My StoryMaker

http://www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/storymaker/embed.cfm

Can a lion share a muffin with an elephant? Yes, why not?

In this interactive picture book, you can create different stories depending on the figures you use. It is easy to follow the instructions and create your own story. The first thing you need to do is select which characters you want to include in your book. Then select what the book should be about. After that, you can type and choose different characters, items, objects and settings depending what you want to happened in your story. There is so much you can do with your story, for example, you can move objects by clicking on them, change characters feelings and write what is happening in the picture. Afterwards, you can share your book with others, read it and print it. The library, Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh, in the U.S. is the creator of this website.

What you need to make it work

Flash Player

How the resource can be used by teachers.

As a teacher, you can make your own stories, which you can show and read to the children.

The story can be used as an introduction to a new topic or a theme.

The story can be a part of a portfolio, used for assessment.

How the resource can be used by pupils.

Children can create their own illustrated stories. They can read and display their stories to each other, and also present their story to the whole class.

Children are practicing writing, listening and reading when they use this website. They are practicing to listen when they are following the instructions, and when they listen to others' stories. They are practice reading when they read the instructions. And they are practicing writing, when they are writing their story.

Other considerations when using this resource.

Before you begin creating your story, it is good if you watch a little video with instructions. If you need help while you are creating your story, there is a little blue guy who can help you. Just click on him and he will help you.

Josefin Lilja

Photo Story as an ICT resource

Photo Story is a program from Microsoft which you can use to make digital presentations. In the presentaions you can add picture - your own or from a general archive and to the pictures you can add text, music and recorded speech.

As I said before, Photo Story is a program from Microsoft and you can download it for free from their homepage.

To make this program work on your computer you need a license version of Windows and you need to have Windows Media Player 10 installed as well. To be able to record speech you must have access to a microphone or a headset.

Photo Story contains easy step-for-step instructions so both you as a teacher and your pupils easy will learn how to use it. When I first tried it, I did not have any pre-knowledge of the program and I learned very quick how to use it.

How Photo Story can be used by teachers and pupils

Photo Story as an ICT resource in the classroom can be used in multiple ways, the only thing that stops you is your imagination. Teachers can use the program to e.g. to introduce new areas of work, lectures, storytelling and much more. Pupils can use Photo Story to e.g. do different kinds of assignments, documentary a day out or a study visit the class made or things like that.

I have tried this program myself to do a Storytelling of the book Spotty and I totally fell in love with it! I am sure that this is a program I will use many, many times in my future work as a teacher.

I also think that this is a program which the pupils will appreciate to work with because first of all it is fun and also because I think that they will feel very proud of their final productions. Certainly will some pupils feel umcomfortable to hear their own recorded voice but this could be a good way to get knowledge of how important the pronunciation is. I also think that Photo Story is a good program to pupils who think it is uncomfortable to speak in front of the whole class, because maybe they will think it is easier to show a Photo Story they had made.

Other considerations when using Photo Story as an ICT resource

When you are using Photo Story as an ICT resource you must think about the copyright of pictures. If you have use pictures you have draw or taken with a camera yourself you do not have to worry about the copyright at all. A good idea is to have a scanner or a digital camera available! If you choose to use picture from different websites you must use pictures with no copyright. Websites that offers an archive of pictures without no copyright is e.g.

• www.flickr.com
• www.multimedia.skolverket.se
• www.fotofinnaren.se

In today’s society we use all kinds of different communication tools like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, MSN, YouTube, blogs and other platforms. I think that most people, regardless of age, are familiar with at least one of these tools, probably more. And I am pretty sure that every kid knows how to use a computer and the internet and I also think that most parents are well known with the internet and what you can find there. So, why not use this in the teaching?

When I joined Facebook a couple years ago I thought that it was a forum for young people. I was probably around 19 at the time so by “young people” I meant people no older than 30, maybe 35. Today, Facebook is not just a forum for “young people”. Parents and even grandparents are on Facebook and it is nothing weird about that. Same with blogs. People of all ages have blogs with different messages and different kinds of readers. There are fashion blogs, interior design blogs, and baby blogs and so on. A blog can be used in so many different ways with different purposes and I think this would be a great resource for ICT. Just like a platform for the pupils and the teacher to communicate on.

