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The last class had a little bit of everything: new material, new platforms, alternative ideas...I need to spend a seriously long time exploring aaall those links I have saved throughout the semester. However it is definitely going to worth it

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European Schoolnet Academy (for MOOC classes)- europeanschoolnetacademy.eu
https://www.toolsforeducators.com/
European Center for Modern Languages- https://www.ecml.at/
classcraft.com (Gamify your classes)
rif.org

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A truly informative yet entertaining lesson! I am definitely going to use powtoon in my classes and I have just added a short clip made through it on my personal website! It is so easy to use and so entertaining at the same time! I am sure that learners of all ages will be more than delighted not only to see a video made through a site as such but also to engage in creating one as well.

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powtoon.com
mysimpleshow.com
moovly.com
voki.com

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piktochart
venngage
snappywords.com
graphwords
glogster (for interactive maps, but you have to pay)
thinglink
wizer.me
voicethread

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Today's class was on ways to flip the classroom through sites such as google classroom, edmodo, ed.ted.com, playposit.com etc.
The advantages and opportunities of such a method are honestly amazing. I feel like the students would definitely embrace a virtual classroom in which they will be in charge while at the same time communicating with both their classmates and the teacher. This makes learning not only more modern but also far more interesting and closer to the students reality. I particularly enjoyed edmodo as it resembles facebook something which I'm sure students will love!

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Assessing through ICT tools was the topic of today's class. It was quite interesting to see the potential that such methods provide to the teachers as well as just how much more convenient and relaxing such a method can be for the learners. At the same time, it was interesting to see that methods as such can promote formative as opposed to the traditional summative assessment. This is something that I find extremely interesting and would definitely like to incorporate in my lessons. I belive that especially when it comes to private lessons as well as private school classes this type of assessment can be quite useful. I am skeptical as to whether it can be incorporated in public schools yet, mostly because something like this would definitely require a change in mentality and Iam not sure whether the educational system as well as the students and their parents are ready to move away from the traditional written-on-paper grades. However, in any case, it would definitely worth the shot!

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quizlet.com
cram.com
purposegames.com
clilprime.com
rif.com
Tarsia (for domino)
classtools.net (for pacman)
popplet.com (for mindmaps)
bubbl.us (for mindmaps)

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Today I was quite pleased to see the vast range of possibilities that are available when it comes to teaching vocabulary. I had already used educaplay to make vocabulary exercises for my students (mostly crosswords and gap filling exercises and a couple of matching exercises for revision oor for emphasis on collocations) and I had also incorporated flashcards in my classes with my younger students, which however I had created by myself through PowerPoint and printed and laminated (which is actually quite tiring, not to mention expensive). However, I was very happy to realize that there are actually so many websites for this precise purpose and I was even more impressed to hear form a few of my fellow students that they already use sites for flashcard creation and that they also encourage their students to create their own, something which I found quite innovative.
My experience with mindmaps is limited to a few that I managed to download through the internet for some topics (such as the one with superman to teach the Present Simple if I'm not mistaken), however I had never actually tried to create something like that by myself, mostly out of fear of my poor artistic skills and out of lack of knowledge as to how to do something like that.
Therefore, my next steps will be to create some games, flashcards and mindmaps for my lessons and perhaps incorporate some of them in my website.

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In today's class, I felt more like a tech-expert than a teacher. I got to see all the different ways in which one can "play" with sound and image as well as how to combine all those to create videos that can definitely contribute to any lesson regardless of the age or the level of the students.
I also learned a few tricks such as editing pictures or delete some of their elements or even make their background transparent. I have already put those skills in a storybook that I am creating for the purposes of one of my classes.
However, perhaps thehighlight of today's session was the realization that I don't need an expert when it comes to creating or editing my audiovisual material. I can manage it by myself

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crazytalk animator
tiff pictures can be enlarged without losing their quality
lunapic.com
Gimp (similar to photoshop)
raptivity.com (site for games)
audio coverter (to transform a wav file into mp3)
fromtexttospeech.com
smart show 3d (software to create videos)
y2mate.com (download video and audio from youtube)

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Collaborative writing was something which I had heard but have never actually implemented in my classes. At least not to the extend that I found out that it can be implemented by skillful teachers. For starters, I have to admit that in the past I have used collaborative writing during my teaching practice but this was merely done in class in the limited time and with the limited resources that a Greek public school can provide. On that occasion I had asked the students to work in groups within a specific time limit and write a short passage that they would later on present to the rest of their classmates. That was a rather simple pen and paper type of collaborative writing.
Much to my astonishment, I realized in today's session that there are so many other ways to incorporate collaborative writing into the classroom and actually make it fun and appealing for the students (who, more often than not, find absolutely dreading the idea of writing something on their own).
Yet, the problem that I am facing is that, at least for the time being, all of my lessons are private one-on-one classes which makes it essentially hard to incorporate something like that in my teaching. One idea to remedy that would be to try to make each student collaborate with me in each writing task. This way, I will be able to "guide" the tasks in the way that I want, however the downside would be that the students will be deprived of the excitement that usually accompanies peer collaboration. Another idea would be to have some of my students who are approximately the same age to collaborate even if they would not know each other. Also, another more far-fetched idea that I recently read online would be to ask my students to join forums in order to get in touch with learners of English from other countries and perhaps later on ask them to work together in a collaborative writing project.
In any case, fo the time being I need to start experimenting with the new sites that I wrote down and perhaps add a project involving collaborative writing in my lesson plans and website

