Exploit Interactive Digital Narrative for Language Development

Draw a Stickman site has a collection of short narratives about a Stickman that you can draw with your mouse.

Once you have drawn the man you click a button and he comes to life.

You then follow him through a short adventure and draw in various elements as he needs them and discover what happens to him.

There are three free adventures that students can work through or you can use them in class with a data projector.

These are really imaginative adventures that can inspire students’ creativity.

Draw a Stickman can be used for lots of activities including retelling the story, writing the next chapter of the story or just predicting what will happen as the adventures unfold.

You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

Related links:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Get Students Creating Their Own Video Reviews and Resource Library

This is a great tool to make screen-capture videos directly from within your Chrome browser.

Once you have registered and installed the browser plugin, you just go to the page or site and click on the Loom button.

You’ll need to give the plugin permission to use your microphone and webcam, then just click on ‘Start Recording’.

You can choose to record whole screen or just an application window.

Click the plugin button again and your video is instantly uploaded to your profile on the Loom site and the link is copied.

The recording will open in a new browser tab and you can then give it a title and watch it again. You’ll see the website you recorded a webcam image of yourself talking in the lower left corner and a number of fields to type in information and add comments.

You can share a link to the recording through social media, get an iframe embed code or just get a direct link. Once you share it users can watch and leave comments.

Loom is a great tool for teacher training and development and also great to get students speaking, doing website reviews and sharing them together. You can get the students to create their own resource library of useful tools and websites.

I hope you find Loom useful. You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

Related links:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Free Reading and Language Development Lessons from DreamReader

DreamReader site was designed specifically for English language learners and has a range of reading texts at different levels.

Each text also has an interactive online quiz and an audio recording of the text. The lessons often focus on particular gramatical features, but have also been classified as:

• Easy English
• Interesting English 
• Fun English 
• Practical English 
• Academic English

The materials can also be downloaded as pdf and printed for use in the classroom. Each one also has a downloadable version of the audio file.

Here are a few nice examples:

• Minecraft 
• Adjective Order 
• Brad Pitt

These materials are great for homework reading assignments or for use in the classroom.

DreamReader is a really useful free resource which is constantly being up-dated with new materials. The site doesn't require any kind of registeration from either students or teachers and only carries a minimum of advertising, so it's a real gem of a site for hard up teachers and certainly something we should share. Thanks to Neil Millington for producing it.

You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

My eBooks:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers

Best
Nik Peachey

Make PDF Texts into Interactive Online Activities for Blended Learning

This tool enables teachers to build onto more traditional course book based courses and add a blended learning element. Once you have created an account you can upload PDF documents, or buy in text books from publishers or book stores and add them to courses.

You then give your students a code to register on the course and they can access the texts, make notes and annotate the text and build discussions around them.

The site also generates a ‘confusion report’  which can show you where the students are struggling or having problems with the text, then you can deal with the problems in the next class.

When you register as a teacher you need to tell the site which school you teach at. You can try a live demo of a course to see how it works at: https://app.perusall.com/demo

Perusall is a useful tool for turning a face to face course into blended learning without too much extra work.

You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: https://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

My eBooks:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers

Best
Nik Peachey

Free Reading Passages and Progress Tracking Tools

This site was designed to help grade K5 - K12 native speaker students develop their reading and comprehension skills, but can also be really useful for second language development.

Students can choose from a range of graded texts and get a wide range of interactive activities and reading support. Teachers can also register on the site and assign specific texts to their students.

The reading support tools combine text-dependent comprehension questions and discussion type questions to focus students’ attention as well as text-to-speech and dictionary / glossary type vocabulary support. Students and teachers can also download the text as a pdf file.

CommonLit is great for getting students to work more autonomously on their reading skills.

You can find more tools and activities like these in my ebook 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom.

The book is available on iOS or as PDF for other devices.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

Related links:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Find and Create a Variety of Interactive Activities and Assignments for Your Students

This is a really useful collection of activities assignments and tools for teachers and students.

There are lots of ready made interactive activities designed for learners. You can search through these and find something appropriate for our students. Some of these look a bit homemade, but the functionality and design is sound.

There are also tools you can use to create customised content for your students’ specific needs.

For most of the assignments you need to register on the site and create a class. You can then create assignments for students to do and track their progress.

Some of the activities are translation dependent, so registering (which is free) will also help set the language used.

Some of the activities I liked most are The Manga Maker, Vocalyzer, Essay Rank and Error Spotter. For the ones that involve voice you'll need to make sure students are working on Google Chrome.

In some cases the assignments need a little more instruction on how they are created and how they work, but it certainly looks like this is a resource that will continue to develop if it gets support.

Apps 4 EFL is free, but you can help to support it through Patron and it may well be worth doing so if you find it really useful for your students.

You can find more tools and activities like these in my ebook 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom.

