Free Tools Challenge Number Three - Bitstrips

Update (2018): If you have landed on this page from the Let's Go Digital website, you might be confused about the tools I used to create these comics. Unfortunately, Bitstrips and Superherosquad don't exist any more. The Bitstrips people are still offering something called Bitmoji, which (although nice) is a far cry from its original. If you are looking for a comic creator, there are still a lot of free options out there, such as Toondoo. Superheromachine is still out there, luckily.
I have decided to keep this post as it is, instead of republishing it, since it still contains a lot of practical ideas for the classroom. The post was written a long time ago and it was a part of a blogging challenge I participated in back then.

Created with Hero Machine

I am going to keep the posts related to the Free Tools Challenge very short, so that I can explore as many tools as possible and somehow catch up with the challenge.

In Challenge Number 3 we are exploring Bitstrips. I have decided to modify the original task and adapt it to my teaching situation. So, instead of exploring Bitstrips for Schools, I am going to stick to classical Bitstrips.

Let's say you want to create a comic with or for your students. Why should you choose Bitstrips? Because they are really, really easy to use. Because they are flexible. You can create your own comics in seconds using the ready-made characters. Or you can spend five minutes more and create your own character. For the first activity I am going to share here I created a silly pink-haired girl called Jane. I liked Jane so much that I starred her in the other two comics I created.

It is easy to position the characters, to change their facial expressions and their gestures. I am usually puzzled by comic creators, but Bitstrips are very intuitive.

I promised in my first Free Tools Challenge that I was going to keep these posts down-to-earth and full of practical activities. Then why do strange winged ladies keep appearing on this page?

Well, see, I kind of got carried away and, along with Bitstrips I used several other tools, such as Hero Machine (great for creating comic superheroes), Superherosquad (for comics, really easy) and Marvel.com (again for superheroes). It so happens that all my heroines have wings. I would love to share them all here (I have created a whole bunch of them), but there is no space. I am somehow sure that they'll keep cropping up in my future posts.

Now for my Bitstrips activities. Practical and down-to-earth. Just like Jane, who hasn't got wings at all.

There are lots and lots of ways you can use comics in class. I have, yet again, focused on three:

1. to introduce new grammar and vocabulary or provide further examples

You could, of course, just write the examples on the board, but isn't this much more interesting?

Try to make your comics funny if possible. Don't forget to change your characters' expressions and positions according to what they are saying.

Bitstrips are great for vocabulary and especially for idioms. Have a look of what Janet did here.

2. Comic characters always use informal English, so comics could be used to teach the difference between formal and informal English.

In the following activity I used a letter of complaint where a customer was complaining about something that had happened to him in a supermarket and then I 'dramatised the scene' in the comic:

This is just an example, but it is possible to develop it into a full lesson plan. First you can work on the difference between formal and informal English with your students, then you can work on the language of complaining. After that they can compose a letter of complaint and finally they could create a Bitstrips comic. There is even room for a role play in between.

Or the process can be reversed. First they think of a real situation, then they create a Bitstrips comic, finally they write the letter.

3. In the third activity I have provided the strip, but no text. I am sure you are familiar with this type of writing activity. Usually speech bubbles are provided, but I haven't done that here. That way there is more flexibility. Who is speaking? Is the cat saying anything? What are the characters saying?

Any ideas?

Please share your ideas in the comment area. 

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A Google Docs Quiz

Photo on Filckr by Erich Ferdinand

Free Tools Challenge #2 was to create a multiple choice quiz using Google Docs.

I normally use ProProfs when I want to create multiple choice exercises. I like ProProfs: the quizzes are easy to make, easy to embed, they look nice on your blog or wiki page and students immediately know what their result is and where they made a mistake. And, you can search ProProfs for quizzes other teachers made and share them with your students. However, it was time to try something new.

I love Google - from Gmail to Chrome to Blogger I am a Google girl. However, that doesn't apply to Google Docs. I simply never bothered to learn how to use Docs. Which is a pity, I suppose.

Well, this is a start. Not much of a start, since I only created one quiz. Here it is:

It looks nice doesn't it? And if you want to find out how well you did it, here is the link to the text where I found these particular words.

