Introduction "Kindergarten has always been the place to make friends, paint pictures, tell stories, play games and have fun while learning. Wooden blocks and lego have always been favourites in kindergarten classes. Today, the world is undergoing a digital change, changing our children digitally as well. If we can find a way to integrate the new coming technologies into our teaching, we can help our students to extend their learning and empower their creativity. It is also a way to enhance your innovative skills as a teacher in designing lessons or creating new projects with your students. Using Web 2.0 tools with young learners may seem difficult to implement but the results can be fruitful. There are plenty of online tools to bring technology into your classes that can make your children inspire, excite and make connections with the rest of the world. What tools should a teacher of young learners know before graduating from a teacher training college? This has been the question two passionate teachers asked themselves after years of using Web 2.0 tools in their daily teaching scenarios. The purpose of this e-book is to explore different Web 2.0 tools to foster creativity and innovation with young learners and also to give a jump-start to teachers who are eager to start working technology into their lessons. There are many articles, books and blog posts about integrating web tools into language
teaching but there are few ones that are focused on using technology with young learners. We also think it is a good idea to provide practical ideas on web tools that every teacher of young learners should know and use with their students. And we want teachers to be able to see these tools together on one book with easy to understand step-by-step instructions. We have both been using these tools with our students in a real teaching environment for a long time. We clearly see which ones work and which don't. The tools we provide in this book are the ones we feel are easiest and most accessible for teachers. In short this is a book whose time, we feel, has come. We invite you and your young learners to join us on a journey through these tools. Happy travels.
Before You go In this e-book sample we would like to share some tools with you. These will be the tools you use to take your learners on their first digital journey. Like any journey, it's best to be prepared beforehand. You should know the landscape and what to expect. In this section we introduce five tools and suggest a short activity for you to do yourself before you use the tool in class. Tool 1- Shidonni What is it? Shidonni is a safe virtual world where children can draw their own animals and a world for them to live in it. Getting Started Go to www.shidonni.com. Download Microsoft Silverlight on the pop up page if you don’t have it on your computer. Draw your animal then sign up. Try it out Draw a background for your animal. Feed your animal with the food that you have drawn. Pet, clean, play games and send your animal to sleep. You can make friends and play games with other people if you like. Come back often to see what your animal is doing. Tool 2- Wordle What is it?
Wordle is a tool for generating word clouds. You can create customized world clouds from the text that you provide. Getting started Go to www.wordle.net. You don’t need to give any personal information or sign up to use Wordle. Try it out Choose a text you like (e.g. a poem or lyrics to a song). Type or paste the words into the box. Click on create. You have made a wordle! You can click on Randomize to change the form if you want.To keep your wordle, you need to make it full screen. Then take a screenshot using your Internet browser (use the help function in your browser to find out how to do this, each browser is different). Open a word or powerpoint document and paste in the screenshot. Tool 3- Voki What is it? Voki is a tool to create speaking avatars with your own voice or using text-to-speech application. Getting started Go to www.voki.com and sign up. Get your microphone ready. Try it out Click on create a new voki. Customize your character by changing clothing, herd and bling. Try to re-size your character’s face and play with the colours. Choose a
background or upload your own background picture. Choose a player. Now, it’s time to give a voice to it. Click on the microphone picture and allow voki to use your microphone. Click on record and start talking. You have 60 seconds to talk. When you finish, stop and listen. You don’t like it? Record your voice again and click done. Give your Voki a name. Share it with an email or copy and paste the link. Next time, try text-to-speech application. Click on the T button. Choose a voice and and an accent. Type your text and listen. Like it? It is now ready to be published. Tool 4- Glogster What is it? Glogster is an interactive online posters with text, graphics, videos, sounds, pictures and drawing. Getting started Go to www.edu.glogster.com. Sign up. Try it out Click on 'Create a poster'. Go to your page. Delete the pictures on the page by clicking on the bin button on them. Find the tool bar (on the left hand corner) then click on 'Wall'. Make changes to the glog background first by selecting an image from the gallery. Then add graphics, text, images, video and sound. Move and customize the items on the page until you are happy with the layout. Click preview. If you are happy with it, it’s time to publish and share it with others. You can come back to change it anytime.
