Digital Posters in the ESL classroom

Using digital posters when teaching esl has many benefits:

-Give confidence: as students create them they feel motivated and proud of their productions. They feel confident enough to talk about them.

-Encourage communication: posters are a way of showing what they learnt. They want to communicate what they wrote.

-Foster students´ autonomy and creativity: they are free to make their own decisions about the information they´re going to include. They have a leading role and aren´t restricted to their teacher´s choices.


-Adapt to different learning styles: they are involved in their own learning. They interact with their classmates and benefit from cooperative and collaborative work. The enviornment estimulates them because it isn´t  just a written text.

-Minimize grammar mistakes: language is specific. Complex structures aren´t used.

Improve writing skills motivating students.

Writing is not an easy skill to teach in the digital age we live. The problem is that most students make punctuation and grammar mistakes. This often happens because they write in a hurry .The faster they finish the best.They don`t have enough motivation to check and look for new vocabulary. What`s worst they aren`t involved in their writing. They feel it`s just an exercise and it`s unreal. I asked myself how I could change this situation and I found a real purpose to motivate them:I realized that they could produce letters to real people from different countries in the community I created for a goal I proposed:Link To world https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/102242336148220737279 They could also choose who to write to. I wanted them not to leave the pen and sheet because they make you unique: you have a spelling which identifies you and your personal touch, so I decided to make my students take pictures and  post their productions. I was really surprised.There was a real change: in their effort to impress recipients and make their post perfect they paid attention to every single detail. They took their time to do their best and the results were great. They are looking forward to hearing from others and send them another letter by the virtual world. These are moments I captured so that you can picture what I`m telling you about.

A StoryBoard by me

This StoryBoard is to introduce pronouns and possessive adjectives in context.

Creat comics with StoryBoard That

StoryBoard That is a great tool to create stories. Either your students can create it or you to introduce a topic to talk about or why not a grammar point.There are a lot of characters, colours to customize them, settings and speech bubbles to choose which is great because it fosters imagination in students.

Another example using OurStory

OurStory an innovative way to write online

OurStory is ideal to use for developing writing skills because it enables you to write stories, tag friends and add media to collaborative timelines either privately or in public. Students can make groups to work in a task you give them and they have the chance of downloading their story in PDF form if they don`t want to embed it. A good idea is that other students and their teacher comment on the stories once they are ready so as to give feedback. In my opinion, this innovative way of writing will motivate students and they will reinforce and improve their writing skills. This is part of a story about Buenos Aries which a friend and I wrote:

Add text to images with Pinwords

PinPinwords is a free tool which doesn`t require to be registered. It is very useful when you want to write on images: you can upload them from your computer or website. If you don`t want to do it, you can choose backgrounds or try their bookmarklet. You have many options to place your title:tape, typewriter, wide, just caption, titled or handwritten note.Once you write the words you can pin the image. Having the pin button is a great advantage because your students cac create a board in pinterest for a project.Pictures can also be shared via twitter: you can tweet a picture and your students can tweet about it. Other alternatives are to use Tumblr or e-mail to work with your students. This is an example:

ROXIO PhotoShow:a great publishing tool

ROXIO PhotoShow is a great tool to publish projects such as biographies, reviews, stories or any kind of writing with your students. You can upload photos from your computer and add music with makes it lively and motivating. These are some video tutorials to learn how to use it:                                                   

References:https://youtu.be/m3hogTgzjuU
                   https://youtu.be/UpV2OZraTek
                   https://youtu.be/iBGs0ZqvoSg

A TIMETOAST I made about Top 10 Most Influential People In Agriculture

Make timetables:use TIMETOAST

Timetoast is a place where students can create and share timelines on the web. They can create historical timelines of important events, build a timeline of  their holidays and much more. Their timetables can be used for biography layouts on people or any other topic you can imagine.

Frequently asked questions about it: Register and try it:http://www.timetoast.com/subscription/edit


 A timetoast I made about Martin Luther King: