Introducing Digital Resources to the EFL classroom

Near the end of the course, our teacher introduced us to a new digital resource:  StoryboardThat . This is a very easy to use tool, that allows both students and teachers to create comic strips and jokes, combining wide variety of settings, customisable characters and text. Take a look at my cartoon!

Voki is another fun tool that students can use for homework, classwork or projects. They can create their own avatars, c ustomise their appearance and decide what they want the characters to say. It is both possible to add text messages and to record students' own voice. I created my Voky to present a digital story-telling activity. You can take a look at it by clicking on the image below.

Padlet  is definitely one of my favourite digital tools. You can create online virtual boards, where students and teachers can collaborate, reflect, and share links and pictures.  Take a look at the wall I created to use it with my students.

Story Bird was the first story-telling tool we explored during the course and I must tell that I totally loved the images available and the designs you can create.  The idea was to create illustrated stories or poems. Click on the image below and take a look at mine!

Another tool we explored during the course was VoiceThread , an online tool which enables you to create digital albums, incorporating video, voice, and text commenting. The interesting is thing is that it is possible to work in a collaborative way. You only need to create an account, start uploading photos and add comments to each of them. In this case, I created a Voicetread to present some vocabulary about celebrations around the world.   

Our next step was using Google Slides , an app which enables you to create presentations and edit them with others at the same time. You can use it also to edit PowerPoint files online . The presentation I created explores different types of music. What I liked the most about this tool is that it enables you to embed videos from YouTube, so in this case, I inserted a short video to each slide to exemplify music styles.

  The third tool we explored was Google Drawings , a really interesting application I have never heard about before this course  started . We had a lot of fun editing and planning activities based on different pictures. In this case, I wanted my students to practice vocabulary and structures related to "clothes." In order to do that, I chose a photo I found on the web and created a number of speech bubbles with parts of a conversation at a clothes shop. What I wanted them to do was identifying who says each of these phrases and I also left some speech bubbles empty for them to create a kind of "follow up" for the conversation.