Tag Archives: onlinetools

Acapela.tv: converting text to speech in a funny way

Audio, Create your own stuff, freeware, Funny Stuff, Games, In the Computer Room, Resources, Students' Corner, Vocabulary, , , , ,

This site is plain fun ! Acapela .tv is a new site that has a lot of potential for the language class.
Choose a real character or a cute cartoon and make him speak. Choose from a range of voices that interpret and read content with meaning and emotion. This text to speech tool is great to do dictations or revise vocabulary among other things.

HOW I’M PLANNING TO USE IT

♥I think it might be funny to divide the class into two groups -the class I have in mind, right now, is a small class of nine students; with larger classes I might need to divide it into three or four groups.

My aim with this activity will be to make sure students revise some vocabulary related to money for their next test. So, the class is divided into two groups. They need to listen to their cartoon speaking, write down the words the character asks them to revise and be able to explain them to the other group. Each character will say the same number of words and you know the rest… don’t you?? A competition, as usual, something that I, a very competitive person, just love.

TEAM A

TEAM B

♥My next step will be asking selected students from different courses to do the job. The volunteers will need to go home, register and create a character to revise vocabulary. Obviously, they’ll need to copy the link provided and send it to me so that I can display it when playing the game in class.

What do you think? Will they like it?

Blog de Cristina is also on Facebook. 

Traditional Recipes from Asturias

freeware, Students' Corner, , , ,

.”Better late than never” or so they say.
This booklet with Traditional Recipes from Asturias was written with lots of love by my former students from the bilingual stream at IES Cesar Rodríguez and with great memories of these amazing students I fulfill my promise . I only hope you are still reading this blog, one year later!


I have used the highly recommendable tool issuu . Click to enlarge.

Creating Word Clouds with Tagul

Create your own stuff, freeware, Resources,

And again it’s this time of the year when all my free time goes to preparing and marking exams so I don’t have much time left to dedicate to the blog. To tell you the truth, I don’t feel inspired! I start a sentence, I know I want to say something … but inspiration never comes. So I’ve given up! maybe, next week, I’ll be back to my usual self. Meanwhile, enjoy this site for creating Word Clouds. It is called Tagul .

Get Adobe Flash player

How to Download the Audio File from YouTube

Audio, freeware, Resources, , ,

A very short post to share  this tool with you.

ListenToYouTube.com is an online application for converting YouTube flash video to MP3 audio. The service is fast, free, and requires no signup. All you need to do is copy-paste the  YouTube URL, and the application will  extract  the MP3, and give you a link to download the audio file.

Tag Galaxy: Flikr Images to create a 3D photo-sphere

Create your own stuff, Pictures, Speaking,

Do you know anyone, especially students, who would not rather have a lesson spiced up with pictures?   Now, this  is  an amazing tool to work  with and  just plain fun! Tag Galaxy appeals to all visual students and it helps spice up a boring lesson. Have I  just said” boring lessons”??? Sorry! a slip of the tongue!!

How does it work? Easy peasy! You enter a tag  – I wrote Hobbies-  and as soon as you click GO , you will see a 3D galaxy with lots of planets of different sizes. The biggest one is for my Tag ( in this case Hobbies) and the smaller  planets will be words related to the keyword orbiting around my keyword

At this point you might click on another planet to combine words ( Hobbies+ books) and form a new galaxy.

Click on the big planet and see your picture collection , straight from Flikr  assembling.

Spin the globe  with the mouse. Click to select a picture and get a close -up. Cool!

Tag Galaxy in the classroom: I’m sure my students will be delighted to watch the whole process but leaving aside the cool part, I think using this wonderful tool can be highly motivating for my students.

♥ At the moment I’m teaching  Simple Past tense to my Elementary students and  I’m planning to use it  to do some speaking with the structure:

When did you last….? (play football)

I last( played football )( three weeks ago) +  the follow up questions.

♥It could also work  for Picture Description

♥Writing Skills: Students are given the beginning of a story such as: it was a stormy night … Students write “storm” as the keyword and the picures will help them spark their creativity.