I like the idea of using a multiple choice quiz as an introduction into a Reading Comprehension exercise, the way I did here. A quiz can spark the students' interest in the text and make them want to read in order to find out whether they were right or not.

Google Docs have some obvious advantages. They can be edited over and over. Questions can be changed, deleted or added. They are collaborative, which means that different people can add questions to your quizzes, including the students themselves.

If you want to learn how to make these quizzes, check the tutorial in the Free Tools Challenge blog. I have also found a great tutorial here.

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Wallwisher and Vocabulary Activities

Some of you may remember that I participated in the January Teacher Challenge called Kick Start Your Blog. I took a break in February, but I am back now. I am a week late but hoping to catch up. The new challenge is called “30 days to using the best of the web’s free tools for educators” . It sounds very interesting. We will be learning about new tools and thinking of ways to implement them in our teaching.

I am going to write these posts from the point of view of an EFL teacher working with adults. I will try not only to test the tools, but to come up with activities and worksheets that can be used in class the next day.

The first tool we used was Wallwisher. Wallwisher and I are old friends. Members of my PLN use it to throw surprise birthday parties at each other. It works like this: You decide to create a Birthday Wallwisher for someone. You start the wall (it takes five minutes). Then you send the link in a Twitter DM to everyone in your PLN . They follow the link and post their messages on the wall. Your job is finished. You can just sit back and watch the wall growing. It is great.

Here is the wall I got for my birthday.

Apart from this fun way of using Wallwisher, there are tons of other things you can do with it. Tom Barett has come up with 19 interesting ways to use Wallwisher in the classroom. It is very hard to come up with something new after this, isn't it?

Which is why I am going to focus on vocabulary exercises only.

1. Wallwisher allows you to post pictures on your wall, which makes it great for creating small picture dictionaries. Here I have focused on different kinds of berries because my students often mix them up:

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/berries

Most of us have strong visual memory. The students should be encouraged to look at the wall as often as possible and to try and remember where each picture is on it.

2. Start with one word (in my case 'work'). Come up with as many words derived from it. Then move on to synonyms and idioms. There are many variations to this activity. You can use antonyms, collocations, compounds... Anything that is relevant to you and your students.

This is a collaborative activity, though one person can do it as well. You can do it, or you can assign it to one of the students.

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/workrelated

Wallwisher is a great collaborative tool. It is fast and easy to use. As you can see here, the result can be a little messy, but who cares?

3. Finally, Wallwisher can be used for brainstorming. You can start with a concept, such as 'holiday' and let the students post whatever comes to their minds. Here is an example:

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/holidayefl

Wallwisher is good for vocabulary revision too. You can ask the students to post the words they learnt after each class or after each unit. Then they can write a short story or prepare a short speech using at least five of the words posted on the wall.

There are probably thousands of other ways you can use Wallwisher for practising vocabulary. Please feel free to add your ideas in the Comments section.

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What Is Your Computer Metaphor?

It is Week 5 in Multiliteracies for me. I know, the workshop finished a long time ago, but I have decided that for me the workshop is going to last as long as I need it to last. Or, rather, as long as it takes me to go through my weekly tasks.

I printed some of my Week 5 readings (I know, so old-fashioned) and settled down comfortably to read them. I got as far as half-way down the page of my first text before I knew exactly what I wanted to say in this post.

In Functional Literacy Vance Stevens quotes from S. Selber's Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Selber explores the metaphor of computers as tools and says that 'a tool metaphor invariably influences how users think about and work with computers".

As I have already said, I had an idea for a blog post half-way down this page. My mind tends to drift that way a lot. I could never get through my readings at University without getting into a dialogue with the text on its margins. Which is why I advise you to read the article I have linked to above on your own (and, when you are there, you can read the rest of the Week 5 readings), because I am going to talk about something much more frivolous here.

How much does the way we see computers influence our digital literacy? How much do our 'computer metaphors' determine our abililty to use new technologies?

My mother's generation often sees computers as living things. "What does it want now?" she says when she hears a message tone on her mobile.

My mother is a voluntary digital refugee. She is not on friendly terms with her mobile, though she begrudgingly recognises its usefulness. With our home computer... Well, she is not even on speaking terms with our home computer. Because, according to her, it is evil.

