flynn089

Draw.io is one of my favourite tools and the one I use most for creating graphics and infographics. As someone who doesn’t draw very well and has only limited design abilities it has really helped me out a number of times and enabled me to produce professional looking illustrations, product mockups and teaching materials. How it works When you go to the Draw.io site you can either open an existing diagram or create a new one. Click on Create New Diagram and you will have the option to either choose from a number of templates that you can edit or use a blank template. Once you open a blank template you see the canvas in the centre and on the left of the screen there are a number of shapes and a search engine. If you scroll down the categories on the left and click on them you’ll see a vast range of shapes images and icons any of which you can use by simply dragging them onto the canvas. The canvas appears to be A4, but to can drop images and shapes anywhere around it and it will expan...

AnswerGarden is a very simple tool for creating short answer polls and displaying the answers as word clouds. It’s really simple and quick to use and can be used in the classroom or embedded into webpages, blogs or in online courses. To create an AnswerGarden poll just go to http://answergarden.ch and click on the + sign at the top. Then you can either type in a topic to brainstorm or a question. AnswerGarden poll responses are limited to either 20 or 40 characters so be sure that the type of question you use doesn’t require a long complex answer. AnswerGarden works best when only a single word answer is required. Once you have added your topic or question you can just click enter and your poll will be ready. Then just share the URL with the recipients. You can refine your poll and add some security to it if you wish. There are a number of modes you can choose for your poll. You can allow different users to repeat the same answer, in which case the repeated word will appear larger d...

Over the last year I have been working on the first in what I hope will be a series of books to help teachers exploit new technologies in ways that will enhance their students learning. My first book - Digital Video - A manual for language teachers - was released in August 2015 and here just a few of the reasons why I think it's worth the price of a cup of coffee. 1. It’s a ground breaking ebook that combines text and images with 26 embedded video tutorials. Here's an example: 2. It combines instruction on how to use the best in new technologies with creative practical classroom activities. 3.It gives an overview of how new technologies can be combined with existing methodological approaches such as TBL, CLIL and Flipped Learning to make students’ learning more engaging and effective. 4. It shows you how to build your own technical and pedagogical skills to enable them to create their own materials and activities for students. 5. It helps you to see beyond the concept of usin...