The book is available on iOS or as PDF for other devices.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

Related links:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Develop Listening Skills with Authentic Materials

Listenwise is an amazingly rich resource for developing listening skills using texts about current events.

Photo by Konstantin Dyadyun on Unsplash

The site has a huge collection of ready made listening materials on a really wide range of international topics.

Once you register on the site, you can access listenings and scripts and well as a range of interactive and classroom activities.

Once you select a lesson you can easily get a link to share with your students.

Any teacher can register for free, use the classroom materials and share links to the resources with their students.

To use the interactive online materials and get access to the LMS you need to have a premium account. This will enable you to use and track the materials for homework assignments.
The premium membership will also allow you to customise, adapt and assign the content to specific students or classes.

You can see some examples of the materials here: https://listenwise.com/current_events

Listenwise is a really powerful tool for developing students listening skills and for saving teachers planning time.
You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

My eBooks:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers

Best
Nik Peachey

10 Great Apps and Games for Enhancing Learning

In this post I'd like to do a quick round up of some of the great apps and games I wrote about during August.

There are some really useful tools, applications and resources here that cover a wide range of functions that can help us to enhance the way our students learn and their levels of engagement.

Make Your Worksheets Digital in Minutes

Telegra.ph is a simple to use tool that can enable you to turn your Word worksheets into online multimedia documents in just a few moments.

Go to the site and add a title, your name and the text of your worksheet. Highlight the text to get formatting options for making the text more attractive or adding links.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/make-your-worksheets-digital-in-minutes.html

Build Professional Level Online and Blended Courses with this Free Plugin

H5P is a tool for building complete courses with a wide variety of interactive task types. The tool works as a plug in with a range of platforms including Moodle, Drupal and Wordpress (all of which have free versions available) .

It’s very easy to install the plug in (took me less than 5 mins with Wordpress) and once this is done you can choose any of the interactive elements to add to your pages.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/build-professional-level-online-and.html

Create Blended Learning with Video Based Discussions

Using Flipgrid you can create a number of grids based around top level themes and then build 'topics' into these that explore specific areas of the overall theme. When you build a topic you can add various video based resources and then students can respond by recording short video clips giving their opinion on the topic.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/create-blended-learning-with-video.html

Create Virtual Reality Comprehension Tasks

Story Spheres is a great free app for creating immersive narrative experiences. It enables you to take the 360 degree panoramic images from your mobile device and covert them into an interactive virtual reality experience.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/create-virtual-reality-comprehension.html

Create Elearning Worksheets for Comprehension & Speaking Homework

This is a great site for building digital interactive worksheets with a whole range of different interactions. You can embed video, images, text or audio into the worksheets and then build a wide range of interactions into them.With some of the activity types, like the open text one, students have the option to write or use voice input in the worksheets.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/create-elearning-worksheets-for.html

Learn English While Saving the Planet with this Great Online Game

Tyto is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) based around the scenario of a team of students and scientists trying to save humanity by setting up life on a new planet.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/learn-english-while-saving-planet-with.html

Improve Listening Skills with Audio Transcription Software

This is a great tool if you have a lot of transcription work to do, but also a great tool to develop students' listening. You can give them and audio file to transcribe and they can upload it and then check and correct the transcription. Once it's complete they can download and send it to you or peer check each others work.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/improve-listening-skills-with-audio.html

From Image to Story - Motivating Reading Tasks on Powerful Issues

Time 100 is an amaxing feature from Time Magazine. It's a collection of 100 images that have had the power to change the world. The images are displayed on a time line and you can scroll through and click on each image.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/from-image-to-story-motivating-reading.html

 

Convert Your Chrome Browser into a Language Lab for Speaking Practice

Fluency Tutor is a really interesting concept. It is a Chrome plugin that converts a computer into a kind of language lab.

If you sign up as a teacher you can then assign texts to students and they can record themselves reading the text and send it to you for feedback.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/convert-your-chrome-browser-into.html

Creating Dynamic Learning Objects with Genial.ly

This has become one of my favourite tools for creating not just infographics but all kinds of digital content from reading mazes, infograhics and interactive images to video based tasks. Once you have built your learning objects you can either get a link to them or embed them into webpages or blogs.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/creating-dynamic-learning-objects-with.html

 

You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

My eBooks:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers

Best
Nik Peachey

 

 

Sutori for Collaboratively Creating Digital Narrative Timelines

Sutori is a wonderful tool for creating content rich interactive digital narrative.

The narrative time line is displayed in a vertical single webpage and students can just scroll down through the elements of the story.

Photo by Federica Campanaro on Unsplash

Stories can include a wide range of media including video, audio, text, and quiz type objects as well as forums. Once created they can be embedded into websites, blogs or shared through social media.
There are some wonderful examples and a specific section for teachers on the site.