The fact that she is a retired teacher is not quite surprising. Because it is precisely from teachers that I hear this opinion most. They are the ones who believe that computers are corrupting schoolchildren. Whenever my son had a New Year celebration at school, the 'Santa' would ask them if they had been good. I always cringed because I knew what was coming. After asking them whether they had listened to their parents and their teachers, he would ask them whether they had been sitting in front of their computers for too long.

Photo on Flickr by Wisconsin Historical Images

There are different metaphors at play here. Computers are seen as monsters or as evil magicians who will ensnare the children and turn them into game-playing zombies.

On the other hand, I see something quite different from the not-so-literate adults of my generation. Sometimes the children are left unsupervised to go online and do whatever they like. In this case the computer is seen as a babysitter.

Picture on Flickr by jpellgen

This, of course, is a bad idea. The reasons why this is a bad idea are so numerous that I will not even get into them here. But is it generally dangerous to let our children go online and play computer games?

While I was growing up, we were one of the first generations in my country who grew up watching TV. We watched Looney Tunes cartoons, which some people said were too violent for children. There were long discussions about what TV was going to do to our attention span. You know, I don't think we are that different from previous generations. Though, to tell you the truth, I don't like TV much. It is too passive. They talk to you, you listen. You can change the channel, but that's as far as you can go to change something.

It is different with computers. My son was only five when he created his first PowerPoint Presentation. It was a messy thing, but he was so proud of himself. And we still have it somewhere.

I don't know what my son's generation will grow up into. Living near computers and being exposed to them is no guarantee that chlidren will become multiliterate. They will have the technical skills, but without the ability to think critically and to question everything you read online, computers are reduced to interactive TV. Watching the teenagers from my neighbourhood, I get the idea that this is their computer metaphor - computers are 'fun boxes' for them. They go online to download music and movies, or to spend hours looking through their friends' Facebook albums.

Which is why I believe multiliteracies should be taught at school. Alongside with this, critical thinking skills should be developed. Yes, and there should be world peace and enough food for everyone. Birds should be singing and sun should be shining every day.

Between the digital refugees of my mother's generation and the digital natives of my son's generation, where does it leave the rest of us?

We should be somewhere in between, shouldn't we? Except that we are not and people my age are divided into two tribes - the technophobes and the geeks. With lots of variations in between, of course. Some of my friends dislike computers or limit themselves to checking their email. Others, like me, are enthusiastic about the internet in a way my son's generation will never be. For my son, having a computer in his life is quite normal and taken for granted. For me, the computer has opened new horizons.

Photo on Flickr by D. Sharon Pruitt

I see it as a geenie from a magic lamp, willing to do things for me and take me wherever I want to go. It is a magic wand helping me create things I never dreamed I was capable of creating. But primarily it is a communication tool, helping me connect to people.

I have used the chocolate metaphor in this blog before. I have compared myself to a child in a chocolate shop. Digital immigrants have the tendency to 'overeat' when they are online. They overload themselves with new information and new projects. Because they grew up in a society where they were expected to finish every project they started and because they still don't have the skills necessary to manage information online (such as filtering and sifting), they often feel overwhelmed. I believe that digital natives cope better in this situation. They start new projects, but they drop them as soon as they lose interest. They may not be as committed or as persistent as we are and we often accuse them of a short attention span, but maybe those are the characteristics necessary to 'survive' online. To use the chocolate metaphor again: maybe we should sample different kinds of chocolates, but we should also know when to stop before we overeat. Then one day you will find out what your favourite chocolate is and ignore everything else. And when someone offers something you are not interested in, you should find the strength in you to say: " Thank you, I have had enough."

Photo on Flickr By creativecommoners

Can you resist? I can't. But then, I am probably addicted.

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Week Four in Multiliteracies: The Sociopolitical Lens

Image on Flickr by D Sharon Pruitt

I am still very late with my Multiliteracies homework. And, yes, I am aware that the session is now officially over. However, one of the many good sides of online courses is that they remain online forever.

Week 4 looks at Multiliteracies through a sociopolitical lens. Everything we do has sociopolitical consequences, I suppose, especially if we distribute our content over the internet for millions to see.

