Students in the final year of the MYP are required to do their personal projects. The aims of the MYP projects are to encourage and enable students to: 

• participate in a sustained, self-directed inquiry within a global context 
• generate creative new insights and develop deeper understandings through in-depth investigation
• demonstrate the skills, attitudes and knowledge required to complete a project over an extended period of time
• communicate effectively in a variety of situations
• demonstrate responsible action through, or as a result of, learning
• appreciate the process of learning and take pride in their accomplishments.

(MYP Projects, page 7)

The focus has always been on the process, but not on the product. Students are required to keep a process journal and document evidences of their process in their process journal. Throughout the process, personal project supervisors help students to identify their working behaviours and ensure that they follow academic honesty guidelines. 

Process journals are personal and can be documented in different formats according to students' preference, as long as they provide evidence of recording his or her process. So, what can or should be documented? It is suggested in the guide that an extract may include: 

• visual thinking diagrams
• bulleted lists 
• charts 
• short paragraphs 
• notes  
• timelines, action plans, 
• annotated illustrations 
• annotated research
• artifacts from inspirational visits to museums, performances, galleries
• pictures, photographs, sketches
• up to 30 seconds of visual or audio material 
• screenshots of a blog or website 
• self and peer assessment feedback. 

(MYP Project, page 25) 

In my previous experience supervising students' personal projects, there had been problems that students lost their process journals; personal computer got damaged and couldn't be repaired any more; or students just never remember to bring their process journals to school and share with their supervisors. With the types of extracts can be included in the personal project process journal and the nature of saving files/notes via Cloud-based service, I think Evernote could be an option for students' consideration. 

1. Both supervisor and student sign up an Evernote account: https://evernote.com/ 
2. Download Evernote desktop version to your computer (Mac users can just download from the App store.)
3. Once completing downloading, install the Evernote desktop on your computer and log in with your username and password. 
4. Download Evernote Web clipper: https://evernote.com/webclipper/
5. In order to keep up with your research, I also recommended you add Chrome extension called Citable https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/citable/jfiabcklnnhkmkcdjjpmgghiimjkaeio to your Chrome web brower. This tool can help you save citable quotes and notes from your research into Google spreadsheets. 
6. Once you log in your Evernote account, create a Notebook and give it a title, such as 'Personal Project Process Journal', 'Personal Project Reflection', 'Personal Project Research', and so on. 
7. Share the Process Journal with your supervisor. See image below. 

Voilà! Personal project supervisors will get an invitation to join the notebook and keep up to date the student's progress of completing their personal project. 

The more I use Evernote, the more I love it! I wrote about using Evernote to help students acquire a second language before and now I encourage teachers to use Evernote to organize their teaching resources. 

The powerful secrete tool is to use Evernote extension, Web Clipper. This extension can be easily downloaded for your web browser from Evernote website. What makes it different from using bookmarks or dropbox? I used to bookmark the websites, but the problem was that I rarely visited them again. Dropbox was good to create folders and save files. However, I did not find a way to save website pages. Evernote web clipper allows users to save anything encountered on the internet, including articles, website pages, PDF files, videos, photographs, and so on. Whatever you've captured will be automatically synced to the designated Evernote notebooks. Here is one example how I organized resources related to a Pop Culture unit. 

Benefits 

• Being able to save anything from the internet allows teachers to store authentic materials in a more organized way. 
• I can use the 'Presentation' function and show students the note through the projector. Additionally, I can also annotate the note and share it with students. 
• Use the 'Search notes' and 'Tag' functions to find relevant notes in a very short time. 
• When I save notes from a website, it also saves the source of the resource, which makes referencing easy if needed. 
• Titles of notes together with images are clearly displayed in the notebook, which provides a good visual tool when planning lessons. 
• If needed, I can easily share the URL with students or simply e-mail the notes to students. 
• If there is more than one teacher teaching the same subject, I can e-mail the notebooks to my colleague, which makes collaboratively planning easy. 
• Being an Evernote Premium user, I am able to download notes for offline use/planning on my iPhone and iPad. 