One thing that I have noticed while doing my traineeship as a teacher is that many parents feel like they have no control or no clue of when and what their kids have to do for their homework. We all recognize it, the parent ask the child “Do you have any homework today?” and the kid says “No Mum, I don´t”. I think you know what I mean and by having this blog the parents can keep themselves updated on their kids homework, tests, what they are working with right know and so on. Don´t get me wrong, I don´t mean that the parents should “check up” on their kids and be like “Hey, I read the blog and I know you have homework to do so stop playing videogames and start!”. The pupils must take responsibility for what needs to be done but the blog can involve the parents in the teaching.

Of course, you can’t take for granted that all pupils have a computer with internet at home but I do think we can be sure that all the pupils know how to use it and in one way or another they can easily get in touch with a working computer. If not in their home, there are computers with internet in school, library and even in most mobile phones.

How blogs can be used by teachers and pupils:

Like I mentioned before, this blog can be used like a learning platform. The teacher would, of course, be the “head chef” for the blog though the pupils and parents will have full access to it. The teacher can post information about tasks and lessons and the pupils can ask questions to the teacher or the other pupils.

Just to show you my thoughts about this blog I made a blog for fun (at www.blogg.se) and created different categories to different kinds of topics. When I, the teacher, post something on the blog I can choose to place it in the right category. For example if I want to post something about the content in next English lesson I place it under the category “Lessons”. In that way the pupils can easily navigate on the blog and find the information that they are looking for. Here are some categories that I made:

· Contact – contact information to me, the teacher, and the pupils email addresses so that they can email each other.

· Discussion – the pupils can discuss things at the blog like tasks, and this goes under the category Discussion

· Homework and tasks – here can the pupils find homework and tasks that they have to do. It would of course also be given to them in school. But it can be a good thing if someone is sick and wants to know what the homework is for next lesson.

· Lessons – here I would post a lesson planning so that the pupils can see what we are going to do at next English lesson.

· News – perhaps I am sick one day, to inform my pupils I can write this on the blog.

· Questions and concerns – if the pupils have any question or concern about something. It could be questions about a test or something like that.

· Timetable – what time the lesson starts and in which room the lesson is in can be find here.

Considerations

One thing to have in consideration is that you can´t count on the pupils to always keep themselves updated by looking at the blog. I think that there will always be one group who will definitely use the blog to communicate with other pupils and the teacher and also keep themselves updated but there will also be one group who will not bother to check the blog for updates about lessons and homework. Therefore the teacher cannot rely on just the blog; practical information will also need to be given by the teacher when meeting the pupils IRL.

Learning English through a blog

The internet is full of sources of learning English through ICT and the selection of places to participate in activities and games are great. In school we have to have a purpose with the selection and we have to think how the information is being shown for the students on the site and who it is who want to send a message through the site.

I have been going through a website that supposedly is designed for students to learn and practice English as a foreign language in Japan, but the site also encourage young native speakers (English) to play the games and learn from the activities. I do not want to criticize the website, because I am sure that many children can learn something from it, but I would not use these kinds of websites in my English teaching classroom. The reasons are first of all that the games ask you to complete different quizzes and will off course only provide you with right or wrong answer and no explanation. If you happen to answer wrong you get minus points, leading to that this could be a very negative experience for the student if he/she can not complete one question, and looses all the points he/she already made.

I also question why we need to use a computer to play games like “Hangman” or “Matching pairs”, when those are perfect examples of activities for children to communicate around in pairs or groups. Along with “Hangman” the board game “Guess who?” is a fantastic way to communicate, describe and be comfortable while learning. “Guess who?” can also be transformed and the pictures can be changed with different themes and why not play the game live with the students being the “bricks”?

(foto by:unloveablesteve, flickr.com)
(picture posted according to copyrights)

I would want my students to communicate to learn English. I want them to talk, write and explore how to use the language in a creative way and that is why I would use a blog in the English education. For the students to have their own blog would give them the opportunity to write in the blog about matters that they believe is important and to use the English language for something that they are interested in. The blog posts will also be up for discussion with the class and social, global and multimedia ethics would be thought. Many schools and classes write articles and make newspapers, to use the blog we would enter a more environment friendly zone and also gives the parents the opportunities to have a direct access to the children’s development and work.