Are millions going to see what we have distributed? Or is no one going to see what we have distributed? What is the real impact of what we are doing?

The fear that amateurs are going to destroy our beautiful planet's culture and education by writing in bad English (or Spanish, or German, or whatever) and by trying to pass their mediocre work as art is, in my opinion, unfounded. Nobody is going to read your content if your content is bad. On the other hand, the chances of you winning the Nobel Prize for literature for your blog are... Well, what do you think?

Chances are, you'll end up talking to the people who share your professional interests, your hobbies and your passions.

Enter www. For, those people could be living on the other end of the globe and the chances of you meeting them would have been next to nothing 20 years ago. Now you can cooperate with them and learn with them. You can even create together.

What is the impact of this on education? These are the questions asked in the Multiliteracies wiki:

• What key literacies should we be teaching students in a digital world?, but also
• To what extent is it the responsibility of educators to teach/coach these literacies?
• Are there any drawbacks or dangers in teaching/coaching these literacies?

I am not sure I know the answers to these questions, so I will just think out loud here. I have always seen teaching as a two-way process. I learn something new every day from my students. The other day, for example, I found out that Rene Magritte's The Son of Man was a self-portrait. One of my students surfed to Wikipedia on his mobile phone and found that out. I had never asked him to do it (we were simply discussing the painting), but the way he found that information was completely natural.

Watching him do it made me think of something and that made me say out loud what I was thinking of:

Is it still necessary for us to fill our heads with lots and lots of data, when we have all the information we might need at our fingertips?

And what should we be teaching instead?

I am not one of those pessimists who think teachers are an endangered species and will become extinct once students learn how to create their own PLNs and PLEs. Because, to learn how to get the most out of their PLNs and PLEs, they need us, their teachers to teach them how to sift through information, how to pull the content they need and how to connect to the right people. In the other words, we need to teach them how to be multiliterate. I don't think digital natives are born with these skills, nor do they develop these skills through connecting with their friends on social networks.

However, if the teaching species is to survive, we need to evolve. I love new technology, but I know a lot of my colleagues do not share my enthusiasm. This is all right, you don't have to spend four hours on the internet every day to be multiliterate. The wonderful thing about PLNs is that people will support you even if you are not there all the time.

Teachers are adaptable and love learning. There are a lot of teachers online and our profession has really benefited from new technologies. Why, then, do we see no change in the way schools and universities are organised?

This is where the concept of edupunk comes in.

This is what the Mulitliteracies wiki says about edupunk:

And now for something complEATly different. The concept of edupunk suggests that there are issues regarding new technologies not being addressed by institutional learning, and it also suggests an 'in your face' approach to resolving some of these issues by stepping around the established authority and just doing it. This week we'll consider what some of these ill-addressed issues are, and we'll ask: when is it justified to simply take off on one's own tangent on the assumption that this is best for one's students? What are the up- and downsides to such an approach? In what way is this a multiliteracies issue? Participants should enjoy addressing the question: Do you feel that you, or anyone for that matter, is, are, or should be an edupunk?

I will try to answer the questions here.

When is it justified to simply take off on one's own tangent on the assumption that this is best for one's students?

Well, see, I am not a rebel. I use prescribed books and follow my school's curriculum. There is nothing bad in that. If I decide to do something more for my students and with my students, I am sure nobody is going to object. As for the second part of the question ( "on the assumption that this is best for one's students"), I don't take that for granted, either. It is their learning process, not mine. My role as the teacher is to offer, but I can't learn instead of them. I learnt this in my early internet days. Back then, I tried to get the students blogging and I was a little too enthusiastic about it. They saw blogging as additional workload and just ignored me.

Nowadays I just present my wikis to them and wait. Some of them decide to join me, a lot of them never do. I teach adults, which means that my students are not digital natives and some of them are actually technophobes. It was worse three years ago, but now people are catching up. I think the fact that I am not pushing this into their faces helps.

In what way is this a multiliteracies issue?

I don't think wanting to change the educational system is solely a multiliteracies issue. As I have said somewhere in this post, technology is just a tool. However, being blind to technology and refusing to admit it is there is not a good idea if you are an educator.

