Write Your Own Quick Biography

Biographicon is a kind of who's who of anybody. It's actually a biography site where anyone can go and add information about themselves or anyone else!


This may seem a little bizarre, and it is, but the way the writer interacts with the site is quite interesting. You simply type in the name of the person who's biography you want to create and then click a link to generate questions about that person ( or yourself).

Completing the answers to the questions enables the site to generate the text for the biography. It really couldn't be any easier. If you don't like a question you just skip it.


I actually found it a lot of fun and some of the questions are really quite interesting and searching. This is a great tool for students to try out.

• Students could write and share their own biography.
• Write the fictional biography of a character from a book they are reading.
• Create their own fictional characters' biographies as the basis for brainstorming their own creative writing project.
• Write the factual biography of someone they are researching
• Write a biography of one of their family members using the questions for the basis of an interview they do for homework.
• Once biography has been created you can also discuss it with students by clicking the discussion link.
  

This is a really simple but very usable site. It does worry me though that it seems like anyone can go and edit the biography of anyone else, but I guess if you treat the thing like harmless fun then it isn't so serious.

I hope you enjoy this site and make sure you don't edit my biography! Oh perhaps it is serious after all???

You can find 20+ more EFL ESL writing activities here

Related links:

• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Drama project tools
• Make you own animated movies
• Developing screencast tutorials
• Extending a Sentence
• 60 Second Writing Activity

Best

Nik Peachey

Darwin and Evolution

I've just been having a little play with a great feature on one of the Open University's websites Devolve Me.

The site is dedicated to Darwin and as well as having some useful information and resources about him, has a wonderful little tool to take yourself backwards through the evolutionary process.

Just upload your image adjust it for position and then watch yourself transform back for a few million years.

So if you would like to see how I got from this:
Through this

To this
Then just click on this link here and watch as I go back through time: Nik Devolved
Be sure to play with the little slider to take me backwards and forwards.

As for classroom exploitation:

• You could transform a few people using images of famous people then see if students can guess who they are.
• You could also get your students to transform images of themselves and guess who they are.
• Or you could be serious and use this to start a discussion on evolution. Students can post and compare their opinions to the 'Have your say' forum
  

Anyway, hope you enjoy it.

Related links:

• Are You a Celebrity Lookalike?
• Photo Fun with Your Students
• Personalised flashcards
• Animating vocabulary
• A Picture's worth
• Manga images for EFL ESL
• Create an English Cartoon
• Guess the Word
• Play Games and Improve Your Vocabulary

Best

Nik Peachey

AI and Chat Bots for EFL ESL

I've always been fascinated by AI since I saw the Stanley Kubric / Steven Spielberg film by that name some years ago. There used to be a fantastic chat bot on the website for the movie (which is now gone) that I developed a lesson around for a group of students in Morocco. ( A chat bot is a virtual person that you can type text to and get answers)


That's why I was so delighted to find Virsona. The site is still very much in development, but does have a virtual Abraham Lincoln that you or your students can chat with and other virtual personalities are being developed (including Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis).

The wonderful thing about Virsona though is that you can create your own chat bot quite simply, by registering and then adding information and training the bot to answer questions that it might get asked.

There are quite a few ways of adding information to the chat bot's log. You can either do this in the form of diary entries, uploading files or typing in questions and answers.
I've already made a start on a virtual Nik Peachey!
This is great language practice for students and a bit of fun too.

Related links:

• Video conferencing for EFL
• A Virtual World for Facebook Users
• Make your own chat room

Hope you enjoy it.

Best

Nik Peachey

Create Your Avatar Image

Last week I wrote a posting with some teaching suggestions based around the Face your Manga website. Some people were understandably put off by the ability of the images to make some rude gestures.
I have since discovered the DoppelMe website which does a similar thing and could be a good alternative, though with this one you do have to dress your avatar from naked!

Seems like there's always a problem!

Related postings:

• Personalised flashcards
• Animating vocabulary
• A Picture's worth

Best

Nik Peachey