top5 digital trends
TED talks are really interesting, since you can find whatever you want there! You can look for any topic you are working in class and play a video to students. There will find it interesting and enjoyable, since the videos are very funny. It is a good tool to work their listening skills.
TEDed Lessons Worth Sharing
This is an attractive tool for students to make a free, professional-looking newspaper. Learners can practise writing and digital skills in a creative way and then print it or download it. Moreover, using a newspaper format can encourage them both in writing and working together in pairs or small groups to prepare the content.
Working as a group means that students will have to decide what to write, so they also will have to speak and listen for a real communicative purpose. To make it funnier, the teacher can put the finished newspapers on display for others to read. There could also be a competition with the best work staying on display in the corridor or on the school’s website.
ARTHR
I think the potential of using music to help study a language is very powerful.
As you watch the video of the song you choose, the lyrics are presented below, in one of three different ways: 1. ‘karaoke’ style – so you can read or sing along; 2. with gaps for you to type in the missing words; and 3. with gaps for you to select from ‘multiple-choice’ options. You only see the lyrics line by line, as they’re sung, and this is the ‘hook’ with the second and third options: you have to try to type or select the correct words before the next line starts. If you’re fast and don’t make many mistakes, your score will be higher.
LyricsTraining
ChatterPix is a voice-recording tool, and I believe it is a really useful tool because it encourages creative expression from learners who don’t usually like to talk in class. Taking on the identity of the image they choose may reduce anxiety for quieter learners and give them the confidence they need to use the target language. Furthermore, because they can rerecord their audio until they are happy with it, they do not feel the pressure of producing spontaneous speech and they have the opportunity to reflect on and refine their performance before saving their final version.
ChatterPix
Sometimes the best technologies are the simplest ones, and this is a really useful tool for classroom management. It is a classroom timer: it can be set to countdown any given number of seconds and minutes, as well as be paused and reset. I believe it is a very important resource for classroom management nowadays, since sometimes the teacher does not want students to spend a lot of time doing something in particular, so the teacher can set x minutes to a task and ask the students to finish before the bomb explodes.