Here are a few examples that I really liked:

• Aztec, Inca, Maya 
• Teacher's Guide to Starting Back to School
• The History of English 
• The History of Pink Floyd

Creating your own narrative is very easy. Just register and go to your dashboard. Then click the cross to add a story. You can then add a title and introduction  and start adding various interactive learning objects and media.

Once your narrative is started you can also invite others to collaborate and build the time line with you.

Once the narrative is complete you can share it or even print it as a PDF.

You can use Sutori to create interactive reading tasks for students, or better still get your students to use it to create their own project or research presentations or as task outputs as a means of assessing how much they have learned.

Sutori is a marvellous tool and free to use for teachers, but there are also premium subscription which offers learner tracking and management services, so if this is a popular tool in your school it could be worth supporting the company and investing in a subscription.

You can find over 100 digital lesson plans, videos and teacher resources in my Teachers' Classroom App

 

GET IT TODAY

Best
Nik Peachey

Using Image Prompts to Inspire Writing & Speaking Activities

This site is built around the concept of using image prompts to inspire digital writing activities for students.

Photo by HB Mertz on Unsplash

As a teacher you can create classes and assign writing tasks to students. The students do their writing tasks within the platform and can publish and share them there. This is a little like posting to a blog, but within a safe environment.

Students can comment on each other's postings and collect them into a gallery. The site also has an interesting tool to add voice recordings, so you can use this for speaking activities too.

The site is free to use with up to 40 students, and they can produce up to 5 postings each. After that you have to have a premium account, but it is very reasonably priced, especially if you choose the whole school solution.

You can also access the writing prompts without signing up by going to: https://www.writeabout.com/ideas/

WriteAbout is a really useful tool to get ideas for student writing projects.

Get lesson plans, teaching tips and teacher resource books with our Teachers' Classroom App.

 

 

Nik Peachey - Pedagogical Director - PeacheyPublications Ltd

Create Speaking Activities Based on Sequences of Images

This app enables teachers or students to create sequences of images and videos and record a monologue about each one.

The images can be ones they have created themselves or they can find images by using the apps search function. The image search draws on Creative Commons images from:

• Library of Congress
• The British Library
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• NASA
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Students can also add annotations, emojis and other ornaments to the images.

The app then exports the sequence and monologue as a video file that can be shared through social media, email or embedded into a blog or website.

Here's a quick tutorial:

Shadow Puppet is a great tool for creating digital narrative, doing reports or homework assignments or creating more personalised speaking activities.

You could also use it as a portfolio tool and get students talking about any work they have created.

The site also includes lesson ideas for a range of topics across the curriculum as well as some useful printable resources for the classroom. At present it is only available for iOS.

I hope you and your students enjoy this tool. You can find links to many more  sites like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

My Books:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

A Tool for Creating Interactive Fiction with Students

Inklewriter is a tool for creating interactive narrative or what I used to call reading mazes. These are stories that present the reader with various options through the story and allow the reader to choose how the plot progresses as they read through.

To start writing your own story just click on ‘Start Writing’, then give your story a title and add the first paragraph. You can then add the options for your reader.

The site tracks your options as you build the story and you can also see an overview map of the different connections as you write.

To find our more watch the very clear tutorial.

Before using this with students it’s a good idea to get them to read one of the stories so they understand the concept.  This might be a useful one to get your students started - ‘The Sand and the Scarab’ by Cian Gill

To use this with students you could create a story yourself or choose one of the stories featured on their blog and build comprehension tasks or just let students read and then compare their journeys through the story.

You can also get your students to write a story collaboratively and take it in turns to add the different options at the end of each paragraph.

Inklewriter is a great tool to get students writing and makes the process of creating this kind of branching interactive narrative much easier to manage.

You can find more tools and activities like these in my ebook 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom.

The book is available on iOS or as PDF for other devices.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

My Books:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Writing & Discussion Activities to Promote Awareness of Fake News

Newspaper Generator is a useful tool that enables you to create what looks like a newspaper front page.

To do this you upload an image, select a title and a headline and then write in the details of the story. Then just click on 'Make it' and the site will produce a PDF that you can download.

You can use this in class for a number of activities.

• This is a nice way to get students writing news type texts and then publishing them.
• You can also use it to get them thinking about fake news by creating a selection of news articles, some based on real news stories and others that you invent. You can then ask them to research the articles and find out which ones are real and which are invented.
• You could also use the headlines and articles to generate discussion over which are real and which are fake or work on how to spot fake news.
• You could get students to create their own fake news test by creating two real news stories and one fake one. They can then see if they can trick their classmates into believing the fake one is true. They could use this Factitious game as their inspiration. 

Newspaper Generator can be used in an enjoyable way to raise awareness of issues regarding the credibility of news and to promote more critical thinking.

See also: 6 Useful Resources for Exploiting the News in the English Language Classroom

You can find more tools and activities like these in my ebook 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom.

The book is available on iOS or as PDF for other devices.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

My Books:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey