Tripico- interactive whiteboard toolkit for ESL classroom activities

Hello, everyone! Thank you for visiting my blog (again).
How's everthing going?

Today I am going to introduce you a website, Triptico where enables ESL teachers to create teaching tools based on interactive whiteboards.


Go to the Website : https://tripticoplus.com

 

Triptico is an amazing resource for teachers to create their own various class activities and learning materials using interactive whiteboards.

 

 

Introducing Triptico from YouTube

A simple desktop app, packed full of innovative resources to enable

 teachers and students to quickly create engaging interactive learning

 

 

It contains 32 different resources available in 4 different categories ranging from simple timers and selectors to very interesting teaching tools and quizzes such as Word Magnets, Student Group, Order Sorter, Bingo, Find Ten, and What's The Question etc.

 

All of them can be simply used without complex install process and created according to your lesson. Also, all activities you have made through Triptico can be saved for the later use. Once you sign up for a free trial, you can access to these excellent tools if you have a computer and the internet. I absolutely believe that this will make your better use of technology in the classroom to motivate students-teacher interaction and promote classroom participation and involvement.

 

    

 Word Magnets



Every tool acceccible in this website is based on virtual whiteboards as seen above. Word Magnet is one of my favorite tools and I found it very useful for vocabulary and short sentence activity such as labelling, grouping, word scramble and so on. Students will enjoy learning via this modern technology and we teachers also do not have to make all vocabulary cards in paper anymore.

 

 What's the Question?

The quiz maker, What's the Question, is highly recommended for a post-reading activity. As an example above, the teacher prepares and presents answers(mostly key contents of the novel) instead of making questions after reading Romeo and Juliet(or vice versa as normal). Then, each team chooses one of the items they feel confident about to explain and makes the acceptable question for it. If other teams agree that the question presented makes sense to the given answer, the team gains points. I found this is a really fun and motivating activity not only as a reading activity but as speaking practice. Also it will encourage students to cooperate helping one another, where scaffodling can naturally occur.

 

 

Ths site also offers tutorials and Q&A so you might be hard to get lost when you first start to use it. David, the creator this site, always communicates with us through the web.Moreover, one new feature we should notice is "Blog", where you can publish your activity you have created and share it with everyone, too.  

This website is like a treasure island. The more you look into it, the more unexpected your will find. Then, why not try? :)

Regards


Yuna

 

A Useful Blog: 'Nik's Learning Technology Blog'

Hello, everyone. :)
As my first posting on ICT tools and websites for ESL teachers,  I would like to introduce a very helpful blog,  'Nik's Learning Technology Blog.'

Especially for teachers who

• prefer simple blogs with a variety of resources.

• need specific instructions for how to use tools in actual classroom.

• want to know both the good things and weak things about the tools as learning methods.

Nik's blog has ONLY five main menus.

Among them just two are enough for getting resources we are looking for!
 

1. HOME

As you can see below if you go to the website http://nikpeachey.blogspot.co.uk/, you will see a   "so simple" home screen. Nik's the latest article was posted in 15/01/2016. Since the articles are shown in chronological order, you can see older posts as well if you scroll it down.

2. MORE ARTICLES

 

You can see the whole lists he has posted in More Articles section. He has been introducing not only free softwares and tools you can easily download and use in pedagogical ways in your actual classroom such as Skype, VYou, and Goamimate, but also he gives you information about hundreds of new modern teaching methods related to our daily lives students might be interested in such as QR codes below.

So, How Can I Find the Tools and Websites I Need in Nik's Blog?

Only you have to do to find suitable tools for a certain class is to think about the main skills you are going to teach. Then, you can use the research button on the right side of the blog. For example, I am interested in teaching writing skill and looking for a tool for it, so I searched up"writing skill" and got 64 posts related to it as you can see below.

 

 

 

One thing I really like about this blog is that he is not just giving simple information and how to use it about the websites and tools, but he actually "evaluates"  them as an English teacher.

 

He does mention what he liked about the tool and what he was not so sure about. Also, his personal suggestions on how to implement it with students are found. For instance, he posted about how to use Google Map(hope everyone knows it) to help EFL students and to develop their abilities to give and understand directions. He also tells us what he liked and what he did not about it as a teaching method. I believe his comments will definitely help teachers choose the best appropriate tools in a certain circumstance and use them with less risk of failure for their purpose.

 

Moreover, you can access to related links to a certain topic you have a interested in, but the articles are not the sources from outside the blog.







I hope you enjoyed my first post and find it useful.  Any comments will be appriciated. :)

Yuna Choi