Tool 5 - Grababeast What is it? Grababeast is a tool to build and colour your own beast. Getting started Go to www.grabbabeast.com. You don’t need to sign up to use Grababeast. Try it out Click 'Start building your beast'. Play with different body parts by clicking on them. With the pointer, change the colour of your beast. When you are happy with it, give it a name and share it with others.
MY FIRST DIGITAL JOURNEYS Create a virtual pet
Curriculum areas: Animals, action verbs, likes and dislikes. What you need: Computer lab, internet connection, notebook and pencils, powerpoint. You will be using Shidonni (www.shidonni.com) for this trip. Before the Journey Explain what Shidonni is and what you can do with this website. If possible, draw your own animal and create a world for your animal to live in before you do your lesson. Show your animal to the students and talk about it. Tell them its name, age, what it likes and doesn't like, what it can and it can't do.
Ask the students if they want to learn anything about more about your pet. Answer their questions. Ask them to imagine a virtual pet that they can have on Shidonni. Encourage them to describe their imaginary favorite animals. The Journey Take the children to the computer lab. Write the website on the board or open the browser for each computer for children before they come in. Explain step by step how to sign up for Shidonni. Demonstrate it on your computer. Children can start drawing their own animals now. As they do, walk around the classroom and ask questions about their animals such as "What is her name?", "Can he fly?", "Can she jump up high?", "Does she like (name of food)?" etc. Ask them to take a screen capture of their pets and send them to you as a picture. Keep the pictures in a folder. Tip: For screen capturing, show the students how to use the "Print Screen" button on the keyboard. They can then paste the image into a word document and crop it using the formatting tools. For homework, ask children to write a short paragraph explaining their pets. Provide them with an example like the one below:
"My pet's name is Bubble. It's a butterfly. It's got four pink wings with blue dots. It's got three antennas and a big yellow head. It's got two green legs. It can fly and it can jump very high. It likes eating apples and drinking milk." In the next class collect their writings. Take the students' paragraphs and put them all together into a worksheet. Do not write the name of the pets on the worksheet. Now open the folder with all the pictures of the animals inside it and turn them into a powerpoint slideshow. Place one picture of a pet on each slide. Include each pet's name on the slide. In the next class hand out the worksheets to your children and open the powerpoint. Ask children to look at the first pet on the powerpoint and try to find the right description for that. Ask the students to read aloud the description and write the name of the pet next to the description. Check back the answers with the whole group. Tell the children to ask the owners one or two questions in English about their animals. Follow Up Print out the animals, ask children to write their descriptions on a paper and display them on the bulletin board. Your children have created their first virtual farm.
Construct a visual biography
Curriculum areas: describing yourself, finding out about others What you need: Computer lab, internet connection, notebook and pencils, powerpoint. You will be using wordle.net for this journey. Before The Journey Explain Wordle to your children and demonstrate an example with the children. Show them how the words become bigger if they are more frequently used. The Journey Write some keywords about yourself on the board. For example:
“Teacher, married, 32 years old, black hair, green eyes, pet cat, glasses, skiing, Oxford Street, brown bag etc.” Ask each child to write some keywords about themselves, using vocabulary they know. Walk around the class as they write their keywords. Help them by asking questions such as “Where do you live? / Have you got a pet? / What is your favorite subject? etc.” Take the children to the computer lab. Write the website on the board or open the browser for each computer for children before they come in. Ask children to turn their keywords into a word cloud using Wordle. Remind them that they can play with the colors or the fonts of their wordles. Tell the children to take screenshots of their wordles using “PrintScreen” button on the keyboard. They then paste them on a word document and send it to you. Collect all the wordles and create a powerpoint slideshow. In the next class, show the first slide. Children look at the keywords on the wordle and try to guess who that person can be. When they guess it right, the owner of the wordle talks about him/herself describing each keyword. Follow Up
Print out the wordles with the pictures of your children and display them on a bulletin board.
Create an avatar with a job
Curriculum areas: Jobs. What you need: Computer lab or a computer, internet connection, notebook and pencils. You will be using Voki (voki.com) for this journey. Before The Journey Explain Voki to your children. Show them an example. If possible, demonstrate an example in the classroom. Brainstorm a list of jobs in English with the students (e.g. doctor, fire fighter,
salesperson, lawyer, teacher, builder etc.) Write these on the board. Tell students to choose one job from the list each. Children now write a text explaining their jobs. Give them an example to start: “I have patients that are ill. I help them with injections and pills. I work at a hospital. My patients are not people. They are pets. Guess who I am?� The Journey Take the children to the computer lab. Write the website on the board or open the browser for each computer for children before they come in. Explain step by step how to sign up for Voki, or give them usernames and passwords. Demonstrate it on your computer. Children create and accessorize their own Voki avatars for their jobs. They record their voices with their texts. Ask children to mail their Voki avatars to you. Collect all the links. Show each speaking avatar in the classroom. Ask children to guess what job each avatar is doing. Follow Up Vote for the best Voki speaking avatar.
Design a visual book report
Curriculum areas: Parts of a book, descriptions. What you need: Computer lab or a computer, internet connection, notebook Before the Journey Ask them to choose a book that they have read recently and that they like. Tell them they are going to make a visual book report. For homework, they have to prepare a short description of the plot and main characters of their book. Tip: Before the class, find different book covers using Google images. Print these off and show them in class to give your students some ideas of different book covers. Explain Glogster and demonstrate an example. The Journey Take the children to the computer lab. Write the website on the board or open the browser for each computer for children before they come in. Explain step by step
how to sign up for Glogster, or give them usernames and passwords. Demonstrate it on your computer. Show them how they can find and copy images using a website such as Google Images. Tell them to start making their own glog. Their glog must include the following based on the book they chose: 1) An image of the front cover of the book with the title and author of the book. 2) An image of the author and a link to his/her website or more of his/her books. 3) A description of the plot and the main characters (that they did for homework).Tell them they can add images of the characters as well as videos (if the book was made into a movie for example). 4) Their own opinion of the book (a sentence or two) and a star rating (e.g. 1 star bad, 4 stars excellent). Get them to share their glogs by mailing you the link. Put the links together on a simple webpage and in the next class get students to look at each other's glogs. Follow up Students vote for the best visual book review.
Create a virtual monster
Curriculum areas: Parts of the body What you need: Computer lab or a computer, internet connection, notebook and pencils, print outs, worksheet. Before the Journey Explain what Grabbabeast is and how to create their own monster. Allow some time for your students to play around with this website. Tip 1: If you don’t have an internet connection in class, screen capture the steps to create a monster and show them in the classroom. If you don’t have a projector, create a worksheet that explains the steps.
The Journey Take the children to the computer lab and write the website on the board.Orally review different parts of the body before they start the activity (e.g. arms, legs, chest, head etc). Tell students to go to the website. They don´t need to sign, they just click on “Start building your beast!”. Children can create their own beasts individually or in pairs. Create a Wallshisher and make your students describe their beasts answering the following questions: What´s the name of your beast? How many legs,arms and heads does it have? What colour is your monster? Tip 2: If you don´t have internet in your classroom students can describe their beasts on a separate paper, teacher gets the descriptions from each student and create a worksheet. Teacher hands out the worksheets to children and hand the pictures of their beasts on the wall/ board. They walk around the classroom with the descriptions on their hands and try to match the students with their numbers. Follow up Activity Children can practice parts of the body by following the instructions given by the teacher to create their own monster.
More digital journeys You have been reading a sample of our forthcoming book My First Digital Journey for the round. What can you expect in the full book? ● ●
● ●
descriptions and familiarization tasks for fifteen more amazing free web tools twenty more activities, with clear step-bystep instructions for the teacher of young learners lots more tips on how to use these tools and follow up activities a further reading list of blogs and websites for language teachers of young learners