Bob Wilson's autoenglish.org

Name of the resource: Bob Wilson's autoenglish.org

URL: http://autoenglish.org/

Brief description: You can find grammar exercises, vocabulary free exercises, videos giving explanations about grammar, videos for doing listening comprehension activities, a free pronounciation course or dictionaries sites among other things. There are also sections depending on the learners level.

What it is useful for: To find activities to do with your students at class.

What you liked the most: the fact that there are videos for different learner's proficiency of English that you can use for listening comprehension activities. You can also find a lot of printable pdf documents with exercises that I find very useful.

What you disliked the most: The web page appearance. It is to sober, I don't find it motivating.

1.
Name of the resource: Learn English.- British Council
URL: http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/talk-about?page=0%2C1
Brief description: This is a well known web site with plenty of audiovisual materials in order to promote use of English. Most of the videos or listenings have a worksheet atached so as so ask some questions or set a discussion. All the recordings with or without image can be easyly downloaded so the teacher does not need to depend on the Internet but he/she can feel  a bit more confident that the recording is going to work.
What it is useful for: Provides both authentic and adapted material so the teacher can choose the one that fits best with his/her lesson plan. Provides worksheets in order to work more deeply on the audiovisual material.
What you liked the most: This web site has plenty of materials to promote English language and it is updated quite often. Furthermore, teachers can write their comments in order to share activities, correct mistakes, ask for help...
What you disliked the most: Most of the videos are recorded with a white wall at the background and it gives the sensation that everything is too much prepared, too much adapted and non-realistic. Even if they are great performances of everyday life both students and teachers get this sense of "unreal language".
In my opinion, this non authentic videos should be used mainly with children with a low level of English,but not with adults as it may seem childish for them.

2.
Name of the resource: Warmups Followups
URL: http://warmupsfollowups.blogspot.com/
Brief Description: This web page is like Movie Segments To Assess Grammar Goals. http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/. It provides a movie segment related to a grammatical structure and it provides worksheets in order to wokr on the grammar goal through the movie segment.
What it is useful for: It provides plenty of UPDATED authentic material and plenty of worksheets already /prepared. The teacher will only need to adapt each worksheet to his/her students (which is a bit less work for the teacher). Movie segments in this webpage can also be dowloaded so the teacher does not need to depend on the Internet.
What you liked the most: This webpage is updated constantly!!!
What you disliked the most: You need to download a program to be able to PLAY the segments. This program is necessary in order to PLAY the video so it must be installed in every laptop that is going to be used in class. However, once you have downloaded it , you're DONE!

NOELIA ORNAQUE.

Keep your students controlled

Name of the resource: Edmodo
URL: http://www.edmodo.com/
Brief description: It is like a Facebook in which you can post every resource, including materials, homewrok, notes. It is a very useful way to be in touch with your students, who will be organised in groups, like in class.
What it is useful for: to keep in touch with your students in an organised way. The students can comment on things too.
What you liked the most: I liked most the way it works, because it is very easy to use. SIMPLE.

MUSICAL ENGLISH LESSONS

Name of the resource: Musical English Lessons

URL: http://www.musicalenglishlessons.com/

Brief description: It is a website where teachers can find a list of songs+lyrics with planned activities, worksheets and teaching ideas to practice different grammar points, vocabulary, writing and other language points. Apart from songs, there are also other resources such as grammar reference and videos.

What it is useful for: It is very useful to get ideas in order to plan dynamic and motivating lessons, since students usually enjoy learning through music. The activities can be useful to practice and/or consolidate a range of language points, to introduce subjects for debate, to encourage conversation, to improve writing skills, to introduce new vocabulary, etc. Moreover, many activities are suitable for students with learning difficulties.

What you liked the most: There is a complete list of commercial songs and the exercises are original and varied.

What you disliked the most: The page layout is not very well organized and it may be difficult to find what you are looking for until you get used to it.

MEMORY GAME MAKER

Name of the resource: Memory Game Maker

URL: http://www.education.vic.gov.au/languagesonline/games/memory/

Brief description: Using the Memory Game Maker, you can build your own interactive memory game. You can specify if you want text, pictures or sounds on each row of cards. You can then type in your own text, attach your own pictures or record your own voice. These will appear on the cards in your finished game. You can also customize some other features of the game such as the look of your game and the sound effects used.

What it is useful for: It is very attractive for young students. You can use it with digital whiteboards. You can use this resource to practice vocabulary or even to match sentences. Students love this game because they learn while playing games.

What you liked the most: It is very easy to build a memory game. In five minutes, you have a dynamic exercise.

What you disliked the most: You cannot use this resource in Mac computers.

A finished game created with the Memory Game Maker.

Name of the resource:  Movie Segments

URL: http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/

Brief description: This resource is really useful because it includes some films. The user of this blogs uploads some clips from certain films in order to assess some grammar points. There are some exercises already done, so the teacher has not to do a lot of work.

What it is useful for: When you want to explain some grammatical item, and you do not know how to make it a bit more entertaining, this is a good way.

What you liked the most: You already have some exercises done for you, and they are divided by ages and levels.

What you disliked the most: It is a bit difficult to find something for the age and the level you need it. And you cannot rate it.

• Name of the resource Manythings

• URL http://www.manythings.org/

• Brief description: this web page provides loads of activities for a wide range of levels.

• What it is useful for: the activities can be used as extra material to practise grammar, vocabulary, listening and reading.

• What you liked the most: it has many audiovisual resources.

• What you disliked the most: it is not well organized. Sometimes it is difficult to find what you are looking for.

ESL About

Name of the resource: ESL About
URL: http://esl.about.com/
Brief description: it is a web plenty of resources. It offers all types of materials for beginners and higher levels as well as some theoretical explanations.
What it is useful for: finding activities related to speaking, reading, writing as well as listening. There are also some quizzes and games.
What you liked the most: you can find listening activities and different proposals to run speaking activities.
What you disliked the most: the activities are grouped according to the skills, however, they are organised in to two main levels: beginners and “continue learning”. The levels are not concretely specified.

English Club

Name of the resource: English Club
URL: www.englishclub.com
Brief description:

Englishclub is a user-friendly website including plenty of resources for teachers and learners of English. You can search activities according to skills (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, listening, speaking, reading and writing) and some fields (Business English). It also offers a wide range of fun and interactive material and activities to learn English through ESL Games, English quizzes and audiovisual material online. Apart from activities to teach and learn English, you can find tutorials and sound files explaining formal aspects of the English language and plenty of worthy references, such as dictionaries of sayings, idioms, phrasal verbs, slang, quotes, etc.

It offers the possibility to test your level in English and get help with English grammar. You can also make your own English page with blogs, photos, videos, music, etc and chat in English with other students and teachers and find penpals for English practice.

What it is useful for: It is useful for students to read or listen to the tutorials and understand some formal aspects of the language, do activities, check their mistakes and improve their English proficiency in an easy and fun way. It is useful for teachers to get interesting ideas to teach aspects of the English language and download useful material.

What you liked the most: It is useful for teachers and learners of English.


What you disliked the most: Users can get distracted by so many advertisements.

Name of the resource: Englisch-Hilfen. Learning English Online

URL:

http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/

Brief description: This web page includes different grammar and vocabulary exercises very useful for different levels of English. Visitors can also do tests, participate in the forum and download worksheets.

What it is useful for: It is useful for both teachers and learners.

What you liked the most: One useful thing is that exercises are divided into levels or into topics to facilitate the visitor's research. There are also interesting links such as top news and online dictionaries.

What you disliked the most: There are few speaking and listening comprehension activities.

Name of the resource Agenda Web
URL: http://www.agendaweb.org/
Brief description :  This is a very interesting and useful webpage where you can find a huge variety of exercises that cope with all the language skills. 

What you liked the most: I really like this web because it has a the exercises separated by skills and within each skill they are separated by topic.



Hope is useful for you all!!!!! ;)

Name of the resource: Educating Her World, Sara Davila.

URL: http://saradavila.com/front/

Brief description: This is a resource where you can find plenty of activities for your classroom. You can search them by level of proficiency, by type of activity  (e.g. games, TBL, etc.) and also according to the  language items (e.g. skills, grammar, reading comprehension, etc.) you want to work with.

It is useful for finding activities for the classroom and also for getting inspiration.

What I like the most is that there are TBL (task-based learning) activities, many activities that focus on speaking and also that in all the activities you find you can download the sheets for the students to work in class (it's very complete).

What I dislike the most is that there are not many activities for practicing specific grammar points.

Anna Prat

Storybird

•Name of the resource: Storybird
•URL: http://storybird.com/
•Brief description: Teachers and students can make stories using the illustrations that are available in the page
•What it is useful for: Teachers can build stories and also use a free class account to manage students and give assignments to them. When students have submitted their task, teachers can send emails and/or comments to students.
•What you liked the most: it stimulates student creativity and imagination, moreover there are so many images that can inspire students to start writing, It’s a good tool to foster collaborative writing among students because students can invite other students to collaborate with them in the same task. Teachers/students can make their stories available to the general public or restrict the access.
•What you disliked the most: Students can get distracted easily with the illustrations.


Marta Nogué

Name of the resource: Teachers.net
URL: http://teachers.net/
Brief descriptio: Here you can find activities, lesson plans, games, etc.
What it is useful fo: It is useful to get ideas to design our own lesson plans and activities in the classroom.
What you liked the most: There are a lot of interesting activities that one can adapt.
What you disliked the most: The organization is a little bit messy but it is not very difficult to find activities related to the teaching of English.

Name of the resource: Multimedia Authoring for Language Tutors and Educational Development
URL:  http://recursostic.educacion.es/malted/web/
Brief description: This web page is designed to learn English.

 

What it is useful for: Revising units, listening, reading, vocabulary, speaking.
What you liked the most: The activities are visual and entertaining.

 

What you disliked the most: You need Java to use to programme and you cannot download the activities.

Name of the resource APAC (Associació de Professors de Llengua Anglesa)
URL http://www.apac.es/index.html
Brief description ok, first of all, sorry for my previous task; I though we just have to prove how the site works, and try to write something or embed some videos, this is why I've done this little presentation of the Shaun the Sheep videos. Anyway, it's been useful for me to see how it works.
Now, I'm prividing the URL (I already now what it is!) of a website that could be useful as a resource. It is the website of the APAC, whre you can find interesting information about our job.
What it is useful for it's useful to be updated and aware of all the latest researches concerning English Language Teaching
What you liked the most that you can find there uploaded the powerpoints of some lecturers made by prestigious linguists and also interesting activities to put into practice with the students!
What you disliked the most that it could be richer in terms of content

Let me show you some examples of what you can find in the site:

1) Here is the link wher you can directly find some of the games suggested
http://www.eslgamesworld.com/members/games/ClassroomGames/Quizshow/Irregular%20Past%20Simple%20Quiz%20Show/

2) And here I'm providing you with the cover of one of the monographs the APAC publishes every year. In this case, the issue was dedicated to CLIL:

Name of the resource English + 1
URL I'm still wondering what it precisely is
Brief description What about learning English + something else more? I like learning that way because there are so many interesting and funny things to learn! Now, I've recently discovered some typical English cartoons made by plasticine (Walace and Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep) and I've learnt about its filming technique, called Art-motion. I've found an entertaining video where it is explained the process to make these cartoons possible. Let me show it to you!
What it is useful for Well, it's useful to find entertaining and curious things about all kind of subjects. Just to make learning English a bit more exciting (and also to foster curiosity)
What you liked the most that there aren't any content contraints
What you disliked the most that it's very difficult to deal with ICT

Here you are one sample chapter of  Shaun the Sheep

And here you can see how the art-motion technique works!

Practical teaching ideas

Name of the resource: Teacher Man, Teacher Ms.
URL: http://jockmackenzie.wordpress.com/
Brief description: This blog is from an experienced teacher and provides practical teaching ideas.
What it is useful for: It is useful for teachers that want to find different and original language activities.
What you liked the most: THE TEACHER MAN'S SONG!!!!

What you disliked the most: I think the resources could be best organized.

IT Tools to be used for Language Teaching and Learning

Name of the resource: IT Tools For Thought (ITFT)
URL: http://ictlanguagelearning.wordpress.com/web-20/
Brief description: This blog provides IT Tools that can be embedded into language learning and other links, articles and resources which enhance teaching and learning experiences.
What it is useful for: It contains useful ways of integrating technology into foreign language learning practices.
What you liked the most: If you don't have a clear idea of what to do in your next sessions, this blog can be very helpful. You can find a wide variety of ideas for teaching by using IT tools.
What you disliked the most: If you want to find a specific teaching resource, sometimes is not so easy to find it.

English Attack!

Name of the resource: English Attack!
URL: http://es.english-attack.com/
Brief description: English Attack is a website created for English learners that contains a whole set of different multimedia activities and audiovisual materials that are updated in a daily basis. Within this page we can also find thousands of interactive games, chunks of movies and series, pieces of news, lots of information about the entertainment world, etc. All the materials gathered are organised by topic and by language cathegory. Besides, there is a forum available to comment on the resources. 
What it is useful for: it is particularly useful for the students just to move around the webpage and get some cultural information about many topics related to entertainment in English. The Photo Vocab section offers a lot of specific vocabulary and the Video Boosters might be a really interesting resource for those students who have special interest in movies and series. They can also be handy for the teachers when preparing a listening comprehension activity. These are just, however some examples of all the things that can be done with this resource.
What you liked the most: In my opinion the Video Boosters section is extremely interesting and useful, particularly for those students who still don't feel comfortable with watching long videos in English. It offers a brief definition for those terms that might be most difficult, the level of the English spoken in the video and a short summary of what they are about. All the audiovisual materials are extracted from the latest movies, series or songs, which makes the resource even more appealling for the students.
What you disliked the most: The way the page is organized may seem a bit too messy, and in order to have access to all the materials you need to sign in and pay a monthly fee (from 6 to 10 euros).

