PROJECT: American Kids ask questions about Brazil

Last week, I received a very cute video from a friend of mine , Camila Sousa, who is teaching kids in the US. The kids ask questions about Brazil.

Watch their video. They're so cute!



Then, I invited a group of students to answer their questions in a recording. Students wrote their texts, practised and got ready for the recording. The final product was a virtual poster with all the recordings and some images. That's what I had imagined, something colourful which could really represent the "Brazilian Way".

One more AWARD - " Vale a pena ficar de olho neste Blog"

I´d like to thank Janet Bianchini and Claudio Azevedo for including my blog in their lists of 10 blogs they recommend.

What an honour!

This award is  part of an initiative called "Vale a pena ficar de olho nesse blog", which means "It's worth keeping an eye on this blog". The chosen blog has to copy the picture, with a link to the blog from which it has received the award . Then write ten more links to the blogs which are well worth a visit.

It´s hard to limit my list to ten blogs but I´ll do my best:

• http://warmupsfollowups.blogspot.com/ - I love Claudio Azevedo´s  warm up ideas using video.
• http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/ -  I love David Kapuler´s tips about new webtools.
• http://www.boxoftricks.net/ - I love José Picardo's  interesting posts for teachers.
• http://joedale.typepad.com/ - I love Joe Dale's posts which are straight to the point and full of links.
• http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk/ - I love the resources we can use with the IWB.
• http://daily-english-activities.blogspot.com/ - I love Nik Peachey's suggestions for students / teachers.
• http://www.2teachis2touchlives4ever.blogspot.com/ - I love following my dear friend's (Camila Sousa) adventures in the US.
• http://rightobe.blogspot.com/ - I love seeing the wonderful things Andressa has been developing.
• http://zarcoenglish-tooloftheday.blogspot.com/ - I love Alexandra's projects.
• http://ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org/ - I love Ozge's colourful ideas

Launching my e-book

Someone once told me we have to celebrate every important moment in our lives and my e-book launch is one of these times which I wanted to mark.

I wrote the WEBTOOLS book (in Portuguese) during a very difficult time in my life and the process of writing the book gave me great satisfaction. By writing the e-book I was  giving back the knowledge I´ve learned with so many e-friends.

The moment was touching, with lots of smiles , hugs and some tears.
But it was also a moment to meet people I care for.

A dear friend of mine introduced me by writing a fabulous e-book (with BOOKR) which made us cry, I had the great pleasure of finally meeting an ex-student of mine (online course) I had never met f2f (Ana Maria Sousa), received lots of flowers (thanks Andressa for the lovely flowers) and best of all felt loved.Camilinha, thanks for your phone call.

Just sharing the pictures with you.

Enjoying GOANIMATE

This Friday, I'll be launching my e-book in Brazil with a cocktail at Cultura Inglesa, the school where I work at and as I was preparing the book launch, I decided to prepare a little cartoon to start up.

My choice was GOANIMATE and I had so much fun. Inspired by Alexandra Francisco's cartoon to present her school, I used my own pictures for the backgrounds. The more I play with GOANIMATE the more I like it.

GoAnimate.com: Lançamento e-book by anamariacult

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

TAGXEDO - one more wordcloud device

I love WORDLE , ABCYA , and now am enjoying the possibilities of creating wordclouds with different shapes and also be able to save the image to my computer with TAGXEDO.

You can make a wordcloud out of a URL or a text, but then you have various editing options.
http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html

This is the word cloud I´ve created with my blog URL

This is the editing page.

My E-BOOK - WEBTOOLS = ferramentas de internet

In 2009, I started collecting webtools which I thought were very useful to language teachers in general and decided to share what I´ve been reading and trying out through a book. The reason I wrote in Portuguese is that there are various language teachers in Brazil , who teach languages other than English, and haven´t heard of the wonderful tools which could provide further learning opportunities to students.

I collected 20 webtools I´ve already tried , described them, provided links to examples and gave examples of how the tools can be used in the classroom.

I´d like to thank the various teachers who have authorized the links to their blogs and work:

• José Picardo
• Alexandra Francisco
• Nik Peachey
• David Deubeldeiss
• Dennis Oliver
• Ian James
• Sue Waters
• Bob Palmer
• Mary Hillis
• Mary Beth Hertz

 http://issuu.com/anamariacult/docs/webtoolsferramentasdeinternet

Celebrating EASTER - developing projects

I´ve just joined Alexandra´s and Eva´s celebrations project.

And what is it about? They are web tasks we propose to our students and publish them in one wiki so that we can celebrate and learn together.

 http://celebr8uandmedigitally.wikispaces.com/

These are the projects we´ve developed so far:

• a voicethread  

click here to view it FULL SCREEN

• A video with drawings and a song.

• an EASTER MINI-DICTIONARY