Creating social phrasebooks with Phraseum

I spend a lot of time looking at different web-based tools and apps and thinking about if and how they can be used for learning. Sometimes it takes some thought and at other times it’s really obvious. With Phraseum it was instantly obvious...

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Using Wise Quotes with EFL ESL Students

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,...

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Adventure Narratives for EFL ESL Students

For a long time now I've really admired and been fascinated by the work of Amanita Design. They have a really unique approach and I love the way they blend photographic textures with cartoon images.I also find their games quite addictive and...

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Artificial Intelligence Chat bots and EFL ESL

Earlier this week I posted a short article to my Quick Shout blog about a new site called Virsona that enables teachers and students to develop their own AI ( Artificial Intelligence) chat bots.Since then I have been trying the site a bit more,...

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Using Word Clouds in EFL ESL

I've just discovered Wordle, which is a really useful site for creating word clouds. The word clouds are created by entering either a text, URL or del.icio.us user name into a field. The site then generates a word cloud based on the frequency...

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Microblogging for EFL with Plurk

Well I never thought I'd say this, but I've become a fan of microblogging! I have to say that it's mainly because of Plurk. When I first saw Twitter some time back I couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about. I had a look at a few 'twitterers' sharing such information as what they had for lunch or that they were washing their hair and...

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Prompting reading speeds

This is a really handy little tool which is doing the rounds at the moment. It's called CuePrompter and it's an online Teleprompter.For those not in the know, a Teleprompter is a tool used by news readers, TV presenters etc to help them remember...

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