Less known blogging and website platforms

Even if you have your own blog or website, you may want to try out something new and swap WordPress, Blogger, TypePad or Live Journal for some newer platform.
Less known (used in the title of this post) is relative of course.

Here are some sites which offer services for bloggers or website creators. 
I have chosen only those sites which are free or offer a choice of a free basic account. They are listed in no particular order.

I'd like to recommend Weebly in the first place because it has a special version for education which lets you create a class website or blog with your student accounts. They can publish their projects, e-portfolios, homework on the site.
Editing of the page is very easy - you just drag and drop everything you need including photos, maps, videos, texts etc. I love the promise that there are no advertisements on your site.

Lifeyo is another blog building platform with an intuitive interface which can be used with students. I quote Richard Byrne from  Free Technology for Teachers: "LIFEYO's ease of use makes it easy to get students creating websites."
What is truly great is the absence of advertisements on your blog. It is also suitable for creating and publishing your portfolio.

Jimdo is a site which offers a private account for free with the storage of 500 MB.
I quote ReadWriteWeb: "One of the easiest tools we've seen for creating truly multimedia sites!"
There is a video tutorial of how to make a website in minutes. One of the best features of Jimdo is the wide choice of languages to choose from. This makes it possible to use a Jimdo-hosted website for the speakers of other languages, not only English.


The site which looks really cool is Jux which combines Open Source and Creative Commons principles. It requires no knowledge of HTML or other coding but it lets you play with themes, templates, widgets etc.
I quote the website: "Everything on the site is a widget than can be dragged, dropped, moved and reshaped willy-nilly. The basic site widgets include a text box, an image, a page title, a site title, etc."

SnapPages is somewhat similar to the Jux website. You build your site by dragging and dropping page elements and widgets. The basic account is free and offers a storage of 1 GB which is more than enough for a personal website.

A fast and free website building is promised by Webnode. It says "Even your grandma can do it!" which may encourage beginners to try this platform out.
There are hundreds of really beautiful templates to choose from. You can create photo galleries, polls, forums and add plenty of gadgets and widgets.

Sub Hub Lite is another web platform for creating your personal blog or website. It promises an easy and fast way of setting up a fully customizable website.

hPage is a totally free website building platform. It has a long list of features and many extras. You can choose between English or German to use on your site.

Creating personalized seals (and having fun)

The current school year is approaching its end and in many schools teachers are struggling to keep students' minds on classroom work. Why not have some fun instead of cramming their heads with grammar rules?

I have been using the seal generator for some time and it has always brought joy because it is a creative and rewarding activity.



The seal maker is a web tool on the http://www.says-it.com website which offers different tools for making funny images, signs, graphics and badges.


My favourite is the seal maker which lets you generate a personal seal which you can use on your documents, projects, homework, letters, webpages etc. Students love creating their own seals and proudly present them to their classmates.

Look at the seals made by three 15-year-old students. If you can get into the computer lab, you can have a whole lesson of fun letting your students make their personalized seals and voting for the best one at the end of the lesson.  You can also ask them to make a seal at home and send it to you or put it on their homework.

When you begin, you will need to explain some basic things about formatting options but usually students cope with such tasks very easily. Let them experiment, let them find the best design and colours and when they have finished, ask them to save their seal (it will be saved as a gif image). After that use it as you wish.

A lot of fun for everyone!

For more fun activities visit another of my favourite websites - the RedKid.net website and make tons of humorous and entertaining signs and images, e.g.:

Teaching food vocabulary with artist drawn recipes: They Draw And Cook

Since I first came across the website They draw and cook, I have often visited it and always found new and awesome picture recipes drawn by different artists from all parts of the world - India, USA, Brazil, Russia, Spain, France, Mexico and many more.

Not only are the recipes beautifully presented and easy to follow (in case you are ready to cook some new dish) but they can also be effectively used in teaching food vocabulary serving as attractive flashcards.

Take, for instance, the recipe Vegetable Stock by Nate Padavick.

One of the comments reads as follows:
Great color palette, nice 'hand-stamped' texture, appealing shapes, and a reminder to compost (nice touch).

The recipe contains the names of vegetables - onion, mushroom, carrot, turnip, tomato, squash, celery, asparagus, leek, parsley etc.
There are a few cooking verbs - chop, boil, simmer, strain etc.

Students learn the vocabulary in a fun way and they can also try out the recipe at home which is a great added value to the lesson. In addition, they can get inspired to draw their own recipe and share it with their classmates!

The site hosts a fantastic variety of recipes and you can search for a specific food or dish name. I can only imagine what a treasure this site must be to the teachers of cooking classes!

More brilliant recipes (click to zoom)

If you love great design and marvellous illustration, you will love the site and use it to your advantage as a teacher.

Homework sent in as an audio file

I have a group of very bright students who love trying out new things. This time it was homework recorded online and sent in for me to evaluate.

For recording the speech, I chose the simplest tool on the web - Vocaroo. It is seldom mentioned when different audio recording programs are discussed but it is absolutely perfect for beginners or young students. There are no buttons, no frills, no nothing, just a box which you click to record. And yes, the only thing you need is a mike. The tool does everything itself and at the end you just send the file to an e-mail address. (In this case, students sent their files to me.) The file can also be downloaded and it can be embedded which I am going to do here. Awesome!

For this homework my 16-year-old students had to write and record the story My first date because we are studying the theme Relationships. They were allowed to tell the truth or invent the story, and here is one of the stories told by a boy who is an avid gamer.


Updated on December 1, 2011. Just learned that Vocaroo does not keep the recorded files for long (my guess is half a year), this and many other files recorded by my students have been removed. I was not smart enough to download them or save in some other way. Disappointed.........

