Embedded Files
The APPS section is a selection of websites & apps commonly used by teachers. Each selection comes with a short explanation of how to use and some have examples of how they have been used by teachers in the past.
Click on the titles or logos to access the app or websites' homepage. All of the apps offer free accounts upon subscriptions, however, many require a paid account to unlock extra features or create unlimited resources.
Music Resources
Music Resources
The Children's Music Network celebrates the positive power of music in the lives of children by sharing songs, exchanging ideas and creating community. Click the link to check out songs that might work well with SDG-focused lessons.
Practice listening and writing skills by listening to pop songs and filling in the blanks - may be a bit difficult for elementary students, but might also be worth a try!
Chrome Music Lab is a website that makes learning music more accessible through fun, hands-on experiments. Search online for tons of song tutorials to bring into the classroom.
Perfect for an information gap activity that requires students to dictate a song to a partner by color.
Elementary School Songbook
Elementary School Songbook
Dropbox link: please copy/download and create your own file (don’t edit the original :)
This songbook has a dozen or so practical songs for the elementary school classroom. Contact Matt with any questions about how the songs go~~
Google Slides version (some features may not work)
Removing Lyrics from YouTube Songs
Removing Lyrics from YouTube Songs
Create your own karaoke versions of songs for the classroom.
Download Audacity
Watch this 41-second tutorial
Play your YouTube video and record it with Audacity
Export the file to your computer
Upload it to the vocal remover website
Wait for it to process, save it and you're good to go!
PPT Game Websites
PPT Game Websites
Apps from Susan Tang's Workshop (9/27/23)
Apps from Susan Tang's Workshop (9/27/23)
First off, big thanks to Susan Tang- if you want to get in touch with her about any of the apps she shared, here's her contact cosettebear@gmail.com
Susan's Padlet from the workshop is by far the best way to view and review material from the workshop:
https://padlet.com/cosettebear/padlet-8sghnb6ixtnjuute
Below is a list of APPs covered during the workshop. Check them out and be sure to share anything you come across! The images below link to the apps as well~
Apple Pages- Picture Bingo & Emoji Stories were standouts. Find a link to blank templates in the Padlet and check the images on the right to see how the app was used.
Quizlet Live- This was used as a way to enable students to cooperate with one another while working together to answer questions and get points.
Seesaw- Used for digital manipulatives. Students can drag icons, images and words around the screen to make stories.
Green Screen by Do Ink- This app let us create our own green screen videos very easily using just an iPad, a green screen (which was purchased at a reasonable price from a fabric shop & the Do Ink app). You need to purchase a subscription to the app, but it's a lifetime subscription- no need to renew each year! See the Padlet to access the videos we made!
Keynote- We used this to create images we uploaded to AR Makr
AR Makr- See the short videos we made in the Padlet
Quickdraw- From Google, this platform asks you to draw a prompt in less than 20 seconds. If the neural network can recognize your drawing, then you're an artist!
Autodraw- You start a drawing and Autodraw automatically suggests icons or clipart images that you can copy, paste and use free of copyright.
Diffit for Teachers- This website allows you to create and access differentiated resources. You can enter in your own text and ask it to level it or you can use its search engine to access and level articles from the internet.
Canva Magic Design- This is Canva's 'Free Online AI Design Tool.' It's still in Beta, but in the workshop we asked to create a Top 10 Taiwanese Foods presentation and it actually did a decent job!!!
Freeform is a useful drawing app. Students can draw on a blank canvas or add elements like sticky notes and other features to their pictures. Teachers can also set up a template and have students go from there. Check out the tutorial or scan the QR code to download the app and try it for yourself!
Chatterpix Kids is a fun app for the classroom. Students take a picture, draw a mouth on the picture then record what they want their picture to say. It works great in EFL classrooms as students can draw a picture first (possibly as part of an activity) and then bring their picture to life while practicing English at the same time. See the examples below and scan the QR code to download the app and get started!
Slido is an online polling platform that allows people to participate in polls and quickly answer questions. It can be a fun option to embed within a PPT presentation or as a way to quickly allow students to see how their answers or opinions stack up against those of their classmates. One good thing about Slido is its ease of use; create a QR code for your questions so participants can scan the QR code and be instantly taken to the poll. There are a number of different poll formats to choose from, including Q & A, word clouds, rankings and ratings. See the example below for a poll about ice cream. There is a QR code and a link to answer the poll.
Edpuzzle is a free app that lets you share video assignments with your students. The app allows you to take any video you find on YouTube, add questions and prompts to them and share them with students as an assignment. The video assignments can be completed in class or at home and teachers are able to check students' answers and view progress on the app.
Below you can try edpuzzle from a student's perspective. Be sure to listen to the instructions at the beginning and press continue to watch the video!
Flip (it used to be Flipgrid) is a free app used for video sharing and video discussion. Teachers create a class and a topic and students can record or post videos for all members of their class to see. Students can then comment on other people's videos and leave messages for others to read. Students in Taitung have used the app to record self-introduction videos (with funny filters of course). The videos were posted as a class and students were able to view and comment on their peers' videos.
The example below is of FETs in Taitung sharing their favorite digital resources.
Nearpod is a very versatile app that allows you to create everything from mini-lessons to games for your students. Within a Nearpod lesson, you can create slideshows, add videos with questions, provide opportunities to practice language through a variety of activities and even give students the chance to explore new places through the VR Field Trip option. Check the examples below for examples of what a Nearpod lesson might look like.
Blooket is an online educational gaming platform in which teachers first create a question set and then are given a number of different game modes to select from. The game mode 'Gold Quest' is a personal favorite. Students answer questions to get gold, but also are allowed to swap or steal gold from their classmates.
