Studysync  

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Studysync is an innovative educational software based on educational content for reading and writing.
This product is designed to increase reading and writing for middle and high school students. Studysync engages students and teachers in reading and writing through an extensive digital library of texts, TV quality, video lessons and a proprietary online writing as well as an anonymous peer review tool.





 Studysync improves reading and writing across the curriculum. That is why, it has many benefits. One the one hand, it motivates students to read and write through a dynamic and digital library. Moreover, this tool develops critical thinking skills because of the immense text selection, so there are no boundaries of learning.
On the other hand, it provides multiple teaching support. Texts, prompts and assessments can be customized based on group or individual educational goals. For that reason, Studysync allows classroom management to be easy and flexible and putting curriculum, instruction and decisions directly on hands of a teacher. 



Facebook - StudySync

Access the tool here

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ByGosh  

Posted by: Flor in



ByGosh is a children's literature site that features some of the world classic stories. Users are able to find interactive personalized children's books, classic short stories, poems and novels.  They are Free and online.

Overall, byGosh is a useful site to promote culture through classic tales. Moreover, it is quite helpful not only for kids but also for adolescents and adults. Unfortunately, you will need internet connection to exploit its benefits.   

Access the tool here

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Bio.True Story  

Posted by: Flor in


Bio. True Story is a web site where you can read about famous people. Through original series, it uncovers the drama in people stories: everyday situations with a twist, centric crime stories and paranormal events.




The advantages of using this site is that it allows teachers to grab students' attention with extraordinary stories. It also provides a section called Bio. Classroom where you can find educational material designed to encourage the use of biography in the classroom. The disadvantage is that this kind of sources provide texts with complex or new vocabulary so more time would be needed. Additionaly, you might see only one tense, simple past, ignoring the rest of the tenses.


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Buenos Aires Herald  

Posted by: Flor in



Buenos Aires Herald is an English language daily newspaper from Buenos Aires, Argentina. It has a Berlinet format, and depending on the day of the week, it comes with supplements: 
OnSunday: a sunday supplement with a view to the past week. It includes an analysis of the events of the week and commentary from the Buenos Aires Herald's staff.
World Trade: it covers foreign commerce news and maritime issues related to commerce.

The advantages of using this online newspaper is that it allows your students to be in contact with real English. Through this tool you are offering to your students a critical reading about current and relevant issues.
Access the tool here

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Foxit Reader  

Posted by: Flor in



Foxit Reader is a software provider of solutions for reading, editing, creating, organizing, and securing PDF documents. It allows you to open, view and print any PDF file. Foxit Reader also includes easy to use collaboration features like the ability to add annotations, search or highlight important information.


Overall this software offers several benefits; the best thing is that it is very light in size and it loads up quite fast. It is freeware and so small that opening PDF files are fast.  Foxit reader is the best alternative to Adobe Reader. Furthermore, it is very easy to use. You can ask your students to write a story or an essay, in Word and turn their works into PDF files.

Access the tool here

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Children's Storybooks  

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It is a site in which many books are available for children to read online. It is a very interesting site to explore in English classes with the objective of encouraging and developing literacy skills in the students.
This tool offers some advantages. Firstly, all the stories are arranged according to children's age: Young Children, Older Children and Young Adult and you can read them for free. Secondly, they are illustrated so the stories look more attractive and help students understand what they are reading. However, you cannot download the stories and you need connection to internet to read them. What is more, the stories could not be appropriate to the age of your students because of the language they use. Although they are arranged according the age, the language is a bit difficult for Spanish speakers.
Anyway, let's start exploring and reading the wonderful stories this site offers.

Access the tool here

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Roflbot  

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Roflbot is a funny way to add text and captions to your pictures. This is a very useful tool for teaching vocabulary in your class in a creative way.




Here, you are free to write and modify pictures by adding text and create for example, a story. If you want to use Roflbot and enjoy it, you can start by using a sample from a random picture or start with a picture from the web as well as from a file taken from your computer.