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storybird.com (for creating storybooks)
bookcreator.com (similar to storybird but works only with chrome)
storyjumper.com
mystorybook.com
smore.com (for leaflets)
storyboardthat.com (for comic strips)

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The highlight of today's lesson is without a doubt the fact that I finally learned how to create games for my students. I had never thought that it would have been so easy and I was so pleased to realize just how many different options I have to my disposal when it comes to game designing. I have already started designing a crossword to use with my Senior D student in order to check if he has learned last time's vocabulary and I plan to do much more. A lot of positive feelings on that!

My following steps should be to start creating games related to my book of choice.

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prezi.com (useful site to create interesting presentations)
readthewords.com (useful site in case I want to use recordings in my games)

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Prior to this lesson, my experience with regard to portfolios was limited to the one that I had to submit as part of my evaluation for the teaching practice course last year. At that point I had a rather vague and incomplete view of the utility of such a means of evaluation and promotion of one's material and work. I had never thought that such a work could be used even as part of my CV, the realization of which intigued me a lot.
I'm not quite sure yet as to the actual process that I should follow in order to create my teaching portfolio, how and where to begin and what to include, however I will definitely try to keep what I learned today in mind for future reference.

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The focus of our third session was on website design. We were introduced to two different website creators, wix and weebly. I mostly engaged with wix so I'm thinking that this will most likely be the one that I will work on for the creation of my own website.
What I found particularly intriguing during this lesson was the fact that I got the chance to explore yet another way of making my teaching more appealling to my students no matter their age. At the same time, it was the first time that I was asked to do something like that which turned out to be extremely satisfying and yet also challenging.
I surf on the internet every singly day, either to get ideas and material for my lessons or simply to relax. However, I had never thought of the actual process and work that it takes for a descent website to be built. I have always been used to seeing the final "product" and never bothered to think as to what made a particular website appealling or not to its visitors.
So now I am thinking that I need to have in mind yet another task. Apart from making sure that I start thinking and designing my own activities and material that I would eventually upload on my site, I also need to start thinking about and experimenting with the ways in which I would eventually manage to creat a website that would be worth visiting and would result in the appreciation and sincere interest of the students

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Now that I have found out about Learning Designer I should perhaps try using it in my own classes. However, the problem is that it requires for each TLA (Teaching and Learning Activity) to consist of tasks whose aim and purpose I need to clarify.
I find this hard because sometimes it's not easy to tell whether for instance a task has to do with production or collaboration.I feel there is such a fine line separating those two. Also, more often than not, I find it hard to find the reason as to why I am giving a particular task for my students to work on. I know that there may be a grammatical phenomenon for in the worksheet that I give them or that I use a particular text to expand their vocabulary bank on a specific topic etc. And definitely I do make sure that the task is engaging and intersting enough for the learners, however I find it hard to embed and link it to the teaching session altogether.
For instance, the other day, I worked with an adult beginner student of mine on a worksheet on what each color represents, to which emotions it related etc. I know that I used that particular worksheet in order to teach her the colors because I found the relevant section of the coursebook to be rather boring. However, that was only one third of the lesson. Once we were done with the worksheet I had to move on to grammar and there was no way I could continue the lesson by using the same topic (i.e. colors).
What I mean to say simply is that sometimes I feel that I do bits and pieces of each topic. I don't always feel that I have the time to devote each lesson to a specific topic and work around it. So perhaps I should work more on my creativity when it comes to using teaching material in class. Perhaps I should try thinking of ways to use the same material (e.g. an article etc.) to focus on more than one teaching aim.

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DuckDuckGo (doesn't keep data)
webopedia (encyclopedia of terminology connected top computers)
dogpile (metasearch engine)
CreativeCommons (site to look for and use material that are copyright-free )

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Google
Research gate
Jstor
Quora
Bing
Slide Share

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They can make each lesson more appealing to the students and less tedious since they incorporate modern-day technology that students love using. They can give a fun and interesting tone to the lesson and make the students appreciate both the subject itself as well as the instructor.

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Upon the completion of this particular course I am hoping to become more familiarized with any kind of technology and resource material that would make my future lessons more appealing and extraordinary.