I am also very keen on the idea to have the blog on the class website (where information, forms, homework and week letters and planning would be posted) so that is will be a natural part of what they already would be used to. To create a website like that you can very easy use weebly.com ( http://education.weebly.com). Smart, environment friendly and easy for most of the families today, who use email and internet in work and in private everyday. For those families who do not have the opportunities to enter the website at work or at home will off course be provided with a paper copy of the news and the weekly letter, so no obligations, no pressure for families.

In short the resource would be a blog created at either weebly.com or blogger.com or any other free blog network. The blog will work as forum to post text, poems, news, work and information about other activities that happened in the English classroom. The students know that there is a receiver for their work, and will therefore make a bigger effort when creating. The students will always have the opportunities to publish their work and that will make them proud. To make this work we need a computer with internet access and the above mentioned blog account (and possibly a digital camera to post pictures on the blog to make it visually come alive)


For me as a teacher I will have access to all the texts written by each student in one place, giving me the opening to easy evaluate and to see progress in the work. The blog would be a tool for helping the students to see their own progress, with will help me as a teacher to motivate them. Me, as the teacher also has the responsibility to make sure that no pictures of the children (without parental approval) are being posted and that all text is correct and representative is the blog.

The students will write and publish real information, example a post about last week’s fieldtrip, give grades on the food in the cafeteria, tell about something they find important and discuss world news etc. the students will know that they always have a receiver and will be published and that their job is important and will not just end up in a pile or draw of old texts (like too many texts do now unfortunately). Education and knowledge about layout, fonts and esthetics will also be a part of the blog. How do we attract readers? How can we make the post look as good as possible? The students will feel important and the work they do will always feel meaningful.

POSTED BY: THERESE BOLIN

Photo Story- an ICT resource

About Photo Story
This software from Microsoft is free of charge and can be downloaded from www.microsoft.com/photostory. The computer needs to be prepared with Windows XP or Windows 7. It also requires that Windows Media Player 10 is installed.

The program makes it possible to provide presentations through speech, music, text and photos. When creating a new story, the first step is to import the pictures you want to use. These can be your own productions as well as photos found on the Internet. The webb site www.fotofinnaren.se has an extended selection of material, which is free to use for educational purposes. There is also an opportunity to add different effects to the chosen pictures, as well as text and music. The program is prepared with different pieces of music, but if not finding anything suitable, a suggestion is to look at www.multimedia.skolverket.se/Arkiv/Musik/ for further options. In the flow of the story making, you will eventually come to the "recording point". This is where you add your voice to the photos and it can be redone until you are satisfied with the result.

Photo Story can be used by younger learners as well as by older pupils. The creation will be a product of the learners´ present level of knowledge and skills. When used by teachers, the topics and language can be adapted to fit the specific group who will take part of the presentation.

How Photo Story can be used by teachers
First of all, I think that this is a good tool when introducing a new topic or theme. The presentation does not have to reveal the actual topic, but can be built up for the pupils to guess. Clues will be given from the recorded voice and the pictures will serve as support for meaning and understanding. The same goes when using the program for storytelling. It can then be used as a listening activity, with included pre- and post tasks. Digital presentations can also be good starters for different discussions in the classroom.

The children´s own and final productions can be published on, for example, YouTube. Once they are avaliable on the Internet, they are items of public opinions. This gives an opportunity to have a discussion that highlights an appropriate behavior when commenting other peoples´ pieces of work, and the value of constructive criticism verses condescending comments. Due to the stories inclusion of pictures, a discussion about copyrights will have its natural place.

This way of working has the advantage of creating a rather informal learning situation. The pupils are allowed to pick up and produce language under fun and relaxed circumstances, which is beneficial to the motivation and thus the whole learning process. The digital stories can be contributions to portfolios used for assessment. It will give the teacher a chance to catch the learners´ pronunciation skills. When used as assessment material, the whole working process should be considered though. Not just the final result.

How Photo Story can be used by learners
This program is an excellent way for young children to get intouch with computers for learning purposes. It is simple to use and no pre-knowledge is required. Clear instructions and support from the teacher should be enough when making their own digital presentations. Producing a story offers opportunities to practice speaking, pronunciation and writing. The recording allows the learners to really listen to the own voice, which may lead to an awareness of the pronunciation and the importance of it. When consuming someone else´s story, careful listening is required. This gives the pupils a chance to practice and develop this skill.

The final result of a Photo Story is a very concrete outcome. In the end it will, hopefully, make the children feel proud of what they have created. YouTube publishes will make it accessible to parents and friends. This might push the pupils to make an extra effort.

Other considerations when using Photo Story
As concerning all teaching and learning, this way of working includes both advantages and disadvantages. There will be children who are less comfortable with having the own voice recorded for everyone to listen to. It is, indeed, a rather exposed situation. This can be softened up if the topic is familiar and out of interest. Since the access of computers usually is rather limited in schools, one idea is to let the pupils work in pairs or small groups, put together out of common interests.

There is a risk that computer work is considered to be less important than ordinary teaching. Explicit information of the learning purposes and the expected outcomes is one way to decrease that risk.

A website as an ICT resource – LearnEnglish Kids (British Council)

The resource I have chosen to tell you about is British Council's user-friendly website LearnEnglish Kids, which is designed for children who are learning English as a second or foreign language.

You can find the website here:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/

On LearnEnglish Kids there are five main sections:

• The game section, where you will find online activities and games about numerous different topics. You can play games just for the fun of it, like "Take That, Teacher" where you collect points by hitting teachers with paper aeroplanes, or you can play language games that are more obviously focused on language learning like labeling pictures, quizzes, finding words in puzzles and practise spelling in English.
• The listen and watch section, where you will find videos and online activities that are designed to practise listening skills, as well as songs and animated stories especially written for children. To make it easier to find songs and stories that are suitable for your class, every song and story has a level tag stating if it is "easy", "medium" or "not so easy". You can also find rhymes and tounge twisters here, and you could even record yourself saying them.
• The read and write section, where you will find worksheets that you may download and use in the classroom. This section also contains a feature that is called "word of the week", where a new word is introduced by a short video every week (as the name implies). A sub-section called "Your turn" in this section is designed to encourage children to contribute to the site by writing about different things that catches their interest.
• The make section, where you will find online activities that allows you to create your own stories or for example design your own superhero. Here you can also download crafts worksheets and watch videos of children making some of the things described in these sheets.
• The explore section, where you could watch an introduction video how to use LearnEnglish Kids and where different things can be found on the site. You can also find links to other websites that are suitable for children learning English.

In order to use LearnEnglish Kids you need a computer connected to the Internet and the freeware Adobe Reader that easily can be downloaded from this adress:

http://get.adobe.com/se/reader/

How teachers and pupils can use LearnEnglish Kids

For teachers, LearnEnglish Kids really can be an invaluable source of material to use in the classroom. The great number of topics to choose from could work as an inspiration to create whole themes, but you can of course also search for exercises that are suitable for just one particular lesson. If you want to use a story or a song you can choose if you want it to be texted or not, and you can also control the speed by pausing (for songs) or clicking the "next"-button (for stories). Most of the stories and songs also have following worksheets that you may download and use with your pupils, as pre- during- or post-tasks. If there are many words in them that are new to the pupils you could prepare them before the viewing.

Because of the varied content of the site you can use it with pupils aged 7 to 13, but of course you have to adjust your chioces to your own particular group of pupils and their current level. Something that works with one group of children might be too hard or childish for another one, even if they are in the same age.

To create your own user account and become a member of the site you need to be 13 years old or younger. If you want your pupils to use LearnEnglish Kids by themselves there are a couple of house rules to go through (regarding their expected behavior on the site) before they sign up. You don't have to be a member to use it though, but if you are you are allowed to post comments and create your own avatar. The possibility to write and post comments is something I really like about this site, because it provides a great opportunity for pupils to use their new language in an informal way and interact with children all around the world.

When the pupils have been introduced to the site they could use it at home, playing the games or listening to the stories of their own choice, whilst they are learning at the same time.

Other considerations when using LearnEnglish Kids

If you want to play songs and stories in front of a larger group you should have the computer connected to a projector, to make sure that all pupils are able to se everything. And if you want your pupils to use the site on their own there is, of course, the issue about the number of disposable computers.

Another thing to have in mind is that you should have a clear learning purpose when you are using this site in your teaching, so it doesn't become just an emergency solution when you want to keep your pupils occupied.

Scholastic

I was searching for good webpage´s on the topic "news for kids" and came across this webpage. I think it is important to make the children aware of what is going on around the world and to do so from an early age. This will teach them humbleness, empathy, how children around the world are living and also to be thankful for what you have. If you then do the news in English they will learn the language and feel the use for it as they learn. This website does not only give you the news around the world, written in a good level for kids, but it also provides a lot of exercises that can help the students to develop their English skills.