Roflbot offers some advantages. Firstly, it is a very useful editor to be used with children, teens and adults. It is a funny and enjoyable tool in which users are able to create texts freely. Besides, it allows to add as many pictures and texts as editors like. Secondly, editors can save the captions and post them on facebook, save them to flickr and on the editor´s computer. Finally, it is easy to learn how to use it and no tutorial is needed. 
Nevertheless, Roflbot has two main disadvantages. The first one is that this tool needs internet connection. The second one is that editors do not have much fonts and colours to choose while writing a text and sometimes it is difficult to change the size of the picture.
  Access to Roflbot here

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Storybird  

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Storybird is an online tool that allows you to read, create and share stories.
In English classes, it can be used either to encourage literacy, development of foreign language vocabulary and written work, or developing creative writing.

The use of this tool has more advantages than disadvantages. One one hand, it combines images and text to tell a story. Storybird can be created collaboratively or individually and it provides a huge number of ready made images. These ready made images force students to focus on their writing and story telling techniques by creating artwork. What is more, Storybird is free and has a spellchecker function default in American English that can be changed to other languages such as British English, French and Portuguese among others. Last but not least, students' work is managed through virtual classrooms where students and teachers can see each others' work. That allows students to comment on others' work and make contributions. On the other hand, you need to create an account to be able to use this tool. However, you are able to set up a teacher account which allows you to enable students to use the service without each student having to set up individual accounts as well as managing classes and setting assignments. Furthermore, the ready made images are cathegorized so you have to choose a set of pictures and work on them. You cannot select images from different sets. Storybird does not allow you to upload your own illustrations so it may be limiting for the students. Finally, printing stories is not free.

Encourage your students to develop their writing and reading skills by creating their own stories!
Learn how to use and manipulate this tool with the following tutorial.

Access the tool here


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Kidblog  

Posted by: Flor in


Kidblog is a secure, private blogging platform created specifically for educational use. Students are able to publish posts and participate in academic discussion. Teachers mantain complete control over students blog and user accounts.


The good aspect about this tool is that it is free, simple and easy to use. In addition, teachers have administrative control over all students blogs and accounts. Your students' blogs are private, viewable only by classmates and the teacher. The bad part is that you need internet connection and patient to get used to interact with your students in this way specially if you have never done so. Nevertheless, you should give it a chance and start using it. It is a good way to develop your students' writing.

Access the tool here 

Click here to see the tutorial  

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Prezi (Presentation Media)  

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Prezi is a presentation software and storytelling tool for presenting ideas. The software employs a zooming which allows users to zoom in and out of their presentation media, so the users are allowed to display and navigate through all the information.


There are some advantages and disadvantages of this tool. One advantage is that it breaks the mold because it is not like a traditional Power Point presentation. Additionally, it is free and web based. This tool provides access from any web-enable computer which is great for students and they can easily use their Facebook to create free accounts. Another advantage is that Prezi links text and movement to pictures. Movement becomes part of the presentation and allows you to go in and out of the texts by clicking on the images as links to the presentation. Prezi can also be appropriate for all ages because it ensures that any age group will be successful in creating and presenting new creations. 
However,Prezi has some disadvantages,for example the use of Internet.It means that internet connection is essential. Apart from that, this tool can cause sickness.At the beginning you can feel lost and dizzy, but consider that you are doing your presentation, try to avoid moving from one area to another until you finish one presentation. Anyway, remember: Prezi abuse of zoom, rotation or much effect can cause users to be sick. For that reason, you should try not to use it improperly.




Access here to open Prezi Tutorial

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Wordle  

Posted by: Flor in


Wordle is a free, online tool that generates word clouds based on a text a user provides. 



Wordle gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. Consequently, it will provide an accurate visual of the key words used most often in the text, giving clues of the most important piece of information.
Wordle is a good tool for teachers who want to present especific vocabulary, to show key words in a short story or in an exam. The use of this tool will depend on your imagination. The cons are that as it is online you will need internet connection. In addition, it does not develop your students' writing skill, it is just a helper you give to your students when working on a specific task.