There are so many great functions about Evernote. If you can spend time to explore it, I bet you will love it! 

Lino allows users to post digital sticky notes on a virtual cork-board. Users can share ideas by posting texts, images, videos, links, and any type of files to the sticky notes. Sticky notes come with different colors. Users can change the color and the size of the font. Additionally, the size of the sticky notes can be altered and tagged. The tag function permits users to search among stick notes. It also allows user to set due dates on the sticky notes.  The Canvas can be made public or set for private use. Users can access Lino on iOS and Windows operating systems. Apps are also available for iOS and Android phones or tablets. 

Lino provides a virtual environment for people to brainstorm ideas, solutions, and other type of collaborative projects. I am going to focus on using Lino to teach explicit reading comprehension strategies. Using sticky notes  to teach reading comprehension skills is not a new idea. However, by using multi-media sticky notes, we: 

• help students to visualize their thinking; 
• deepen students's understanding of the text and allow them to make connections by texting, uploading images, files and videos to their sticky notes; 
• encouraging individual sharing and collaborative brainstorming;  
• set due dates for different tasks; 
• organize sticky notes with flexibility; 
• make the collaborative thinking process to be assessed anywhere, anytime on any device. 

• The teacher registers an account.  
• In order to post sticky notes in response to a topic, the user should create a Canvas first, which is like a bulletin board.
• Create a group for your class for easy class management and idea sharing. 

By using Lino's multi-media sticky notes and utilizing the sticky note colors, students practice to: 

• Share their prior knowledge and experience (scheme) before reading via the K-W-L activity; 
  
• Predict solutions to a problem presented in a text. 
• Infer by posting three different color sticky notes for What I read, What I know, and What I infer; 
• Create questions after reading. Students post four different color sticky notes when using the Question-Answer-Relastionshop (QAR) strategy: Right There Questions, Think and Search Questions, Author and Me Questions, and On My Own Questions. 
• Engage with an informational text by using the Text Coding strategy during reading. They create four different color sticky notes representing four different symbols. For example, "?" for Questions: I don't understand. I wonder..., "!" for important ideas; "V" for vocabulary that I can't work it out; “＊” I already knew this. For this activity, have students code the text individually prior posting sticky notes on Lino.  Teacher and students can create any symbol to code the text. 

• Question-Answer-Relatioship (QAR) strategy
• QAR question prompts 
• Text coding strategy  

• 7 Online Sticky Note Services for Students and Teachers

Mind-mapping is an effective and frequent used tool to help students brainstorm and make connections. Popplet is a web-based interactive mind-mapping tool that allow users to organize their ideas by typing, drawing, and/or uploading images and videos. Users can first use it as Sticky notes and then indicate the same or similar ideas into categories. Popplet allows users to brainstorm collaboratively to enhance critical thinking. 

By using an interactive web-based mind-map tool like Popplet, it: 

• allows teacher to create an inviting environment for collaborative learning and thinking;  
• allows everyone's voice to be heard and generate ideas; 
• encourage second language learners express ideas via various media; 
• stimulates thinking by uploading different visual materials (colors, photos, videos, graphs, etc.); 
• assists learners to visualize their thinking process and revise their thoughts (metacognition); 
• enables learners to organize information more effectively; 
• facilitates learners to identify key and related concepts more easily; 
• allows teacher to facilitate a focused brainstorming session with control;  
• helps learners to make connections and generate a conceptual framework;   
• allows PDF or JEPG export so that students can document this in their learning process journal; 
• encourage students to consider other viewpoints; 
• increases learner participation and keeps them on task.  

• Decide a prompt that is clearly defined for students to focus on. Brainstorming is not just to have students to come up with all kinds of ideas at random. A focused and defined topic not only activates students'  prior knowledge, but also encourage them connect and generate new ideas. 
• Allocate time for students think individually and silently first. 
• DUring this activity, monitor students' responses and ensure their ideas are original and relevant to the prompt. 
• Encourage students to make connections to others' responses and add more details by texting or upload visual materials. 
• Please refer to Step-by-Step Instructions on Using Popplet in Your Classroom

• Guide your students to sing up a Popplet account so that you can add them as collaborators to your Popplet. By the same token, one student can set up a Popple and invite their group members. The video below shows how to enable 'Share' function on Popplet. 

