SideVibe - a website that helps you teach paperless

I learned about SideVibe website from my Twitter PLN (@lelapin). It attracted my attention immediately both by its appearance and fantastic usability. You have to download its toolbar and then you can start using it for practically every web page that you think can be applied in your classes.

SideVibe is a web based teaching tool which replaces the old-fashioned handouts by putting the worksheet on your screen. Neither you nor your students need to print anything because all the learning, testing and homeworking can be done online. The worksheets or task sheets are created by the teacher and they are attached to the web page you choose for your students to explore or read. The teacher can choose from the three types of activity vibes or a discussion vibe.
The students register with the teacher's code (provided by the site) and are automatically listed in the teacher's account. After the students do the task, you assess their work online and send them feedback - without printing a single strip of paper.

To test the website I chose my favourite site East of the Web / short stories section and prepared a simple assignment for my students about one of the short stories - Professor Panini, a witty story about dramatic mishaps taking place in 2023. The students were asked to do it as home reading task. I have not seen the results yet.

 The assignment is written by the teacher on the "vibe" which can be dragged around the page to any place which is convenient for viewing. Thus if the page is long and stretches far down the screen, the vibe is taken along and you don't have to scroll up and down to access it. Students write straight in the answer box without the need of opening a Word document or a notebook. After they submit it, the teacher can assess it and send feedback.

Creating online vocabulary activities

I have prepared this post with regard to the teacher training session when I am going to consult the teachers on creating online vocabulary activities for students to be used either in class or independently, at home.

There was time when only Hot Potatoes was available for creating interactive quizzes and it was a really cool program back then. Now we can choose from a vast variety of intelligent and user-friendly online tools and applications without the necessity of downloading the program.

One of my all-time favourite sites is Kubbu which lets the teacher create attractive interactive quizzes though you have to spend some time on it. There are different formats you can choose from, like Crossword, Match, Divide, Slider, Composer. Take a look at the samples (on the main page) to see what they look like.

Check out the activities I have created and used with my students.

Newspaper vocabulary for advanced students - multiple choice exercise to match the word with its synonym

Food vocabulary for elementary students - drag and drop exercise to sort the food nouns

Another website I have used for creating vocabulary lists is Wordstash which is a great site for learning vocabulary and in addition it makes some easy online activities from your word lists.

Teachers can choose from the ready-made lists or create their own which I did here. I prepared a short list of travel words (synonyms) which my intermediate students had problems to distinguish and made them practice until they knew the difference. Students can either first study the words in Learning Mode or go straight to Practice Mode and then play some easy online games with the words from the list.

My latest discovery is Word Dynamo website which is the youngest child of the Dictionary.com parent site, still in Beta.

I took to it at once because it looks cool and it does everything itself, you only have to provide a list of words. The presence of the dictionary ensures you have a choice of definitions at hand, you just have to pick the one that suits your needs. The choice of activities include Match, Crossword, Listen, Write and Flashcards for learning the word definition and pronunciation.

Have a look at the word list Travel synonyms which I made for the same class as above to check out how this site works.

The next website I plan to explore is Educaplay which lets you create various multimedia activities which can be placed on e-learning platforms, eg. Moodle. A pity its blog is in Spanish, so for me there are two options - either I don't read it or learn Spanish :-)

Updated on 02.10.2011.
I tried creating activities on the site but most things on it are in Spanish including the instructions for students, so I have to drop the idea of using it. I also found the instructions for making activities confusing even though they were in English. Bad luck!
                                

I also suggest you to visit Random Idea English website which publishes great grammar and vocabulary online and printable exercises to use with your students of upper-intermediate or advanced level.
                     

A new tool KUBBU

I just found an amazing and extremely practical tool for making online activities, exercises, quizzes, puzzles etc called KUBBU - a strange name (meaning nothing) but don't be put off by it.
It is free, you only have to register. I tried it out and was delighted. Something new at last!

Follow this link to see what you can create with this tool - 
http://www.kubbu.com/a1/2498_jobs_and_professions

Another online task

Here is another task which I made for teaching Present Continuous. It contains a video (a popular song by Fool's Garden) so you will need loudspeakers. Enjoy!
TASK 2

An online task about the protection of environment

I have made quite a lot of online tasks.
You may use them in your lessons when you get access to the computers. All the tasks include online activities that engage students in class work and give some free time to the teacher.

TASK 1
The task on environmental problems (rainforests) with Prince Charles and other famous people on the video.