Educational institutions and educational policies have always been behind what happened "in the real world". They have also always been behind what ordinary teachers did in their very ordinary classrooms. I know, my mother was a teacher too. One thing I learnt from her is that, in order to be a good teacher, you need to break a couple of rules. I don't believe that institutions will change overnight but, by the time they do, the teachers will be more than ready.

This post has taken a ridiculously long time to write. I tried to work out my answers for the questions posed in the Multiliteracies wiki. I guess I don't have the answers. One of the reasons for this could be the fact that I never thought about the bigger picture when I got addicted to online learning. I still can't bring myself to think about the bigger picture. The global ELT community is like a village now. Everybody knows everybody else and you keep bumping into the same people over and over again. What we are doing here is just a ripple in the ocean, but it is a start.

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Why I Love Digital Storytelling

I am going to try and kill three birds with one stone. Or rather, do three pieces of homework with a single blog post.

Because everything is connected. I might be making a generalisation here, but I believe everything we do on the internet these days boils down to digital storytelling.

Let's look at it this way: we spend hours on the internet blogging, tweeting, posting images and audio files. We talk to each other and we listen to each other. We tell each other stories.

Week 3 in Multiliteracies was about digital storytelling. And Week 4 in Digital Storytelling is the Grand Finale of the course - the point where we actually get the chance to tell our story.

Where does Teacher Challenge come in? Well, Challenge Number 6 was about adding multimedia to your blog. Multimedia were compared to the nerves of your blog, the way images were compared to the eyes of the blog.

I have to confess that I was deliberately stalling with my homework both in Multiliteracies and in Digital Storytelling so that I could wait for the time that I had some stories of my own to share.

When we are talking about adding multimedia to your blog, what we are really talking about is digital stories. They can be in different formats: video, audio, slideshows, cartoons. Multimedia can serve the same purpose images do. They can illustrate the post, or inspire you to write it. They could be the centre of the post. You can try out an application and write a post explaining how or why you used it. The multimedia shared in your blog do not have to be created by you, but it feels great if they are.

Is digital storytelling different from ordinary storytelling? If so, how?

Digital storytelling uses multimedia. Stories are told in different ways - you can use images, or video, or words, or music, or any combination of the above. There are so many tools to choose from. In his 50+ Ways to Tell a Digital Story Alan Levine told the same story using 50 different tools!

Digital stories are short and succinct. Everyone attempting to write a digital story should bear in mind that the attention span of his or her readers is short. They land on your page, scan the text and they might or might not click on the multimedia. The shorter the story, the better your chances are. But then, your responsibility is to make the story really powerful with the little time you have.

Which brings me to another point: Digital stories are embeddable. Most of Levine's 50+ stories are embedded right there in his wiki. Digital stories can be shared in blogs, wikis, on Twitter and Facebook. If your friends like them, they might share them further.

Digital stories can be written by one person or a group of people.

Digital stories are multicultural and digital storytelling is truly democratic. It gives power to everyone to express their talent.

It seems that whole new genres are being born almost daily and there are probably thousands of ways you can tell your story.

I chose two. First I decided to bravely read a poem of mine, so I started looking for tools that linked audio to a single image. I tried out three, but liked Fotobabble best (really easy to use, good sound quality) and I am going to share the Fotobabble version of my poem here:

">Photo by ">Chelle on Morguefile

Then, I decided to learn how to use Prezi. I had tried once before and it seemed too difficult. This time I watched all their tutorials and it actually isn't difficult at all. I chose another poem and started copy-pasting it into Prezi

Prezi can turn plain text into beautiful images (a bit like Wordle), which gives it great potential for publishing 'digital poetry'. I am not very gifted for visual arts (even photography is difficult for me), so I felt not having to worry about images was great.

My poem is called Stop Drilling. It has nothing to do with practicing boring grammar in class:) You see, I live in a flat and two years ago one of my neighbours decided to redecorate his flat. He kept drilling and knocking down walls. Finally, I learnt how to sleep through the noise, but the silence would always wake me up. The poem got completely out of control. It rebelled on me and decided to turn itself into something completely different. Time you people saw my dark side:

Stop Drilling on Prezi

Keep hitting the Play button to read on.

