ClubPenguinis a virtual world where kids wander around with their penguin avatars, play games, interact with other friend penguins. They can chat, send greeting cards, use emotions, attend parties, take part in role-plays, adopt a pet. It’s a great place to practice reading and participate in role playing. It’s free and there is no third party advertisement.

Shidonni is a site where students can draw their favorite animal with a world to live in it and see the animal spring to life. Kids take care of their animals by feeding, petting or sending them to sleep. The animal eats the food that kids have drawn for it. They can choose if they want their pet to walk or fly, and they can name it. Kids can draw a background and change it whenever they want. They can play games with their virtual animals or send them to their friends to play with their animals. You can watch this introduction video. This site is great for kindergarten students but I’m sure primary kids will love and enjoy this site!!

Nasa Kids’ Clubis an interactive site of NASA where kids can play educational games about math, science and technology, learn about space and astronauts. They can also chat with NASA experts .

 SFSKids is a site where you can learn about music and instruments, hear, learn and have fun with music.

 CBeebies is a BBC website for kids. There are songs, games, art&craft and stories section on the site. Each section has many different and fun  activities for kids to play and learn online. The site also has Radio CBeebies where you can listen or watch shows. There is also a section for grown-ups to help teachers and parents to get most out of this site.

InnocentKids is a site where children play games and get prizes every week.

National Geographic Kids is a site where you can search on different topics such as animals, maps, geography, history and culture for young learners. It also has a blog section where you can read National Geographic articles for kids by kids. There is also an online homework section where you can find different lesson plans with resources for different levels and subjects. There is also a sister site, National Geographic for LittleKids where you can find materials for preschool children. 

PBSKidsis a website that is based on favourite TV shows where you can find many activities such as games, songs, stories and colouring pages.  

 MoshiMonstersis a site where children can adopt their own pet monster, give it a name and design it. Monster can make friends and interact with each other. Children can nurture their pets by solving puzzles and playing games.

Animations have already been so popular even before internet; and with the developing Web 2.0 applications, it has become an  effective and an engaging tool in the classrooms. 

ZimmerTwins is a simple site to make great and fun animated stories. You can start making your animation from scratch or you can create your own using one of the story starters. You choose the characters, settings, transitions, actions and emotions by using drag-and-drop feature. After, you only write the text in bubbles. You don’t need any drawing skills to make animations with Zimmertwins. 

You can create a mini animation with DVolver by pointing and clicking. You can choose the setting, characters, music at the background and how the chosen characters interact in your animation. You write what you want your characters to say and it shows up in bubbles in your animation. When you finish, you can mail it others, get a link for it or simply embed it to your blog.

Xtranormal is a site where you can create animations using text-to-speech application. You choose your animation styles and settings, characters and the voice for them. When you finish choosing all,you can write what you want your characters to say. When you have finished writing your text, there are some directions that represent cameras, looks, points, pauses etc. You can insert them into your text. When you finish your movie, you can publish it, get a link, embed or directly upload it to Youtube.

Fuzzwich is a site that lets you create 20 second animated movies. You can choose the setting, choose among ready characters or customize them by uploading your photos, text, music and movement as well. When you finish, you can get a link or embed it to your blog. 

With GoAnimate, you choose your theme and characters or you can even create your own animated characters by changing the size and colour of their body parts and clothes. You set up your theme on the timeline. You can change the background, add characters and prompts. Characters can do different actions such as walking, dancing, talking. You can use text to speech application to make your characters talk or simply record your own voice using your microphone. You can also use zooms in/out or colour effects on your video. You can upload your own music or sound effects as well. You can post them on  social networking sites or upload them on Youtube.

Domo is another site that GoAnimate features. You can create animations and slideshows. All the animations are reviewed and appropriate to use. You can add music and text to your animations.

Doink is site that lets you create flash-style animations. You can create your animations from scratch or reuse the work of others. You only have to draw the pictures step by step to animate them.

Animasher  is another site to make animations by using pictures from the gallery or you can use your pictures too. You can add music, some sound effects, text or record your own voice for your animation.

You can also use Memoov to make animations. You choose the background from the gallery, add different characters to the animation. You can change the colour of the characters or give them different emotions or movement. You can add objects too. You can write a text or make the characters speak with your own voice. You can add music and several effects. When it is done, your video will be directly sent to Youtube for easy sharing.   

Using animations is  a great way to improve different skills of kids such as reading, writing, storytelling, decision making, problem solving as well cognitive, social and innovative skills. It’s sure to facilitate learning of the kids and boost the way you are teaching.

Cross posted on TechLearning.

I’ve made three animation projects with 6 years old kids for the last two years. MEDEA Awards awarded “Daisy and Drago“ cartoon that was animated and dubbed by 6 year old non-native students with “Creativity and Innovation” award in Online-Educa conference last year. I had written a guest blog on Ken Wilson’s blog about this project. If you are interested more, you can also watch my interview about it and watch the film here. The kids also animated the second story of Daisy and Drago. You can watch it here.

This year, we’ve been working on a new animation story with new and very cute characters “Bubble and Pebble”. The aim is to teach colours to the kids. The recordings haven’t been completed yet so I’ll share it later on a different blog post. By the way, you can have a look at the short summary of the story below:

At school, we’ve collaborated with the IT department to create digital games for kindergarten students to reinforce what they learn in English lessons. This year, we’ve decided to create digital games using our new characters to teach different topics to the kids. For this project, children have drawn the pictures for the game. I’ve recorded their voices and IT teacher  has put the drawings and the recordings together using Flash. You can play the demo of one of the games below:

Children do love playing with Bubble and Pebble games!! and it’s amazing to see how much they enjoy the material they have created to learn English. Let’s give them all a big hand!!

Daisy & Drago and the Magic Wand from ozge karaoglu on Vimeo.

I have been writing my own stories for my kids as it is so difficult to find the best EFL story that match with our monthly themes.It’s wonderful to see that they enjoy them and retell the story and talk about the characters and dramatize it.I have had a few attempts to publish my stories and I hope it’s going to come true soon.
As I was looking for someone to illustrate the story, I met one of my best friends,Havva. She is the teacher who teaches how to do animation in our school to different level of students. We decided to turn one of my stories into a cartoon. Havva illustrated the story and 6 year old students animated the pictures and we recorded their voices both in English and Turkish.The first film became second in the 6th Children International Film Festival and shown in many cinemas all over the world. What a proud!! And above is the second story that we did this year. My story, our kids and the film. I hope to win another prize with it, wish me luck:)