City vocabulary mindmapped with BUBBL

I had to find an attractive way to present city vocabulary to my younger students and I remembered bubbl which I had used a while ago, then forgotten. I had not been particularly excited about it and I thought it was rather limited regarding the formatting of the mind map. I still think so. And I am disappointed that it loses its elasticity when it is embedded. But it serves well for showing the colourful word clusters on the big screen.

I have also used it with my older students and I recall they really enjoyed playing with the tool because once they put something in it, it came alive in front of their eyes. They used to drag the bubbles around and watch them spring back, and I assume it was just another toy for them. Which it certainly is.

Here is what I made for my lesson.
Link to the mind map

Two great websites about London and Britain

I have come across a couple of websites which in my opinion are very useful for getting fresh and plentiful information about the latest events in London and Britain.


One of the sites is Visit Britain Super Blog. Written by a large team of experienced and talented travel writers, journalists, photographers and life-long travellers, the blog shares rich information, reviews, suggestions and impressions.


The blog abounds in information about the culture and heritage of Britain, places where you can eat and drink, things that you can see and do and of course there is now a special section about the Royal Wedding.
I have enjoyed reading the blog and been extremely grateful to the authors for their numerous fascinating posts, among others Britain's beautiful bridges which I used with my students.

Another blog I have favourited is 3 Days in London which is a story of love for London written by an author who is not native to the city.

The blog gives answers to What/ Who/ Where is London, describes brief history of London, reviews attractions, architecture, landmarks of London, and of course there is a post about the Royal Wedding (looks like it is a must-post these days which no blogger can ignore).


Both blogs are of great help to the teachers who need resources for the lessons about Britain, its culture and modern life.

Exploring the possibilities of Storybird

Finally I've got to making my first story on Storybird which I had been planning to do for a while. Easter break gave me this chance and I did not get disappointed. Working on the story got my creative juices flowing and though I realized I can hardly be an author who writes perfect stories in English, I managed to build my first tale. Here it is.

A night in the city on Storybird

What I like on Storybird is the amazing, fantastic and awesome artwork offered to the writers. The pictures are varied in colour, theme, characters, atmosphere, style etc. I went through tons of images and loved so many of them that my initial problem was to choose the most attractive ones for my first story.

But, as I was trying to decide on which pictures I would be going to use, I realized that it is not us who decide on the idea of the story but the pictures which lead us where they want, and we just have to follow them.

For a story you get an assortment of pictures and you can choose only from them, no possibility of adding images from another bunch or replacing them. It may be considered a drawback if you do not like any restrictions but such are the conditions on Storybird - take it or leave it.

If you are going to use Storybird with your students, they will probably be grateful that they are offered a ready-made set of pictures which certainly makes it easier to decide on what to use. You may start with a very short story, no longer than 2-3 pages to show the students the way it is done and get the knack of digital storytelling. I am sure they will take to it eventually and create original, witty and sparkling stories.

Meanwhile, I have composed another story, and while I am now waiting for it to be approved by the site administrators, I am asking myself - has Storybird got me enchanted?

April 27. Here is my second Storybird - The cat who flew to the moon.

Developing writing with monthly journals

image by gregoryhogan

Time to share one of my favourite writing practice tasks.

I have been using this type of tasks with my students for many years and it has always proved to be successful. Students have always given positive feedback and even those who usually don't feel like writing anything at all, eventually hand in their product and eagerly wait for the grade. They admit it is a challenging task but it might also be one of the reasons why they like it.

What is it? It is a monthly journal with a short task for each day of the month.

I put the daily tasks in the table which represents one calendar month, week by week, day by day. This particular task was created for December 2008 when the 1st day was Monday.

The students are asked to write a short paragraph, an opinion, a list of words, a definition etc - one entry per day.
They are encouraged to use dictionaries and encyclopedias, eg Wikipedia or any other. The tasks require browsing reference and looking for information. I allow the students to draw pictures or colour the pages if they want.

I create a grading scale depending on the total number of points I am going to give. Usually it is 3-5 points per entry. Each teacher can devise his/her own marking scale.

Here is the worksheet to download but you will no doubt create your own, if only because of the dates.
Though this task is more suitable for students whose English is a foreign language, I am sure a modified task can work well with other students too.
The teacher needs to adjust the difficulty of each (daily) task depending on the students' level.

More presentations on creative writing

Following my presentation on writing mini sagas, here are two more presentations giving quick tips for writing diamond poems or diamantes and limericks.

A diamante is a seven line poem, shaped like a diamond, hence the name. It is perfect for revising adjectives, participles or gerunds.
To learn more, see my presentation.

Creative writing: Diamond poems

More PowerPoint presentations from baiba svenca

Limericks are short poems of vague origin but the name most obviously has been borrowed from the Irish town of Limerick which is why limericks are often associated with Ireland.

This presentation gives examples and suggestions how to write a limerick.

All these forms of creative writing - mini sagas, diamond poems and limericks - are suitable for developing students' creativity, imagination and thinking skills. They work well with students of all ages.

Mini sagas

Recently I have noticed the literary term mini saga appearing here and there. As a relatively new type of creative writing (first mini sagas appeared in 1982), it has not been widely used, and I wonder why.

Mini sagas are easy to use in the classroom with students of all ages. The themes will differ but not the format which is exactly 50 words. Twitter messages are very long in comparison. Students may like this type of class/home work because it is short. On the other hand, in the beginning they won't know that it is rather difficult to create a meaningful and coherent text using only 50 words. Why not give it a go?

I made a PowerPoint presentation which explains the idea and gives some examples borrowed from the internet.
See if you may find it helpful in your teaching.