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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 few years I've done a lot of work developing writing and redeveloping online courses and course materials. In the initial rush to get learning online many organisations got themselves a Moodle platform and then attached a whole load of PDFs and .docs, added some forums and the odd video clip and called it an online course. It's no surprise then that drop out rates for online learning courses have been so high. The advent of Web 2.0 though, brought a whole bunch of new tools that course designers could take advantage of to make content more social, interactive and engaging. Here are some of the tools I've been using recently to embed a bit more interactivity into the courses I work on. Storify - http://storify.com Storify is a great tool for collecting together  a mixture of web based resources and references into a web based widget that you can then structure into a digital research paper. You can easily pull in comments from Facebook, Twitter or Google searc...

Using YouTube videos with students can be really great, but finding a video with the exact language you want and at a suitable length with too many other distractions around can be really difficult. That's why SafeShare.TV is so useful. SafeShare.TV is a tool that has two primary functions. The first is to enable you to share YouTube videos using a direct URL that frames the video without the advertising and other distracting features that might cause students to wander off into less suitable materials. The second and perhaps even more useful function of SafeShare.TV is that it enable you to crop the video clip so that only a particular part is shown. This is particularly useful when you want to build activities or tasks around clips that focus students on particular linguistic features. Find out more How to use SafeShare.TV First find a YouTube clip that has a section that you would like to use. I chose this one from ‘Room with a View’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tehft3GDw6k ...

I've always found wise (and sometimes not so wise) quotes really useful, both within the classroom with students and as a way of introducing a topic when writing materials. I've used lots of different websites to find quotes over the years, but iWise is certainly about to become my new favourite as it seems to have taken wise quotes to a new level. You can search for quotes by keyword, look at quotes of the day, browse quotes by topic or just click for a random quote. That isn't all, iWise is compatible with Twitter and allows you to re-tweet quotes or subscribe to and follow tweet feeds from your favourite sources of wisdom. If you decide to search by topic etc, it even pulls in tweets from Twitter too. So how about some quote activities with our EFL ESL students? Here are some suggestions: Get students to find a random quote and translate it into their own language or find a parallel quote in their own L1. Collect 8 - 10 quotes on a similar topic and get students to dis...

Back in November 2008 I published Part 1 of a series of articles intended to explore the use of WebCams in education. I have now finally got round to writing Part 2 which is a collection of 20 activities EFL ESL teachers can do with their students. Here are some links to useful free video communication tools that you could use for these activities. MailVu is a simple to use app which runs in the browser and enables students to record a short message which can be sent by email. EyeJot is another simple video email app which also has a mobile version. Skype is of course the mainstream choice for synchronous communication. Oovoo is a Skype competitor which also enables the recording of video interviews by capturing both interviewer and interviewee. I want this ebook 20 WebCam Activities 1. Chinese - video dictation - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it thems...

For the last few days I've been playing with WallWisher a handy tool for creating online noticeboards that you can add sticky notes to. You can see a wall that I created here with some notes about Web 2.0 Tools for EFL ESL Teachers. It's very easy to create your own noticeboard, just click where it says 'Build a Wall' and you'll see a new wall with some options on it that you need to complete. Basically these are: Uploading an image Choosing colours Adding title and subtitle Creating your password Deciding who can see and add to your wall Once you have done this you just click the big 'Done' button and you are almost ready to start adding content to your wall. Before you start to add content you'll need to check your email account where you should find your password. Then you just log in to your wall and double click on the wall to start adding the sticky notes. The sticky notes are quite simple, you just add some text and you can either link to an image...

As ever I'm a fool for technology which can make images entertaining and personalise them, so when I saw this I couldn't resist it. Nik Peachey or Austin Powers? This site is called Yearbook Yourself and is based around the concept of the end of year school books that are so popular in some countries. The site enables you to upload an image of yourself and then import it into the style of a yearbook from any year between 1950 and the 2000s. You can then download the images as jpg files. The site also gives you a little bit of information about what was popular in those years and plays a small music clip from that year. So how can we use for teaching ESL EFL students? In order to use it with your students, you or they will need to have a digital image of themselves. Ideally it should be a head and shoulders portrait with the student face on to the camera. Here are some ideas for activities: Create a yearbook for your class . You could do this by getting the students to select t...

If you enjoy working with images with your EFL students, especially on an IWB (interactive whiteboard) or a data projector, then PicLens is exactly what you need. PicLens is a plugin (small program) that works within your web browser (there are versions for Firefox, Safari and IE 7) and it converts many of the standard image sharing websites, like flickr , Photobucket , Google Images , Yahoo Images etc. into "3D immersive environments"! To understand what that mean have a look at this short flash video tutorial which shows how to use PicLens. Click here or on the image to view the movie (5Mb Flash) OR Download a version of this movie for i-pod / i-tunes here At the click of the mouse the normal 2D web pages are converted into a wall of images which you can explore and enlarge. How to use this with ELT students on your data projector or IWB Pull up a wall of images and describe one while your students try to guess which one it is. Then get a student to describe an image an...