How can this be useful for teachers?
If you click on the "Teachers resources" you can choose diferent things in the menu.

• Lesson plans
• Teachers share
• Teaching strategies and ideas
• Tools
• Printables and mini-books
• New teachers
• Computer Lab Favourites
• Interactive whiteboard
• Free programs and giveaways

This can help teachers with all sorts of planning before each lesson. The teachers can exchange experiences and help each other out. Some of the pages refer to special books that you have to have in order to do the exersices, but you can find many free tips as well.

How can this be useful for students?

The students can choose from a variety of different activities from the menu "Students activity".

• Scholastic news
• Computer Lab Favourites
• Write and Publish
• Reading respons
• Interactive whiteboard
• Scholastic Kids Press Corps

Under for example, Computer Lab Favourites, the students can choose math and which level they are at. They can then practise different mathskills.

The webpage says that Scholastic is the worlds largest publisher and distrubutor of children´s books and also a leader in educational technology and children´s media. Scholastic creates quality educational and entertaining materials and products for use in school and at home, including children´s books, magazines, technology-based products, teacher materials, televisions programming, film videos and toys.

You can find the webpages here: http://www2.scholastic.com

Malin Ottosson

Multimediabyrån

Multimediabyrån
When speaking with teachers about ICT-use in school I often meet reactions of frustration. Many teachers feel that they do not have the knowledge or the the time or the equipment asked for in order to develope their use of ICT. I think that Multimediabyrån can meet this frustaration and that is why I choose to write about this web-site.
Background
The Swedish National Agency for Education recieved from the Swedish government a mission to develope and support the ICT- and media use in the Swedish school and pre-school. Multimediabyrån is a part of that investment and is supposed to give support and inspiration to teachers.
Education
At this page you can find short courses with instructions of how to use different software, how to work with pictures, film and music, and how you can publish and present the work of your pupils. Multimediabyrån also provides exercises you can do and often you can start to use the results of them at once. The choice of what software is to be thought about in this site is made out of two parameters: if the software is for free or if it is common at schools. This means you do not have to invest money to start learning and use the things you learn.
Inspiration
At multimediabyrån you can find reports and tips about what others already done, from pre-school up to gymnasium level. You can read about ideas, the work and the outcomes from different projects. I find it very inspiring! Like always "copy-paste" of the idea of someone else is not advisable, but get inspired and make it your way!
Pupils
I think that not only teachers but also pupils from the age of 10 12 years of age could recieve great support from the courses and exercises at this site. The most useful thing though, might be the access to pictures, music, animations and ssound effects that are free to use in a non-commersial purpose at school.

The Youtube possibilities

I could tell you about a less well known ICT resource, like glosor.eu for example, so that my idea would feel more unique and fresh and you would not think ”Earth to Ann. Everyone knows what youtube is.”. But I won´t.
My believes is that even if most of you have used and are well familiar with youtube you have not used it in your teaching. Sometimes we all need to be reminded of what is just in front of us.

In my English class ( I teach fourth graders) I work with youtube every Friday. It all started with me asking the pupils to bring the lyrics of one of their favourite songs in english to class. I collected all the songs and sat down to analyse what the artists were saying to the pupils through their songs. Not very surprisingly there were a lot of sex and women degrading messages. So I thought to my self; ”How can we work with this in our English class?”.

I started by creating a account on Youtube, so that I could mark the videos I wanted as my favourites and also sort them in my own 'boxes' on the site. I searched for both the official videos for the songs, and for a funny or special kind of youtube published cover of the song. If the official video actually shows something that can help the students to figure out what the song is about I think it is a good way to start the lesson. The pictures in the video then become a support for the students when they try to figure out what it is all about. The alternate videos was supposed to end the lessons with a ‘bang’. These videos was intended to impress the pupils or just make them laugh – to make the pupils leave the classroom smiling.

