10 Free Apps to Enhance your Students' Learning

In this post I'd like to take a quick look back at ten of the most popular posts I wrote from last month. These posts cover a host of free apps, games and resources sites that you can use to create engaging digital learning for your students.

Create Vocabulary Activities from Authentic Text in Minutes

WordBooster is a real time saver for anyone creating courses using authentic materials.

 The site generates word lists and vocabulary quizzes from authentic texts and includes definitions of the words and a range of activities to help students understand and remember the word.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/create-vocabulary-activities-from.html

Get Teens Writing with Gamified Writing Activities

Story Wars is a great gamified way to make writing creative and competitive.

Students read short chapters of the beginnings of stories and then have to submit the next chapter for the story.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/get-teens-writing-with-gamified-writing.html

Give Young Learners Structured Writing Practice with WritingSparks

WritingSparks is a great site for giving structure and adding an element of fun to writing activities, especially if you have a data projector so that students can see the prompts on the screen.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/give-young-learners-structured-writing.html

Create Texting Fiction to Keep Your Teens Engaged

Texting fiction is a new emergent genre of fiction writing that is becoming very popular among teens and I have to say when I started reading a few of these creations I can see why.

Basically the narrative is structured as a phone based text conversation and can include images and videos as well as text and audio message

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/create-texting-fiction-to-keep-your.html

6 Useful Resources for Exploiting the News in the English Language Classroom

In this article I'm sharing a collection of resources that you can use with your students to help them understand news stories in English.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/6-useful-resources-for-exploiting-news.html

Create Animated Speaking Activities with Toontastic

Toontastic provides the kind of activity that could be used to get younger students speaking and it gives them the opportunity to play out different roles and to listen and reflect on their own speaking before they save and share.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/create-animated-speaking-activities.html

Build Your 3D Virtual Reality Classroom Today

This is a great tool for running online group classes or social events for online students.

There is also now the capability to build course materials and launch commercial courses through: . You can also take free courses that can help you use the platform.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/build-your-3d-virtual-reality-classroom.html

Using Computer Games to Raise Awareness of Global Issues

In this post I'd like to introduce a few games that you can use with students as a springboard for discussion on what can be some difficult issues for teachers to address in the classroom.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/using-computer-games-to-raise-global.html

Get Students Creating Video Summaries with Lumen5

This is a great tool for quickly creating video summaries. You can use it to write a short summary or just put in the URL of an online article or blog posting and then pick the parts of the text you want to include in the video.

http://quickshout.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/get-students-creating-video-summaries.html

 

I hope you enjoy these resources and make good use of them with your students over the coming year.

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

Get Teens Writing with Gamified Writing Activities

Story Wars is a great gamified way to make writing creative and competitive.

Students read short chapters of the beginnings of stories and then have to submit the next chapter for the story.

The readers of the story can then vote for which new chapter they feel is the best continuation of the story. The one with the most votes becomes part of the story.

There are lots of stories in progress that students can add to or they can start their own. Each story has a fantastic image to help prompt the imagination.

The site is free, but there is a ‘Classroom’ version for $15 a month which makes all the stories your students create private and gives you the teacher the ability to give your students feedback on their submissions.

There is also a free iOS version for mobile devices.

Story Wars looks like an ideal way to get teens enthusiastic about reading and writing fiction.

I hope you and your students enjoy Story Wars. 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

Using Computer Games to Raise Global Issues

Computer games are increasingly making their way into the field of education these days and for good reason.

• They are part of our students' lives
• They can be deeply engaging to the point of addiction
• They can be a creative genre of communication through narrative

So in this post I'd like to introduce a few games that you can use with students as a springboard for discussion on what can be some difficult issues for teachers to address in the classroom.

The Coming Out Simulator
This is an interactive story type game that is played on a simulation of a phone screen. The students watch SMS messages appear and follow the story. Students can work through the story and gain some valuable insights into what it’s like to be a gay teenager and to ‘come out’.

This could be really useful content to get students talking, thinking and writing about a topic that many teachers find difficult to deal with in the classroom.

We Become What We Behold
This is a short game that attempts to raise awareness of how the media highlights certain behaviours and attitudes that reinforce prejudices that can then lead to violence. The students play the role of a photographer, taking photograph and trying to spot things that are interesting. As they snap the pictures they see people’s reaction and gradually manipulate the reactions of the people they are photographing.

This is a great game to lead in to discussion or writing tasks on the topic of media manipulation and prejudice.

Lilya - The Shadows of War
This is a free game built for iOS or Android around the experience of a Palestinian family during the 2014 war in Gaza. It has won multiple awards from around the world. It does a lot to counteract the usual glamour attached to war related games and is a mixture of game play, digital narrative and art experience. It tells the story of a small family and their struggle for day to day survival.

 The game contains a strong emotional message, so you should be careful about using it with particularly young learners.

Read more

Games for Change
You can find lots more free and commercial games like this on the Games for Change website. They have helpful reviews and in many cases short video clips of the games.

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

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

Developing geography related vocabulary

I saw this website today and thought how great it would be to use it in the classroom for developing words related to places and describing different places. The site  GeoGuessr is actually based on Google maps and it's a simple game.

The game works like this:

• You see an image of an unknown place somewhere in the world and you have to guess where it is and click that place on the map. 
• Because this is based on Google maps street view you can actually explore around the image and look for clues.
• Once you click on the map you will see the real location and how close or far away you were.

• You are awarded points depending on how close you are to the real location.
• You have five turns to score as many points as possible.

How to use the site for EFL /ESL
The game itself doesn't really involve any language input or output, but you can easily add that.

• If you are using it in a single computer classroom you can show students the image and ask them to guess where it is. Ask them to justify their answers by describing what they can see. This way you can also practice modal verbs such as 'it may be', 'it might be' 'it could be', 'it must be' etc.
• If students are working on computers you can put them in pairs and get one student to describe what they can see and the other student to listen and try to guess where the place is.
• You could get students to make some notes and brainstorm words related to each of the places and then write a short description of each of the five places as though they visited them during a round the world journey.
• For lower levels you could just play the game and get the students to call out the names of the places. 

Check out my ebook

 
What I like about the site

• This a is a great way to bring the world into the classroom.
• Students can really explore inside the images and pan around to look for clues.
• It's fun and a little bit addictive.
• It's an engaging and unpredictable way to get students interacting with content.

I hope you and your students enjoy playing with GeoGuessr

Related links:

• Exploiting infographics for ELT
• Personalised flashcards
• A River of Images
• Art Photography as a Basis for Language Activities
• How to Create Bomomo Art
• Visualize sentences with video clips
• My learning technology reading list
• My collection of tools for learners
• My Facebook page

Best

Nik Peachey