• In my opinion, Popplet can be uses as a variation for the Chalk Talk Visible Thinking Strategy.

• Activate students' prior knowledge by having them respond to a prompt (a topic, a question, a problem, an idea, etc.)  and encourage them to make connections among each other's responses. 
• Create a vocabulary mind-map 
• Create a visual map after reading (Help students to construct visual images after reading promotes comprehension.) 
  
• Summarize main ideas and supporting details 
• Categorize new information to understand informational text 
  
• Reflect on the learning process 
• Explain a problem or a question by using a Fishbone diagram (such as global warming, environmental issues, what is advertisement?...)
• Recall after reading informational texts
• Outline topic sentences and examples for expository writing 
  
• Create a web to analyze information texts 
• Brainstorm ideas before writing   
  
• Analyze text structures

• Mindmeister
• Lucidchart

I am a big fan of Voicethread. It's one of the effective Web 2.0 tools that extends students' language learning and allow teachers to check students' understanding of the content and provide feedback to language errors in grammar mini lessons. 
As a language instructor, you should use your professional e-mail address to register an educator's account, which allows you to have more privileges with Voicethread. Various of media can be uploaded to Voicethread by students or language instructors, including documents, photographs, images,  videos, posters, and so on. Students need to register an account prior commenting the visual materials. Five powerful commenting options are provided: microphone, webcam, text, phone, and audio-file upload.  

Based on my observation, integrating Voicethred in the language classroom allows us to: 

• Provide opportunities for comprehensible output (digital speaking);
  
• Allow language learners to be aware of their language production (metalinguistic);  
• Create opportunities for blended learning (Flip teaching); 
• Increase the target language exposure and gradually develop academic language skills;  
• To promote listening skills, if appropriate;  
• Allow every student to utter and hold everyone accountable in their learning;  
• Give students wait time to think and construct speech before responding (cognitive thinking); 
• Encourage students to see their language learning progress and set learning goals; 
• Provide differentiated instruction to students of mix proficiency levels; 
• Develop students' visual literacy; 
• Encourage purposeful collaborative learning;
• Serve as a formative assessment tool.  

• Students register an account with Voicethread. 
• Have students upload personalized images for their icons. (easy to recognize studetns)
• Allow Adobe Flash Player on the computer.  
• Set up recording guidelines and with students. For example: 

         1. Be aware of the background noise.
         2. Speak with clearly and confidently. 
         3. Think carefully before speaking.
         4. Listen to self recording before saving comments. 
         5. Listen to other people's comments if unsure. 
          6. Respect different comments/perspectives. 

• Provide scaffolding to ensure successful commenting. For example: 

         1. Pre-teach vocabulary and grammar structures in mini-lesson setting. 
             2. Provide sentence starters, if appropriate. 
             3. Teach strategy to describe an image or a photograph. 
             4. Utilize graphic organizers to facilitate oral recount.  
             5. Provide students with clear criteria. (What are you looking for!)

• Use See-Think-Wonder, visible thinking strategy, to generate discussions 
• Design more open-ended tasks that allow students to demonstrate their language abilities 
• For Mandarin teachers, you must ensure your document or PPT files are saved as PDF files before uploading to Voicethread; otherwise, the Chinese characters will become gibberish. 

• Interview a friend and require for more personal information 
• Explain the "What? Who? Where? How? Why?" in the visual material 
• Listen to other's presentations and identify important ideas for note taking   
• Describe an image or a photograph or a scene from a video 
• Compare the character's situation with yours 
• Respond to open-ended questions with details  
• Analyze the lyrics of popular songs
• Evaluate TV shows, movies, cartoons, speeches
• Debate your point of view in responding to the issue presented in the visual material  

25 Types of Fun Voicethread for Foreign Language Classroom
http://assett.colorado.edu/25-types-of-fun-voicethreads-for-foreign-language-classes/