Wordle: writing

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Blogger  

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A blog is like a personal diary, a collaborative space, a collection of links, your private thoughts or simply stuffs. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes. For a blog, there are no real rules. In simply terms, a blog is a web site where you write your stuffs and your visitors can read it, make comments, follow the links or email you.  
Students, for example, will love it due to the fact that they can consult many blogs that internet offers about different topics related to education or just for enjoyment. They  can also create their own blogs about certain topic seen in class.


Blogs have some advantages, one of them is that you can share and post,create pages, add articles or topics of your like. Another advantage is that Blogger is free and popular.You will always get good exposure in the internet, because Google supports Blogger sites.  Moreover, it takes few steps to create a blog account and any special technical skill is needed.

 Nevertheless, there are disadvantages to take into account. Google controls what ads you are allowed to post on your blog site. What is more, Google decides if to close down the platform. Therefore, anyone who is using Blogger should backup their content because  their blog site could be deleted by Google even without been notice by the user.













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Glogster EDU  

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It is a plataform that allows you to create virtual posters. It is a very useful tool in English classes because teachers can create projects, assingments and presentations about any vocabulary or grammar point for students to work on.
On one hand, this tool offers many advantages. First of all,it encourages interactive and collaborative work and enables students to combine different sources like videos, pictures, text, audio, links, animations among others into a digital poster. Secondly, teachers can grade students' work and communicate with them online. Last but not least, posters can be shared with other users on the site embedded in external blogs or wikis or via Facebook or Twitter.
On the other hand, the use of this tool presents some disadvantages. Firstly, it requires connection to Internet in order to create posters. Secondly, students need to have guidelines to follow in order to prevent an innapropriate use. Finally, one aspect to consider is the age-appropriateness for educational activities. Gloster can be beneficial to students in secondary level but a bit complex to those at primary level.
It's time to try this wonderful tool and see how creative your students can be!
Access the tool here

Click here to see the Gloster EDU Tutorial 

An example of what your students could do - Click here

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OneNote  

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OneNote or Microsoft Office OneNote helps you take, organize and share notes. It is a very useful tool in English classes because students can organize all the information in a attractive way without using paper. 
This tool has advantages and disadvanages. On one hand, you can gather your notes, handwritten or typed, and capture pictures, videos and audio commentaries. Besides, you can add your own comments in the documents and you can also gather material from other applications. Moreover, notes can be shared with other OneNote users over the Internet. What is more, it saves information automatically as the user works and in pages organized into sections within notebooks. On the other hand, the pages can be arbitrary large and do not have a uniform layout or structure.

 Let's explore and use this new and attractive way of gather your information!
Download the tool here 

Click here to see OneNote tutorial

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Cmap  

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This tool allows you to create your own concept map. It is very useful in English classes since students can built their own knowledge and manipulate information. For example, they can use it to make a glossary about certain topic adding pictures or sounds to the words or just make a mind map on verbal tenses or any grammatical point.

The use of this tool has many advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, a Cmap can be created in your own computer without access to Internet and if you work online, you can share your work on servers and more than one people can edit it at the same time. It encourages colaborative work. Moreover, you can add videos, images, sounds or links to other web pages or documents to make it more attractive and to complement the information. Last but not least, it can be exported as an image so you can include your Cmap in a word document, a power point presetation or any other computer program. On the other hand, a Cmap requires linking words to join two keywords or ideas; if you do not provide a conector the arrows do not appear and you will see a blank space between both ideas. Apart from that, sometimes it is difficult to understand due to its simplicity. As you are expected to use words or phrases rather than complete sentences, the lack of complexity would led to a difficult understanding of the mind map.

Anyway, let's explore and use this useful tool to facilitate and improve the learning process of your students!

 This video will help you understand how to use CmapTools.
           

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