Bubblr

http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/

Purpose:

Bubblr is an online tool that allows users to create and share online picture strips using high quality pictures sourced from Flickr.

Relevance:

If you believe that learning outcomes improve when students are highly motivated then this tool can be quite helpful. It facilitates a great deal of creativity, which may ultimately increase student motivation.

The high quality and wide variety of pictures available means that you can reinvigorate any topic by making a visually appealing presentation.

Bubblr makes it compulsory for students to comment on pictures, which means that they will always have the opportunity to develop their writing skills.

Tip:

Why not introduce idiomatic expressions or proverbs using pictures? Following your example, ask your students to create picture strips that portray idiomatic expressions or proverbs in the target language and/or their mother tongue.

Limitations:

The availability of thousands of pictures means that creating a picture strip is potentially quite time consuming.

There is no way to filter the quality of the pictures; some may be inappropriate for young audiences.

Tags used to describe pictures may not be reliable.

Published picture strips are automatically made public.

LyricsTraining

Purpose:
LyricsTraining can be described as the fusion of language learning and karaoke. This website provides a wide selection of free subtitled music videos.

Relevance:
Music has always been incorporated into language learning in some or fashion. This site is excellent because it not only allows the students to challenge his/her pronunciation skills but it is also a fun way to memorize idiomatic expressions.

                                                         

Tip:
This website can really be exploited for listening activities. For example, to develop students’ listening skills, songs can be printed and distributed with missing lyrics. Students can then, either individually or in groups, listen to the song and try to fill in the missing words.

It can also be a creative way to introduce grammar points. You can try choosing a well-known song that contains a particular grammatical structure or tense. That song can be sung at the beginning of the lesson and then students can be asked to identify examples of the particular structure or tense. The grammar lesson can then be continued according to your regular teaching style.

Limitations:
The site is not designed to offer ideas about how you can use songs in your teaching; that depends entirely on your own creativity.