Blooket can be used as a review or assessment tool as it gives you data on student performance after the game is finished. The interface is in English so at times it can take a few rounds of play before students get the hang of it. See the links below for examples of Blookets that have been used with 4-6 graders in a rural elementary school setting.
Review of Follow Me 8 Unit 4: Places (based on a map of Chenggong Township)
Review of Follow Me 6 Units 3 & 4: School Subjects & After-School Activities
Review of Wonder World 4 Units 3 & 4: Food & Animals
Wordwall
Wordwall
Most teachers are probably familiar with Wordwall. Similar to Flippity (see the below), Wordwall offers a wide range of activities. One feature of Wordwall that makes it easy to use is that once you have entered your target content (Q&A, pictures, vocabulary, etc.), you can easily switch between templates to allow students to play in different styles.
To the right you can see an example of the map template which students use to slide place names onto the correct location on a map of their hometown. This template could be adapted to allow students to practice vocabulary in a wide range of activities with a few clicks of the mouse.
Try Wordwall out for yourself- there are lots of possibilities for both teacher-led practice and student iPad-based activities.
This isn't really an app so much as it is a fun website. If you ever have a need to add an international perspective to your lessons, consider letting Hopper the Explorer guide your students on their journey. The platform is basically just Google Earth with a penguin. You can send him anywhere!
For a practical apllication, consider giving your students the mission of sending Hopper to one of the countries introduced in the textbook, having him take a selfie and then posting that selfie to a class Padlet or Google Classroom for all to see. You could then show all the selfies to the class and guess where he is in each picture.
Every time Hopper takes a selfie he does a funny pose- kids love it! Thanks to Fat Bat for sharing!
Here he is in front of Big Ben.
Kahoot is probably the most popular and user friendly app for teachers looking to gamify their classroom. For those looking to start using game apps in the classroom Kahoot is a great starting point. For veteran Kahoot users, the app has lots to offer in terms of different ways to use and play the app; team mode, integrating slides and videos as well as different question modes are all great things for teachers to play around with.
Click the links below for some examples of Kahoots used by FETs in Taitung.
Random Trivia Game (PIN: 002120846)
Lunar New Year Game (PIN: 004410213)
Flippity has tons of templates for games. You can make Tic, Tac, Toe games, spin wheels, word clouds and many more things. We recommend logging on to the site and playing around with a few to see what will work best for your students.
Here is an example of very simple Tic, Tac, Toe game that incorporates long & short O sounds.
Padlet is essentially a platform you can use to make and share content with others. You can create a single or multiple walls that are able to house all the posts you want in a wide variety of formats. I personally enjoy using the map feature with students.
Besides these features, Padlet can also help you create images for use both in and outside of the Padlet platform. Read and check the pics below for instructions. Many thanks to Teacher Whitney (鍾方伶老師) for sharing the tip.
From the Padlet Dashboard, open a pad, click on post (the plus sign), then click on the pink three dots
Then select 'I can't draw'
Simply tell it what you want to draw, choose one of the images created, copy it and you're good to go. This makes for a great addition to Padlet posts, PPTs and more. It's less time consuming than copying and pasting individual images and you get to select from a number of images.
Teacher Whitney (鍾方伶老師) reminds us to consider asking it to draw in any number of the following styles
手繪風格插畫 Hand drawn style illustration
色塊風格插畫 color block style illustration
寫實畫風插畫 Realistic style illustration
卡通風格插畫 Cartoon style illustration
漫畫風格插畫 comic style illustration
線條畫風插畫 Line drawing style illustration
復古風格插畫 retro style illustration
3D繪圖風格 3D Render
油畫 An oil painting
照片畫 A photo
未來主義 A futuristic
梵谷風格 A van Gogh style
手繪風格 A hand drawn sketch
油性粉畫 An oil pastel drawing
鉛筆+水彩畫 A pencil and watercolor drawing
Here's an example of a scavenger hunt PPT for the Van Gogh Museum.
This was part of the Mobile English Classroom World Art Lesson. Thanks to the MEC Team!
Google Arts and Culture is a great platform & app with lots of different features to explore. I'd like to share the Museum Views feature which lets you explore museums as if you were in the streetview feature of Google Maps.
For a practical application, consider designing a scavenger hunt in which students are shows a number of things which can be found in a museum. They could be everyday items like desks, trashcans or chairs or they could be items in the art itself like flowers, bones or trees. The items can be introduces in a PPT alongside sentence patterns. Students can then explore a museum on their iPads. Make sure you scaffold the activity with images and keep showing it during the scavenger hunt. A timer for the scavenger hunt itself is also a good idea.
Here's a link to some interesting museums. You can save them as favorites in your own app for easy access.
I don't have much experience using Pagamo. I've found that its interface is a bit hard to use and I'm not quite sure of the objectives of the games. However, Pagamo does have an advantage over other learning games in that you can select content specific to your students' textbooks.
Other teachers consulted have said that students enjoy using the platform and that it may have the potential to improve students' reading & vocabulary proficiency. However, they also reported that students lose interest quickly, especially if they are unable to answer questions. The game makes it seem like it's an interactive online video game, however it is closer to students simply answering multiple choice questions directly related to textbook content.
See the instructions and pics below for how to get started or check out the demo video for what it looks like to play!
After creating an account, click on 'join game' on the main page.
If you'd like to select a daily treasure, you may do so. If not, you can proceed directly to the game.
Follow the images on the right to select your book. In the example, I show how to select Kang Hsuan's Follow Me 8, Units 1-4.
Click on pieces of land to 'train' them and earn XP or other prizes. You must answer a question to get the reward.
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