This way of working with songs and videos from Youtube gave us a good platform for talking about the English language and the language significance in the popular culture. We talk in the class what the song was about, what the message to the listener were and if the message is a morally good one or not? Examples of videos I have used:

On the Rocks - Bad romance dance
T-mobile Welcome Back Heatrow airport
Pink glove dance
Nick Pitera duet by him self – Aladin

In the first lesson I told the students that the goal with this way of working was to make them aware of what they were listening to and what they were singing. The goal was to make them aware of the lyrics so they would not go around singing "Welcome to the candy shop, let me lick your lollipop ..." or "You spin my head round, round, round, round, when you go down, baby go down, down..." without actually knowing what it means. The pupils said that they never thought about what the song actually meant and they got surprised when they realised what they had been going around saying/singing. Also the pupils that in the beginning thought words like ‘bitches’ and ‘whores’ was funny have gotten a new perspective on this. This Friday lessons tradition has become the students favourite lesson of the week and I think it has been a good way for us to talk about the English language by involving their interests. They can discuss the lyrics in smaller groups at first and then share what they have discussed in the whole class. It is also good to let the students pick out words from the songs that they think is hard and include these words in their glossaries. (Yes, I use glossaries).

Another good thing with Youtube is that most of the pupils can use it at home and they can link them self to you channel. In that way they get easy access to the videos you are working with and you can use the videos for homework to. You can also carry on a good dialogue with the parents and show them what you are working with.

The hardest part about youtube is to know if you actually are allowed to use it in the classroom or not. There is no easy answer to this question. I recommend you to talk to your principal and see what the school says about this issue. But bare in mind that many people publish videos on youtube because they want it to be shown. So the question of what you can and can not use should include this aspect. In my example above I would say that the official music videos may be questionable but that the more ‘home made’ videos are okay to use in the classroom.
(About youtube on "Kolla Källan" from Skolverket)
There is also a educational channel on youtube, which you can find here.

Youtube can be used in so many ways. I also try to show motivational videos and other clips that can be grounds for a good discussion. To implement glosor.eu in your teaching is very easy. That site is created for teaching and the instructions is very basic. But Youtube is mostly used for other purposes and according to me it is therefore harder to implement in your teaching. We just don´t think about youtube in that way. But now you do - right?!

ICT resource – ABC Teach (www.abcteach.com)

When I was reading Maria Estling Vanneståls book “Lära engelska på internet” I became intrigued to have a look at the website Språklänkportalen. Looking around at this website made me found this other website called ABC Teach.

So the ICT resource that I have chosen to describe is the website ABC Teach. The website can be available from any computer with an Internet connection and on this website you can find lots of free material in English that can be used by both teachers and students. The material is mostly directed towards the younger students at beginner’s level.
There is a membership payment for 40$ per year if you want to be able to get hold of all the material, but there is over 5,000 printables, interactives, custom documents, clip art, games and much more for free. The main goal and challenge for this website is “to meet the needs of a global audience” which make this site interesting for teachers and students all over the world that either educate or study the language.

On the front page there is a menu at the top of the page. When clicking on the category Directory on that menu, three sub-categories show and this is where most of the material can be found. This is a description of what you can find:

• Core subjects, here you can find material for most of the subjects such as art, handwriting, math, music, science, sports, reading, technology and testing to mention a few. In each of those subjects there are different exercises and documents in English that can be used in the classroom. A few examples of exercises can be crosswords, word search, whole projects, unscramble the words and math problems.
  
  
• Popular categories, is a menu where you can choose from popular activities such as clip art, flashcards, theme units, PowerPoint’s, interactive files, holidays and much more. There are lots of different materials based on the activity and with more or less useful content in the sub-categories depending on which you choose.
  
  
• Selected materials, here you can find material put together just for a certain age or a special need. There are five categories developed in early elementary, middle school, homeschoolers and parents, Montessori material and special needs. All categories contain materials that can be suitable for individualization depending on where that particular student’s level is and what they want/need to learn.

On the front page there is another category called Interactive. (To get the most out of this category the school or the classroom should have either a SMART Board or a Promethean activboard). When clicking on that category there will yet again emerge three sub-categories:

• Smart notebook, is a menu that can be used if the class or the school has invested in SMART Board, in other words an interactive whiteboard with lots of functions. If so, the teachers and the students can download many activities, games, puzzles, themes, math explanations and much more in this category.
  
  
• Promethean flipchart, here is lots material that can be used if the school or the classroom has a promethean activboard, also a kind of interactive whiteboard.
  
  
• Microsoft PowerPoint, this is the menu where you can find presentations, with or without audio, templates and other language presentations in for example French and Spanish.

