Dimitris Tzouris

There is a lot of content out there. I’m sure you agree. The web is full of websites, blogs, journals and other platforms that (try to) provide you with online content. I’ve already wrote about how you can organize all the information you care about and want to remember. This time I’ll tell you how to make an extra step by creating your own online magazine, in order to serve your own content (e.g. blog posts) or articles you read elsewhere and find really interesting and worth sharing. It is also an easy way for you and your students to become content curators by collecting articles and blog posts that help them understand and learn. A great service for that is Flipboard . Flipboard is the most popular content curation and discovery platform today. It is mainly used on smartphones or tablets, but it also provides a nice web view of online magazines, created either by media outlets or individual users - people with interests. Just like you. In the latest version (f

One of the most important developments in computer science that has already started to affect our lives is cloud computing. In a nutshell, it means that when you use a computer, you only need a browser and an Internet connection, without having to install any programs or having to upgrade your computer in order to make it faster and powerful enough to run the programs you are using. You simply open a window that connects you to the web and use applications (web apps) that utilize computing power and storage available on some server far, far away. Where exactly? You don’t care. All you care about is your work. Maybe not a TPS report , but definitely that grammar exercise you have to prepare for tomorrow and all the homework you have go through. The article you are reviewing or the final draft of that proposal that was due last night. Up until recently, you could use Google Drive to create Docs, Sheets and Slides (Google’s version of Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Powe

Many people use Dropbox to store their documents online. In the cloud as we say. Dropbox is nice. The ones who use it probably know that storing documents in Dropbox basically means: Security and no more worrying about backing up files Easier sharing with family, colleagues and students Access from anywhere, with files syncing across multiple computers, tablets and phones Now you can add a fourth reason: To receive files from others, even those who don’t have a Dropbox account. For example, ask your students to submit their assignments or ask conference speakers to submit their presentations. All you need is DROPitTOme , a Dropbox extension that allows you to receive files from others. You can receive as many files you want, but each file has to be up to 75 MB in size and, of course, each file will use your Dropbox storage space. DROPitToME is free. To get started, go to dropitto.me and register. You will be asked to log in with your Dropbox credenti

The web is full of resources that can be really useful for teachers and learners. Lots of websites and tools that we can go to in order to enhance our teaching and learning experience. And most of them are free. In this issue, we’ll take a look at two very useful web tools for in-depth analysis of language: Google definitions and Voyant Tools. The latest update of Google definitions comes with a really useful set of information. Make sure you use google.com and simply enter “define” and then the term you are interested in. Apart from the standard dictionary set of results (including terminology, pronunciation with voice, translation) you get some really useful information on the origin on the word that includes a nice diagram. Below that, you get a really useful chart of the mentions of the word in all books scanned by Google that dates back to the 1800s! This can come in handy when you are doing research or when you are trying to explain the origins of a word or how its u

How many times have you found yourself not being able to find a website you had previously visited? It happens to everyone. It has happened to me too. Really. The bits and bytes of information that we come across daily has grown exponentially from a stream to a river to a waterfall and we’re floating in it, trying not to get carried away by its force. We simply can’t keep up with everything that’s out there. That’s something we have to live with. But for the things that we’re really interested in, personally or professionally, there are ways to save and organize so we can find them easily in 2 weeks, 2 months or 2 years. Diigo is one of the free tools out there for this. It’s bookmarking, but bookmarks aren’t saved on your local computer disk, but somewhere else, on a server, where you can access them again, from a different computer or another portable device. They are stored in the cloud. Each time you save a public bookmark, you help others discover it too. That’s why