I believe digital storytelling is something I might devote more of my time to in the future. I am even toying with the idea of starting another blog, just for poetry. What do you think?

In the meantime, I am packing my bags. I am going to a beautiful mountain with my family and we will be away for a week. I will have to press the Pause button on this blog and on all my workshops, but I will continue where I stopped as soon as I am back.

Your comments are very important to me. I won't be able to respond until I return, but I'll get to you as soon as I can.

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A picture tells... how many words again?

In Teacher Challenge number 5 we were asked to reflect on the role images play in blogging. Now, that is very convenient because I am also attending Digital Storytelling and last week we did Flickr stories.

I keep saying that multitasking is useful. The fact that I am involved in multiple workshops right now means two things:

1. My head is expanding very fast and it might explode any minute.

2. All I need to do is sit back and enjoy and the workshops will take care of each other's homework.

Don't ask me how many workshops I am attending, never ask a lady about the number of her workshops.

Anyway, here is what we did in Digital Storytelling last week:

1. Object Stories

We were asked to post an image of an object that means a lot to us and to write a short story about it underneath a picture. This is what I shared:

My Grandmother's Earrings

These earrings belonged to my maternal grandmother. She got them from her maternal grandmother when she was a little girl. In a way, they are a link to my female relatives.
I know the picture is not very good and it is a pity. The craftsmanship is really beautiful. The earrings are flower-shaped and the blue petals are made of turquoise, which happens to be my favourite stone.
A long time ago I decided I was going to wear them. They were different from anything my friends had. I wore them constantly for 20 years. The clasp is very strong and it was hard to remove them even when I wanted to. Until about a week ago when I lost one of them. I was really unhappy, but two days later it was found.
I was under the impression that my female ancestors were trying to tell me something.
What could that be?

The response I got from other participants was the best part of this activity. No matter which part of the globe they came from, most ladies could feel the pain I felt when I lost my earring. They understood why the earrings were so important to me. My apologies for the picture - it is not easy to capture a pair of tiny earrings and I am not much of a photographer.

I read a lot of fascinating stories about ordinary everyday objects. It is easy to apply this in an EFL classroom. Everybody has a favourite object and everybody can tell stories about it.

2. Colour Stories

We were asked to post an image in which our favourite colour dominated and to write a short story about it. We were allowed to use Flickr Creative Commons images. This is what I came up with:

Photo on Flickr by the Hidaway (Simon)

The Red Sun

His heart is red,
open for everyone to see.
He leaves red footprints
all over the sky
as he sinks into sleep.
One last flicker of fire
and he is gone,
invisible to us,
as he dreams his red dreams
at the bottom of the sea.
He wakes up, red,
the next morning.
He lights the sky
with his red love
and she stretches
her red-sleeved arms
to embrace him.

Images inspire us. If you don't know what to blog about, just find a beautiful image (with a CC licence), post it at the top of your blog, look at it and start writing. Words will come. I have done this exercise with some of my students who claimed they were bad at writing. I would put a photo cut out of a newspaper in front of them and asked them to describe how in made them feel. If words still wouldn't come, I asked them to describe the photo. I believe it helped. The trick is to use interesting images like the one above.

Before I move onto Activity Number 3, I have got something else to share with you. One of the tasks in Teacher Challenge was to use an Animoto video and I love Animoto, so I just had to make one. Here it is.

I swear, if I didn't know better, I would think that the Animoto people knew the secret of Artificial Intelligence. Animoto puts each image right where it should be and it is in sync with the music... I love it. And, instead of just sharing family photos, you can tell all sorts of stories with Animoto. It just takes a bit of imagination.

Finally, Task Number 3 in Digital Storytelling were Six Word Stories. We were asked to share an image (our own or a Creative Commons one) and to invent a six word story to go with it. Six word stories are addictive. People shared and shared. I made three, but only one of them is with the image of my own. That's the one I am going to share here:

Winter Love

The love will outlive the snow.

The great thing about images is that they can be reused. In the Teacher Challenge number 5 we were asked to create a five-word story. So, here it is, with the same image:

The sun will melt them.

And my question for you:

Which story do you prefer?

The one with the Hollywood ending...

or the other one.

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