This resource can be used by the teachers to get inspiration, concrete tips and lots of material that are mentioned above. There are for example many worksheets that can be used in the classroom working with the English language in many different approaches. Approaches like one lesson at the time, lessons over a couple of weeks, a bigger project involving and integrating more subjects, theme-based learning with other classes so there are many opportunities for the teachers to develop and work with the material on this website. There is also a category called ABCTOOLS where you can build your own material such as crosswords, sudoku, spelling, word search, handwriting and much more.

I think that students in the lower grades can find the material on this website fun to work with and that there are at least some parts of the free material that can be useful for learning English with ICT.
It is hard to say what the students are going to like and what are best for each students learning, everyone acquires different and have different interests of what they like or not like to do. This website contains much different material that can be at least tried and tested in some aspects. Lastly, the website seems to have educating people all over the world as its main criteria which at least sends a good signal.

So if you want to check it out, here is the link agian, ABC Teach

Starfall.com – an ICT resource

Starfall.com is a public free website that has been available since September 2002. The purpose with this website is to be a service to teach children to read and the main approach is phonics, which means that the exercises are focus on the letters sound by showing the pupils the letters in the alphabet and then combine them to different words (Starfall.com, 2010; Cameron, 2001). If the phonic approach is done in isolation, there can be a pitfall, namely, it could be very boring and de-motivating, but Cameron (2001) suggests that phonics should be practise about 5-10 minutes to prevent de-motivating. Another suggestion from Cameron (2001) is that phonics could be integrated in story reading, songs and rhymes, which the website Starfall.com is providing.

Starfall’s target audience is from kindergarten to second grade, but also special or home education. The exercises are very well made and have very good animations and the best of all; they are very simple to use and it is for free, all you need is a computer with Internet!

Starfall.com has four steps; “ABC – let’s get ready to read”, “Learn to read”, “It’s fun to read” and “I’m reading”. I will briefly explain each step and present some examples of uses for teachers and pupils. Have you or will you think of any other good use, please, give me your tip by making a comment on my blog-post. Thanks!

Enter the website here: http://www.starfall.com/

1.ABC-let’s get ready to read: This page is the starting point and it has the whole English alphabet in cute boxes for each letter. You can click on each box and you will enter a page with fun animations about each letter. It is very focus on the sound and some words that begins with the specific letter you practise. Additional, this page has a page with sign language for each letter and a page with the vowels. Finally, a page with an ABC-song and there is a minus for this song, you can not pause the song, and sometime the singer sings the song a little to fast for young learners. On the other hand, it is a great and fun song, but needs practise for non-native speakers.

How can this page be used by teachers and pupils?
ABC-let’s get ready to read: Teachers can use this page, as a starting point or as complement, to let the pupils listen the sounds of the letters. Pupils can use this page, by themselves at school or at home, to listen to the sounds of the letters.

2. Learn to read: This page is the next level and it has several of exercises where the pupils shall create some words with a syllable and add an initial letter. For example the syllable is “at” and there is four initial letters to choose from; h, c, r, b, and the computer says a word, like “hat” and then the pupil are supposed to drag the h-letter to the word and then the computer says the word. A little minus to this exercise is that there are no new words to create with each syllable, but only four. On the other hand, it opens up opportunities for us teachers can create more exercises’ like this. Additional, this page has a little text to each syllable-exercise and the pupils, or the teacher can highlight each word and the computer will read the word, slowly, loud and clear.

How can this page be used by teachers and pupils?
Learn to read: These exercises’ can teachers use in whole class or let the pupils work in pair and help each other. Whole class works best if there is lack of computers, but if you have access to several computers, let the pupils work in pairs and help and discuss with each other. A tip is to have headset for each pupil so they can hear the exercises without disturbing other pupils.

3. It’s fun to read: This is a page that have more text and contains different themes where the pupils are intended to create, read or hear a text within each theme. Sometimes the pupils can hear the text, but sometimes they just can highlight the words and the computer will sound the word. The pupils are active all the time by clicking on different buttons or other suggestions that will create the story.

How can this page be used by teachers and pupils?
The different themes in this page can be used as a preparation for a core activity. For example “All about me” can introduce the pupil to a task about themselves: They can take pictures at their life; their home, their room, their pets etc. and then make a Photostory with the pictures and add some text that is describing the pupil’s life and who s/he is. The teacher can show them the particular theme for all the pupils or, if there are available computers, the pupils can look at the animation by themselves.

