Sharing your digital production with Tackk

I love exploring tools which allow our students to share what they produce using English. This week, I noticed Tackk for the first time. This post has the objective to briefly explain how it works and also share some examples of tackk projects and assignments which I've come across.

WHAT CAN YOU PRODUCE WITH TACKK?

Tackk allows you to publish photos, videos, audios, maps and forms. It's great for digital portfolios, assignments, promoting events, storytelling, book and film reports and so much more, all it's needed is your creativity. The site is free and it's DEVICE NEUTRAL, a term I learned from Lisa Johnson today. And what does that mean? It works on laptops, Ipads, and cell phones (IOS and androids), therefore it's perfect for BYOD. Students can create a tackk page without signing up, however, it is deleted after one week. If you wish to have your content saved, consider creating your free account. https://tackk.com/

To learn how it works, watch the tutorial below:




For references on how teachers have been using it, I suggest the reading of two blog posts and the TACKK education page:

• From Freetech4teachers
• From Emergingedtech

As I believe we can learn a lot by checking examples, these are some I've collected:

Try scrolling the image above to see the rest of this tackk page.


MORE EXAMPLES:

• This assignment was to answer the question "How would you increase the peace?"  Students added the tag #PeaceDay2013, this way all the pages created by them can be found on the same board. https://tackk.com/board/peaceday2013

• Márcia Lima and Marjana Smolcec have been developing a collaborative project (Brazil + Croatia) and a final task developed by their students was a presentation about a city in their countries. Check out two of their amazing tackks: https://tackk.com/gq09ek and https://tackk.com/rio (Juliana's presentation).

• This teacher developer created a page to present some webtools and apps  https://tackk.com/qslelh

• My second trial making a page with a simple recipe https://tackk.com/334dcy

• The very creative Lisa Johnson used a tackk page as a virtual handout after a presentation, adding the resources shared. https://tackk.com/agdf1g

Have you ever had your students use Tackk? 

If so, please use the comment area to share your project with us.

Mobile Activity: Introduce a family member

How can I use the many smartphones in the classroom for a simple and real communicative activity? This post describes a mobile activity I have already tried where basic learners use their own devices to introduce family members to their classmates.

Level: basic

Language Skill: speaking

Topic: members of the family

Device: students' own cell phones

Internet Connection: off

After having learned vocabulary related to family, ask if students have pictures of any family member on their cell phones. Let them browse their photos and tell them if they haven't got a phone that day or a photo, there's no problem.

Once students have selected a photo with one or more family members, model the exchange below with one of the students:

Student A shows the photo: This is my brother.

Student B asks: What's HIS name?

Student A: His name is Maurício.

Ask students to stand up and mingle while they show photos and ask questions. Students who don't have a photo to show, just go round asking questions.

I know this activity is VERY SIMPLE but believe me, I saw some smiles while they interacted with each other.

BYOD apps for ELT

Would you help us build a list of cross-platform apps (IOS and Android)?

by Ana Maria Menezes

Roseli Serra and I have started collecting apps which can be used by our students with their own devices. http://list.ly/list/6qC-byod-apps-for-elt?feature=mylist

All the apps added to this list can be found for BOTH SYSTEMS ( IOS and Android), therefore, ideal for BYOD classes.

To contribute to the list, click the pink button ADD TO LIST and paste the URL of the app.

BYOD apps for ELT

View more lists from Ana Menezes