go...let's keep this short otherwise I'll keep on crying forever and ever!

Dedicated to him, a maginficent poem by Rudyard Kipling:

IF-

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Happy Birthday, my son!

4+ Tools for Reading Reviews

While I haven’t had much time for reading myself lately, I’ve been instilling reading habits in my teen students.

To be honest, I’m not that demanding in what concerns language. In other words, whether they read in Portuguese or English, what really matters is that they start or keep reading. I do have one demand, though: whatever they read, they’ll have to present a review in English. Fair enough, after all I am their foreign language teacher.

For my students’ book reviews and recommendations, I’ve used the free tools below:

Animoto is an excellent tool for creating audio slideshows the only problem being the lack of space for writing / text; I have created 30 secs videos and  longer but only with an “Animoto for Education” account. 

Here are two examples: 

This is a multimedia storytelling tool that allows us to easily tell stories including photo, video, music, voice recordings and text. Have a look at this bilingual book review:

Fotobabble allows us to create beautiful talking photos / pictures. Listen to this book review now:

Another possibility is the creation of ebooks, flippable PDFs. An example is the one below I created with youblisher:

Let's not forget Tellagami which is also possible for book reviews as I mentioned in this previous post.
Hope you enjoy these tools and examples I've just shared with you. What others can you share with me? Thank you :))

Snapchat: ephemeral photos

Snapchat is an ephemeral photo-sending app and now a huge trend among our students: with this application, available for both iOS and Android, users / snappers can take photos, record videos, add text and even include drawings on the snap and finally send it to one or more recipients. The snaps are automatically deleted shortly after they are opened / viewed according to the time (1 to 10 secs) set beforehand by the sender. In case you do want to keep the snap you got, you can take a printscreen, but the sender will get that notification.

So,

1. Download the app here for Androids or here for your iOS. 

2. When you start the app, you’ll see a large round button on its interface which is the camera button. When you press it, a photo will be taken, and if you hold the button a very short video lasting up to 10secs will be recorded. After that, one can add text by tapping the snap and / or draw onto the image by using an icon on your phone’s top right hand corner. Snaps can be sent to the ones you choose from your list of contacts / other snappers!

I’ve “played” and experimented this app with my eldest kid and I believe we can also use this in class, for example, for a speaking activity if our sts also have it installed: take a snap and send it to students as a speaking prompt!

Check this tutorial, too:

Easy and fast, right? Obviously free to download and install, too! This is one of the coolest tools but also one of the most controversial.

Snapchat has quickly risen much like Instagram while, at the same time, teens are losing interest in Facebook… Indeed, the fact that it allows us to create perishable photos, gives parents and teachers huge headaches. If we think about this for a while, we easily reach the conclusion that if it can be used for fun and for educational purposes, it has been causing a lot of worries worldwide due to sexting and cyberbullying … perverts as paedophiles are also said to be among its top users…

In any case, here is an info guide for concerned parents and educators developed by http://www.connectsafely.org/ .

Happy Snapping :)