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 :))

More Students' Readings

Another book recommendation.
Another talking photo.
Another photobabble.
Catarina, a 15-year old student of mine and one of my tenth graders' avid readers, has read a heartbreaking book, based on a real story. She liked it so much that she would like to tell us about it. Listen:

Soon it will be available in our school library as it is included in our PNL (Plano Nacional de Leitura).
So, what do you think about this one?

Fotobabble - talking photos

By Christmas I left you this post, namely a talking photo, my personal Christmas card to all of you. To do that I used Fotobabble a very easy tool to use. After registration, 

1. Upload a picture

2. Choose Theme

3. Give it a title

4. Write tags

While one does not necessarily need to follow this order, I did leave the recording for the end. Just click on Record (Orange Icon) and then stop in the end. To check it, click on Play. After all steps, don't forget to save (right corner, below)! Easy, fast and FREE!

We can use it in classes for a listening activity; students can do it as well and share their recordings with the teacher and fellow mates and all can be embedabble into blogs – tutor blogs, class blogs, whatever. A great tool for students to develop fluency, to engage and attract!

My latest Fotobabble was to promote a book / reading for the school library ;)

The student didn’t want her own picture and therefore I just uploaded the book cover and then recorded her voice with my own computer. Please listen:

So, what do you think?
Two remarks: a bit fast, yep, I know, but the student "read" instead of simply using the info ;). The book cover is in Portuguese because I couldn't find any in English ):
Let me know what you think, will you? Thanks.

Christmas Countdown 3, 2

With so much to do, for the first time I haven't even sent a traditional Christmas card - handwritten ones sent by post as I have been doing ever since I can write! I'm therefore going to send different versions to my visitors, acquaintances and friends (:
What would you say about a talking photo to send my season's greetings?


http://www.fotobabble.com/ is a possibility; another one is an avatar - check it out below. At http://www.voki.com/, a free service, we / sts can
- create their customised avatars by choosing characters, backgrounds, accessories...
- add their own voice or use the text-to-voice option (the one I chose)
- post vokis to blogs, websites, profiles - they're embeddable!

A short video is also great! Have a look at this 30sec. free video I created in less than one minute!

Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, y'all!