4. I’m reading: This page is like the “final level” and it has small books for the pupils to read or listen to. The books are places within different theme, for example Folk tales, Chinese fables and Comics. As a wrote, the pupils can read or hear the text, and the computer voice is a good voice that does not sound unreal, like a speech synthesis which often is pronouncing the word with no intonation.

How can this page be used by teachers and pupils?
This page creates a huge “reading-opportunities/discoveries”. The small cute books can be read by the teacher for the class while it is shown on the Whiteboard/Cleverboard so everyone can see the text and the pictures. That everyone can see the text and the pictures is very good because the pupils will stay concentrated and you can more easily point out words and details in the pictures that will helping the pupils to develop their language learning.
Starfall.com has expanded since they started, now they have a website that is intended for kindergarten and also another site: more.starfall.com which, for example, including math. More.starfall.com is a website that offers plenty of exercises and should work very well in the language classroom where English is the target language. This website considers training; colors, vowels, math, songs and rhymes. This website only provides some few sneak peek on the material, because you need to have an account and for one year a school-account cost about 1.800 SEK.

Other considerations when using this resource
I find that this website suits for grade 1-3 and as teachers we always have to have a purpose with our approaches by looking at the syllabus and the curriculum.

Starfall.com according to the syllabus and curriculum, Lgr11

In the syllabus for English (Lgr11) we can read that “[the pupils] shall be given conditions to use different tools for learning, understanding, creating and communication” (Lgr11, 2010:20). I find that Starfall.com is a great tool, which aims to a few goals. The syllabus also writes that the pupils shall be provided:

- Clearly spoken and written English from different media sources
- Songs, rim, poems and tales

This page has very clearly spoken and written English that is authentic, which Estling Vannestål (2009) highlights the authentic material according to ICT recourses. This page is a different source than the ordinary textbook and it contains songs, rim, poems and tales.
The curriculum writes that the school has the responsibility that, after primary school, every pupil can:

- Use modern technique as a tool for search for knowledge, communication, creation and learning (Lgr11, 2010:10).

This goal is a big goal and contain much more than just using a website, but the using of Starfall’s website aims for this goal.

Spelling Bee

(http://www.learner.org/interactives/spelling/index.html)

Spelling Bee is an internet resource, which helps pupils to spell some in common English words. You can chose which grade that you want to train your spelling in, and then you get to hear a short story about something. The story is written down on the page, and there are some gaps that you are supposed to fill in. If you didn´t hear the word, you can click to hear it again, as many times as you need to.

The homepage will help the pupils to train their spelling and their listening ability. This page could also challenge the teacher, because the highest grade gives some hard spelling words. Maria Estling Vannestål says in her book “Lära engelska på internet” that these kind of exercises can be very “old fashion”. When the exercises want you to fill in gaps, it can sometimes be hard for the students to really understand the context of the exercise. This is where we end up in an empty room, where no one really understands why we are doing this. Vannestål (2009) claims that all these kinds of grammar exercises are not so bad, but it is important that you as a teacher use the exercises as great tool for your pupils.

How can “spelling bee” be used by teachers and pupils?

I think this homepage could help pupils to spell the most in common words at their age. The pupils also get to hear the words in a correct context. The sentences are not difficult to understand, and if you would like to challenge yourself, it is just to pick a higher grade.

The spelling Bee is just one exercise that the homepage Interactives offer, and there are a lot of other good exercises. For example; you get to read a newspaper article, and then you will answer some questions about it. The Interactives offer you exercises in math, arts, language, history and science. I think “spelling bee” could really help the children that is having problem with the spelling or that find it hard to hear words that sounds exactly the same. Here the pupils get to hear the words in their context, and maybe that will help them to know the difference.

When the pupils have checked this homepage, they could maybe do their own spelling bee. If you just take some vocabulary that you have had in homework, and then put them in other sentences, you could get your own story.

I would only use this resource for the pupils outside the classroom. The pupils can use this resource when they are at home, and maybe when I want a pupil to train their spelling more. It is pity that the page doesn’t offer more than three stories at each grade. That might be boring for the pupils that all the same stories will come up. This is one reason I wouldn´t use this homepage in the classroom. Instead I would put this page at the class´s own blog, so they could do it whenever they want to.