[Tool Introduction] Triptico

Today I will share with you a wonderful website, Triptico, that provides very interactive, innovative, and fun educational tools teachers can use to engage their students and to stimulate their interest in learning!

Triptico has a great variety of tools you can choose from. It's easy to create activities with these tools that can fit into your classroom and make your lesson more lively! From grouping students to randomly selecting a student to perform on stage to playing bingo...Triptico's functions cover different aspects of the classroom, which I find to be very helpful, and may also change students' perception of English class (as my tutor, Tilly, mentioned, the general sense of the English class is "boring"...hope this tool can overturn this kind of mindset!). 

There is so much you can do with Triptico. The tools can be used to teach any kind of focus in English learning, such as vocabulary, grammar or even communicative skills. You can also decorate the tools with your own pictures, so you can find pictures that are visually appealing or even personally relevant to the students' life.  The special effects (sound and motion) are also what makes the activities lively, and will surely bring excitement to the class! 

Using your own photos makes the activity more personalised and meaningful to the students! For instance, you can use a picture of the school dog that students are familiar with!

The activities highly require student interaction, which may even increase the shy ones' motivation to participate actively! The tools are really adaptable, you can use it to supplement the content of your lesson.  I believe it would trigger the interest of students ranging from young learners to adults! 

The downside to Triptico is that it is not completely free. :( You may use the one month free trial to try out all of their premium tools, though!  Tilly told us that we can create as many tools as we want during the free demo period and save them permanently! Right now, I'm trying to make the best of it! After the free trial is over, you can still create new activities with the free tools. 

Some activities I have created with the tools! During free trial you can save both free and premium tools. 

In my next blog, I will introduce the tool, Word Magnet! So stay tuned for that! :)

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[EDIT]

Today as I was discussing about Triptico with my classmate, she told me that she tried to use the premium tools she had saved after the 30 day trial, and apparently she was unable to use it. :( I may have mistaken my tutor's words. Ack! Sorry about the confusion! Either way, the tools are still fun to play around with, and may inspire you with more interactive tasks! 

[Blog Review] Özge Karaoglu's Blog

Good day, folks!

Today I will share some points I have observed about Özge Karaoglu's educational blog.   Özge shares various types of online tools for teachers to utilise in their classroom. This review is divided into four categories: organisation and layout, content and features, ease of use and navigation, and target audience. 

Organisation and Layout:

The logo was the first thing that caught my attention and left a deep impression my mind. It is very vibrant and creative; the idea of having different hands holding out drawn signs with phrases/roles that describe the blogger and pictures that symbolise the purpose/functions of the blog catches the readers’ attention and gives the readers an overall idea about the content of this blog.

The blog is organised in a visually comfortable format. The web entries and side bars are not cluttered together, the background is clean, and font is clear and simple. Not too much is going on on the page, but the key phrases are highlighted, such as bold faced or underlined, to capture the reader’s attention of the main idea, and the pictures enhance the visual impression that readers have on the blog posts. 

Content and Features 

This blog mainly posts about different web tools that teachers can use in their classrooms. 

The blogger gives a brief description about the tool, and then provides suggestions of how teacher can incorporate these tools into their lesson, which is quite helpful for beginners that do not have much idea or experience of how to incorporate the tools into the classroom. 

Ease of use and Navigation 

The blog posts are in reverse chronological order without other sources of navigation (such as categories, tags, or calendar), so if a reader wants to find a specific post, he/she can only find it by scroll through the entire entries or search it up in the search bar. If the blogger had categorised the posts in different subheadings on a sidebar or top bar, it would be more convenient for readers to navigate and quicker for them to find what they want/need. 

The blog is very simple and straightforward. There is not that much diversity in it in terms of different functions or types of entries, so it’s pretty easy to see what there is to do on each page.

Target Audience

This blog is mainly for teachers that are interested in incorporating online tools into their teaching. The blog is open to the public, so anyone can make a comment. The posts are very brief introductions to the tools the blogger describes, so this blog might fit the needs of inexperienced teachers or teachers that are new to infusing technology into their teaching.


That's about it! Overall, this is a resourceful tool for teachers that are looking for suitable or appropriate tools for their lesson!

Cheers,
Wanda