English Exercises

Name of the resource: English exercises
URL: http://www.englishexercises.org/
Brief description: A webpage with grammar and vocabulary exercises.
What it is useful for:this website is useful to practice the grammar points and vocabulary that has been taught in class.
What you liked the most: that there is a wide range of exercises to do
What you disliked the most: some of the videos do no work correctly sometimes and the students need headphones to watch them

PRINTABLE FLASHCARDS AND WORKSEETS

Name of the resource: PRINTABLE FLASHCARDS AND WORKSHEETS
URL : http://bogglesworldesl.com
Brief description It is a blog full of flashcards and worksheets to practice the different language skills in class.
What it is useful for : It is useful for the TEFL teacher to get extra and different material to work in class.
What you liked the most: You can take and print all the activities and use them in class.
What you disliked the most: Sometimes there is too much information and it is not easy to find what you are really looking for.

English as a Second or Foreign Language


Name of the resource: Isabel's ESL site: English as a Second or Foreign Language

URL:  http://www.isabelperez.com/

Brief description: This web is full of resources for teachers that contains created exercises, some of them with authentic material, web-based materials, workshops and WebQuests.

What it is useful for: It serves for having extra resources to do either reinforced or extensive activities with students.

What you liked the most: Exercises can be done directly online, so students may prefer this modality of working with a computer.

What you disliked the most: Despite it is well organized, I find the web a bit messy, because there are too many written things in just one page.

Teaching English


Name of the resource: Teaching English

URL: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/

Brief description: It is a web from the British Council focused on teachers' role since it contains a great variety of resources such as activities, lesson plans, tips, as well as useful articles, seminars, conferences and publications.

What it is useful for: It helps teachers to have a guidance during his/her job, to come up with new ideas and to be informed of related events.

What you liked the most: It provides teachers with worksheets to be downloaded for all levels.

What you disliked the most: Resources are classified by alphabetical order but not by categories.

Resources for teachers of English

Name of the resource: 
Resources for teachers of English


URL:    http://englishlearner.com/teachers/index.html

Brief description: 
It is a web page where teacher can find many activities to their classes.


What it is useful for: 
It is useful to prepare activities to English classes.


What you liked the most:
Activities are well described.


What you disliked the most:
The fact that there is no video simulating the activities.

busyteacher.org

Name of the resource: Busyteacher.org

URL http://busyteacher.org/

Brief description: worksheet sharing facility for TEFL teachers with added articles related to teaching, e.g. discipline, using film in the classroom, making grammar fun etc. I moved on to this site once I'd used everything on the British Council website.

What it is useful for : Finding colourful, original materials to supplement textbook activities which can be freely edited and adapted for specific groups and classes.

What you liked the most : The cultural content: they always do a special collection of worksheets to mark culturally relevant days: Christmas, St Patricks, Halloween, Valentine's, Chinese new year, Martin Luther King Day, Australia day... Worksheets are graded according to difficulty and content. Other teachers rate worksheets and highly ranked worksheets come up first.

What you disliked the most: The search tool isn't great. You need to register to use the site and upload a worksheet in order to download others. This would be fair enough, but sometimes the login fails, so I stay permanently logged in on my home computer. It's worth perservering though.

British Council Learn English

Name of the resource: British Council Learn English

URL: http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/listen-and-watch

Brief description: British Council has designed a website which encloses several activities you can add as extra material to your day-to-day classroom.

What it is useful for: This website is an useful resource for designing “filler” activities and it contains a lot of different activities to perform listening, readings as well as audio-visual media

What you liked the most: all the topics are up to date, being really appealing for the English learners. Moreover, the activities are very dissimilar, and they allow stimulating the peripheral learning, that is learning while enjoying.

What you disliked the most: activities are organized by topic instead of by level, so that it can be a little bit messy to find a suitable level activity for your students.

Activities for ESL/EFL Students

Name of the resource: Activities for ESL/EFL Students

URL: http://a4esl.org/q/f/

Brief description: This is a website which contains grammar and vocabulary quizzes, tests, exercises, and crossword puzzles, all according to level (easy, medium, and difficult).  There are also writing and reading comprehension quizzes, and general knowledge quizzes on culture, sports, holidays, trivia, places, history, etc.

What it is useful for: It can be used as an extra resource both inside and outside of the classroom.

What you liked the most: Both students and teachers can befenit from using this resource.  It is easy to use and can be a useful and fun tool for students.

What you disliked the most: For some multiple choice questions, only one choice or option is given, and in some crosswords when you click on a certain square for a letter to show up, a letter pops up in a different square.

The Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers

• Name of the resource: The Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers
• URL:  http://caslt.org/resources/english-sl/classroom-resource-links-music_en.php
• Brief description: It is a website that contains useful resources for second language teachers (of English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese…). The resource that I provide, however, is centered in teaching language through music, and then, it is focused on musical resources for teaching English.  
• What it is useful for: Using music has always been a very good strategy for language teaching. I consider this resource useful because it provides several different activities (from gap filling to focused on pronunciation activities), all of them related with the use of music and songs in the classroom.   
• What you liked the most:  There are activities for all the levels, from children to teenagers and adults.
• What you disliked the most: There are a lot of resources, and for this reason, you may spend a lot of time exploring the different websites it provides!  

VisiESLand (ICT)

• Name of the resource: VisiESLand (ICT Special)
• URL:  http://www.visi.es/ict/ict_teachers_create.htm
• Brief description: VisiESLand is a website which collects loads of resources related with ICT and language learning. It is focused on English learning. It contains links to another websites in which you can create games, flashcards, worksheets, puzzles, crosswords, quizzes, etc.
• What it is useful for: It provides a lot of interesting websites that teachers can use as resources since some of the websites include activities uploaded by other teachers. It is also useful because you can create your own games and ‘digital’ activities and exercises.
• What you liked the most: The variety of activities and type of exercises that it contains. Also, that most of them are free.  
• What you disliked the most: In some websites you need to register in order to be able to create the activities. 

Rubistar for teachers

Name of the resource: Rubistar for teachers (Assessment)
URL : www.rubistar4teachers.org
Brief description: A website with instructions and tools to help teachers to create assessment sheets.
What it is useful for : It is specially useful for students' self- assessment.
What you liked the most: It is free and the assessment sheets can be stored on line for a month.
What you disliked the most: It does not offer examples of rubrics for all skills or subjects.

TES resources

Name of the resource: TES Resources
URL: www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resources/
Brief description: Interesting webpage for those who work with CLILL or cross-curricular contents.
What it is useful for: It is quite useful for English teachers who specially work with Science in CLILL methodology.
What you liked the most: Most of the resources use appropriate language and lessons are related to current events.
What you disliked the most: The webpage does not seem to offer a great variety of activities for adult ESL students.

A blog with creative ideas.

Name of the resource:
 If the ship sinks, we have the survival kit!

URL http://iftheshipsinks.blogspot.com/

Brief description:
This blog contains a nice amount of creative activities to be carried out in our classes. Most of them are adaptable to any level and they are intended to cheer up English lessons.

What it is useful for:
It is useful to find warm-up activities, fill-in activities or ideas to practice in class one of those days things doesn't seem to work out, maybe because students are tired maybe because it's one of those odd days

What you liked the most:
It is well organized and activities are simple and clearly explained. It allows you to find ideas quickly. It is up to date.

What you disliked the most:
I really think it's a good activity resource blog, but don't go looking for very elaborated activities in it.

BBC Learning English

- Name of the resource: BBC Learning English

- URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish

- Brief description: This webpage contains authentic material to use in class focused on grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.

- What it is useful for: It is useful for teachers and also for those who want to improve their English in an autonomous way.

- What you liked the most: There are a lot of videos to work with.

- What you disliked the most: There are a lot of resources but sometimes it is difficult to find them.

Welcome to our resources class blog!

Dear student,
welcome to our ICT in TEFL class blog. The aim of this blog is to:

• be familiar with post publishing in Blogger
• search and identify interesting resources for teaching and/or learning in TEFL
• share with your classmates useful resources and information
• be able to identify different ways of using a resource in your classroom

So, what should you do right now?

1. Look for an interesting resource useful for teaching or for learning English. This resource can be useful for you as a teacher or for your students as well.

2. Log into this blog (if you don't have access please contact me!) and post your message. Don't forget to include the following information about your resource:

• Name of the resource
• URL
• Brief description
• What it is useful for
• What you liked the most
• What you disliked the most

Don't forget to add the proper labels to your post such as: reading, listening, speaking, writing, audio, video, image, homework, self-assessment, ...

If you want to share more than one resource, please create as many posts as resources. One post per resource!

3. Comment at least 2 resources created by your classmates. Give ideas about how could the resource be used in a real classroom and its potential uses.

I hope you find this activity useful and engaging!!

Laia

PS. Remember that you can rate each resource!