Useful websites for everybody.

myebook

With myebook , authors can choose to create a work from an existing .pdf file or from scratch. If creating from scratch, authors can start with blank pages or with a theme. Once begun, authors can enter text, load and insert images, embed video and flash files or embed external movies, incorporate hyperlinks, and add forms and documents. Authors can change the look and feel of the book by modifying fonts, backgrounds, and color schemes. Clip art is limited in myebook. Once published, the work can be shared via a hyperlink or social media outlets, or it can be embedded into an existing Web site or wiki. Books can also be protected by a password.

Bookemon

Making an eBook on Bookemon is straightforward and fairly easy. As with other platforms, authors may Bookemons upload an existing document (.pdf. .ppt, or .doc), start from scratch with a blank page, or use one of Bookemon’s many templates. Bookemon also has an edCenter, allowing teachers to create a “cure, private and friendly environment for their students and staff to create and share books”. When creating books, authors can change the layout and order of each page, manipulate the size, shape, font, and color of text, and insert stock clip art or their own images. Bookemon is limited in the area of multimedia, as there are no functions for inserting audio, video, and hyperlinks. Once published, the work can be shared via a hyperlink or it can be embedded into an existing Web site or wiki with a widget. The site does appear to be commercial with price quotes, but students can ignore this and use the platform for educational creativity.

StoryJumper

StoryJumper is more suited for creating children’s story books and may be more suited to younger grades. Students can create books from a few templates or from scratch. The size and location of text can be edited, and images can be incorporated from the clip art or uploaded files. There is no method if involving multimedia and hyperlinks.

Book Builder

Book Builder’s advertisement states that teachers cans “use this site to create, share, publish, and read digital books that engage and support diverse learners according to their individual needs, interests, and skills.” Students choose a layout, add text, images, and audio, and publish their work. Book Builder also has a function allowing students to create a glossary for the work. In addition, teachers and students can create books that involve “coaches” that provide tips and additional information to the reader, and readers can type notes or ideas in a response area.

Bookrix

Bookrix is a free combination of social media and web based publishing that allows students to publish and share their work socially. Bookrix offers multiple book types that can be uploaded directly from your computer. These include, text that can be copied or uploaded, illustrated books and audio books. Within Bookrix, authors can create a profile & blog that can be shared with social media websites.

Bookr

With Bookr you can create and share your own photobook using images from Flickr. Easily create a cover, add pages, insert images & text. This is a great option for creating online books with a shorter amount of text with image backgrounds.

Wix

Wix is a free Flash based website builder that can also be used to create impressive-looking eBooks. An extremely professional product can be created from a long list of wix templates. Many tools, widgets and embeddable multi-media options are available to choose from. As there are many options within Wix when creating a website or eBook, we suggest you consult their outstanding video tutorials to help with your project.

Tikatok

Publish a children's book with Tikatok. A free teacher account allows teachers to create student accounts, create writing prompts & publish student work in traditional paper books. A unique feature is that student created storybooks can be saved as a pdf file that can be used on many e-readers. A great tool for primary grade teachers.

Simplebooklets

Click CREATE and begin to insert text, image, url, upload files, embed codes & music. Add multiple pages to the booklet & click PUBLISH when complete. No signup is required and free account users are able to save their booklets. Booklets can be shared via URL, twitter or email. Booklets can also be made 3 medium public or private.

Hello, everyone!
I want to share with my colleagues about useful teaching links: 
1. English Tutor Bournemouth The website provides free resources for teachers and students on a range of GCSE and 'A' Level texts. Key quotations, annotated poetry, character profiles, worksheets etc. The site has a second purpose, which is to offer private tutoring services
2. Book Box from Channel 4 Learning Features interviews with leading children's authors, poets, illustrators. Suggestions for reading with reviews and excerpts. Templates for pitching the film of the book.
3. BBEC ENG DEPT An ever growing collection of links for teachers of English and their students.
4. Easy Read Shakespeare Easy Read Shakespeare is a new version of Shakespeare's plays formatted in a way to make them easier to follow from the printed page. Character portraits are used to help the reader follow the conversations and location drawings help set the scene. A great resource for anyone studying Shakespeare who can't get to see the plays. 
5. Hope Education Broad range of English teaching materials including books, speaking and listening tools, phonics and story packs
6. Literary Connections links, books and resources for secondary English - mainly but not exclusively for literature.
7. Teacher's Pet Text Tool for Teachers The Teacher's Pet Text Tool is a free add-on for Microsoft Word that can help you transform any text into a fun classroom activity. Developed by a teacher, here are just some of the things the tool can do: Crosswords Flashcards Bingo Cards Jumbles Gap-fill / Cloze tests

Dear  my  friends! 
Delicious.com is great website for keeping track of my bookmarks. I can tag each of my bookmarks with my own tags, and then also sort these tags! Here, comfortable to save your bookmarks and search through them using keywords, to search through popular and newly-added websites added by a large community of users and to add friends and browse through their bookmarks. 
And I want to note about feature of this remarkable site, I can assign tags to bookmarks, which helps keep things organized. Another fun feature the program offers is the ability to search for my friends who also use Delicious Bookmarks. Once I locate friends on the Delicious network, I have access to all their shared bookmarks. I can adjust privacy levels if I don't want to share all my sites with others, which is a much appreciated feature. This simple application adds a lot to my Web-surfing experience. It's great for me to keep track of websites I want to visit again. 
I attached very interesting sites here https://delicious.com/akzhan for English studying online. I think that these sites are useful for everyone.

Hello, everyone!
There are numerous ways one can learn English nowadays. While most still prefer taking courses or enrolling in certain student programs, the internet offers a wide array of opportunities to increase the student's knowledge of the language or get the basics down fast and easy.
Here is a list with some of the most useful sites which I used:

LiveMocha.com
Livemocha has one of the most complete programs from which to learn a host of languages online. It has an interesting and proven to be successful system that offers well-structured courses for each level of knowledge while also facilitating contact with other users who are native or fluent speakers.
The "buddy system" offered by livemocha, where my students learn with the help of a native or fluent English speaker is a relatively new learning tool for online resources and it seems to be very effective, especially as they can focus on the exact element of the learning process, be it grammar of vocabulary related. It will give feedback from English speakers that can prove more useful than the classic structured lesson they will get in any other type of English learning program.

Babbel.com
Babbel is another great online resource that doesn't only focus on providing material for the learning of English but also focuses on entertaining, multimedia lessons that are meant to increase the retention level of each student.
All lessons have an audio, video and written part that are very user friendly. This is the philosophy behind Babbel.com, a mixture of sensory perceptions that try to make it easier for the individual learning a language, English in this case, to commit certain lessons to memory.
Babbel also offers a mobile service and an app so the students can keep learning or refresh certain lessons when they're on the go with the help of the Apple or Android device. This is particularly useful as dead time spent on mass transit can be put to good use with just a click of a button.

Busuu.com
Another great, free resource for learning English is Busuu.com. It has quite a large and diverse amount of learning units that make it easy for anyone to start at their level of knowledge.
It also has a video chat app that offers its users lessons from native speakers. This is particularly useful as it offers students a view into the colloquial speech patterns of a native English speaker.
It can also be the perfect setting to incorporate idioms and certain slang terms in your speaking pattern. The students will get great feedback and a real feel for the natural flow of the language while conversing with native speakers. Above all it will be very interactive and a pleasant alternative to the classic method where they memorize lesson after lesson.
Busuu is a free online resource, however, it has a premium member option where for a monthly fee users can have access to more functions and materials.

Dear colleagues!

As all of us work in the educational sphere, to pursue science and the publication of articles is inevitable for us. Therefore I want to share with you with references which I found during search on a site www.noodletools.com. 

http://www.doaj.org/about - This site offer free online access to high quality full text content, plus excellent search tools, the portal enables researchers to find, use and re-use a vast range of materials with ease. The content of DOAJ will be even more visible and disseminated through this portal.

http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/ - Designed to meet the needs of the research community worldwide, our online portal offers quick and easy access to the collections of the 48 National Libraries of Europe and leading European Research Libraries. Users can cross-search and reuse over 19,914,514 digital items and 124,408,493 bibliographic records.

http://www.issn.org/ - this site manages the International Serials Data System (ISDS), an automated registration system for serial publications in all disciplines.

http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com/content.php?pid=460875 - As electronic book use becomes increasingly popular I recommend this site, surely.

http://guides.vpl.ca/ebooks_audiobooks - Vancouver Public Library. In this site there are very many interesting materials: downloadable eBook collections CyberSafety For Parents: a Digital Forum, Digital Music Collection, it’s very interesting.
I wish all creative success!

Week 1: Introductions; creating an Academic Blog

My dear colleagues!

I congratulate all participants of this programm on accession to blogs.

If honestly, I joined for the first time to my blog. I think that it will be very interesting to my students. Certainly, we read  someone's messages in another blogs, but for some reason didn't think of creation of own blog. I learnt materials in the Internet about the creation of the blog. And I have my own opinions of doing it, which I want to share with you.

At first, I want to say about the advantages of the blog.

1. It enables you to write down your thoughts on anything that interests you. 

2. People can leave comments on your blog

3. Easy and quick update or add new posts

4. Very quick and easy to set up. 

I think these advantages are very usefull for each teacher. My hope as well though is that it will also then become a resource or archive for other people to use to explore there interests. I think it is as an archive on a particular topic that the blog is of most use. This requires a mixture of types of posts to keep it lively and well stocked.

Talking all advantages of the blog, I want to say abiut the disadvantages too. It consists in that, whatever you publish is available for everyone to see. If you write a post in anger, you might regret it later. Blog takes a lot of time and I unfortunately haven't enough time. But I  understand very well that it is very important for me therefore I will try from all my forces. My opinions, I want to show with these pictures too.

Hello everybody!
Welcome to the blog!
I am so much happy that I have received this scholarship. I am deeply thankful to UO AEI Webskills Team for providing me this opportunity to learn something useful in innovative technologies in teaching of foreign languages. The integration of new technologies into the teaching and learning processes of the universities is clearly the most important aspect. After the completion of the course I can conduct for my colleagues the seminars and trainings which train all interesting and new methods of teaching foreign languages. Thank you very much for such opportunity!