MyBrainshark

MyBrianshark----Presentation can be fun!

1. What is it?

MyBrianshark is an online tool which allow users to upload their documents such as pictures or powerpoint slides and add audios, and then they can share the video presentations with others through email, facebook or other communicative media.

2. How to use it?

Click the following video to have an idea of using it.

3. Why is it relevant to ELT class?

• Basically, it can be used to prepare a presentation, and then the presentation can be sent to teacher or shared with peers.

• Teachers can use it to deliver a lesson outside classroom, especailly useful in distant learning. Teaching materials can be shared such as powerpoints, document or videos in previous lessons, so that the viewers can have a vivid learning experience.

• It is a good way to have students do some collaborative activities. They can share their ideas of a particular task or an activity with their partners and accept their feedback or comments as well.

• Some classroom performances such as role play or debate can be recorded and uploaded so that parents or other students who have interest can have a look at it.

4. Benefits or using this tool

• It's free and hands-on.
• It can help students to overcome their shyness of doing presentation in front of people.
• It can increase students' motivation to do more reflective thinking about a group work.
• It saves a lot of time for teachers to arrange an activity in the class.
• It offers teachers an opportunity to add some relevant information or materials outside classroom.

5. Limitations

• It may take a lot of time for students to accomplish an online presentation.
• It requires stable Internet, so home or office may be the better places of using it.
• It can only record 15 minutes, perhaps it's not long enough for teachers to deliver a complete lesson.
• It is quite time-consuming for teachers to give individual feedback on students' work.

JING

JING----refresh your ideas!

Click here to download this amazing tool for free.

• What is JING?

JING is a free application launched by TechSmith Corporation, which allows you to instantly capture images and record video on your computer as soon as you download it, and then share them with anyone. JING is a great tool for adding basic visual elements to all of your online conversations.

•  How can you use it?

Follow the video to get a clear idea of using it.

• Why this tool relevant to language learning?/How might you use it to foster language teaching inside/outside class?

1. For teachers:

1) Give feedback of students' assignment or other homework. It is such a communicative tool that allows teachers to give both visual and audio comments and highlight the key points, which makes it more clear to students.

2) Interchange ideas of teaching and observing the class among colleagues. It is more flexible than online meeting, so teachers can take advantage of using it to share their ideas about the problems or difficulties happened in a language learning classroom, and also receive the possible solutions from their colleagues.

3) Assign tasks to students. In this way, teachers' instructions can be more clear and less confusing, and also they can show some useful websites or online tools to students directly.

2. For students:

1) Send their presentation to teachers or peers. It is convenient to share their presentation with their classmates or teachers, and then receive the comments from them without face-to-face interactions.

2) Do speaking activity. Students can use it to do a monologue or make a dialogue with their partners according to the list of questions.

3) Interchange ideas or opinions with teachers or peers. Since it is a communicative tool, students can use it to ask teachers questions or interchange ideas about learning with peers outside classroom.

• Limitations

1. It has time limit. Users have to finish the content in 5 minutes.

2. It requires the users to have an ability of speaking. If they are not satisfied with what they have recorded, they may do it again and again, which is a waste of time.

3. If teachers use it to give feedback to individual students, it is quite time-consuming.

4. Users have to download it first and then start doing it. If you change another computer, it means that you have to download it again and lose all the previous recording.

More than Words!

Wordle----Words can be beautiful!

1. What is it?

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.  IT t is a free facility for people to create graphics from the text you upload. 

2. How to use it?

• Go to Wordle.net.
• Click on Create. Type or paste in text into the empty box, and then click “Go.” Your finished Wordle will appear in the box.
• You may click on font, layout, and/or color near the top of the Wordle to change those things. You may also click “Randomize” at the bottom for Wordle to randomly select another design.

• Your Wordle will not be saved unless you create an account and add it to your public gallery.
• Click on “Print” to print it out. Click OK if you get a message about printing.
• Then save your Wordle as a .jpg file to be pasted into another program.

       This video may give you a clear understanding of the steps:

3. How to use it in an ELT classroom?

• brainstorming or reflecting

Teachers can ask students to do some brainstorming by using the captured wordle pictures at the beginning of the class, or ask them to do some reflective thinking at the end of the class.

• remembering vocabulary

Literally, wordle can be used to test how many words students have learned in the class if teachers show the lines fading out.

• studying for an exam

In terms of learner autonomy, before examination, students can use it to do pair work or group work, such as showing the key words to their peers and asking them to tell the language points.

• adding a visual element to a blog post

Besides, wordle can make blogger/blogger teaching vivid because of the colorful and creative layout.

• sharing thoughts or notes on a certain subject

It also can be a useful tool to assign a group activity among students. They can list some ideas and thoughts or put down some notes on a subject or topic, then wordle will create a picture which can be presented to other students.

4. Strengths

• It's free.
• Its creative and interactive layout is attractive to users.
• It can calculate your word frequency quickly.
• It's a useful tool for reflective thinking and revision.

5. Limitations

• There is no sound of this tool.
• The context may be in disorder because it selects the key words in a random.
• There is no meaning of each word.
• The layout changes every time you edit it.

Wall of wishes!

Padlet (Wallwisher)

Let's start from here!

1. What does it do?

Padlet (Wallwisher) is a free online tool where anyone can build a wall, and it allows users to write, collaborate and share content on an empty canvas. It was originally popular for birthday celebrations, ceremonies or other wishes. Nowadays, it is widely used in English language teaching classrooms.

2. How does it work?

Click the following video, you will get a clear idea of how to use it.

3. Why is it relevant to language teaching?

•  Teachers can use it for brainstorming. For example, students can join one wall and take down their own opinions of one topic. It is a good way to do a warm-up activity.

• Teachers can use it to distribute a group work to students. Because of the collaborative feature of Padlet (Wallwisher), it brings a lot of fun to students to accomplish a project work with their peers.

        Here is an example of students' group work. Hola Barcelona.

• Teachers can use it as a resource sharer. There are a lot of things can be shared such as exam practice sites, videos for training their listening skills and web quests.

• Teachers can use it to carry out speaking activities. Posting debate topics, creating stories, organizing role plays are good choices.

• Teachers can use it as a real notice board. In this case, teachers can put up the class and school rules, make a class timetable, and notify students or their parents of homework assignments and keep them up to date with what's happening in the classroom.

• Teachers can use it to train students' writing skills. It is good for lower level students to focus on writing a short sentence of two with great accuracy, it is also an easy way to do dictation and poetry exercise.

4. Advantages of using it

• For students: 1) It is good for collaborative work.

                                2) It enhances creative thinking. 

                                3) It accelerates reflective thinking.

• For teachers: 1) It brings much more fun to the classroom.                      

                                2) It is a good way to keep in touch with parents and   update students' learning outcomes.

                                3) It is easy to carry out communicative teaching, such as giving feedback to students and getting feedback from students.

                                4) It provides a good opportunity to do evaluative and  reflective thinking.

5. Limitaions of using it

• It takes users a lot of time to modify the layout.
• It has word limit if teachers want to give assignment homework.
• It requires a well-equipped facility in a classroom with Internet.
• It may bring out some inconvenience for users to work together because the "wall" may be messed up.

Breaking News English!

Teachers' resource: Breaking News English!

1. What is it?

Breaking News English offers ready-to-use EFL/ESL lesson plans in Word and PDF, graded news articles, listening, podcast, and communicative activities. All lessons are based on stories currently in the news and a new lesson is added every three days. Listening files can be downloaded in mp3 format or subscribed to via a podcast.

2. What makes it a useful tool in language teaching?

First of all, it is easy to use. As the following picture shows,

all the news are displayed on the left column, users can not only see the title but also know the difficulty level. Click the title you are interested, and then you can continue reading.

Secondly, since the above categories include all the aspects in a ELT class, such as 'listen', 'read', etc, while the beneath is the whole article, teachers can use these resources to do more activities in the classroom.

Take 'grammar' for example,

let's see what will happen when you click these four different exercises:

Grammar gap-fill

You can type in the missing verbs, gerunds, adjectival forms in the spaces - their infinitives are at the top. Then click to check your answers, and aslo press the "refresh" button on your browser to play again.

Articles gap-fill

This one is simply to check how students are familiar with using articles, which include definite 'the' and indefinite 'a' and 'an'.

Prepositions

whose layout is similar to articles gap-fill but with different purpose. 

word order

3. Advantages of using it

• All lessons are based on stories currently in the news - as the world's news breaks, teach it.
• Classroom handouts are readily reproducible.
• There are graded listenings with each lesson.
• Each lesson has 26 pages of printable activities / handouts, which are rich teaching resources for teachers.
All lessons are also downloadable PDF format.
There are 30+ online quizzes for each lesson, which allows students to finish them either in the classroom or at home.

4. Disadvantages of using it

• The interface is a bit messy.
• Teachers will spend more time choosing the appropriate teaching materials.
• Students will spend more time finishing the homework or pair work.
• This fixed genre may make users feel bored.

Say it! Record it! Make it!

Vocaroo: easy recorder!

1. What is it?

     Vocaroo is an online voice recorder which allows you to create your own voice recordings without installing any software. All you need to do is provide a microphone, the in-beded one also works.

2. How to use it?

    Click the 'record' button, you can easily record your voice.

    If you want to know more, follow this video:

3. How to apply it into language teaching?

Obviously, teachers and students can use it to do a lot of activities:

• Teachers can start an activity in the classroom by providing examples, such as telling a story.
• Teachers can create an audio to distribute the homework outside the classroom.
• Students can use it to do some reflective thinking, by either preparing the task in the  class or recording their thoughts at home.
• Teachers can use it to give some feedback on students' homework, since the recordings can be sent by the recorder and be downloaded by the receiver.
• Students can use it to complete peer evaluation, because vocaroo can be shared with other classmates.

4. Benefits of vocaroo:

• For some unconfident students, using vocaroo can help them to overcome their shyness when they practice speaking at home, and they can listen to their own recordings again and again.
• It is easy because there is no barrier to entry.
• Students can use it both in the classroom or outside the classroom.
• For both teachers and students, it is flexible.
• Comparing with taking down notes, speaking through vocaroo saves a lot of time in the classroom.
• Teachers can use it to design more interesting activities.

5. Limitations of vocaroo:

• Time limit is only 5 minutes.
• Users can not track the voice, which brings much more difficulties for teachers to give feedback or for students to give peer evaluation precisely.
• Users can not edit their recording. That is, if they make mistakes, they may only retry, which costs more time.

                                                 Record music and voice >>

Dvolver: make your own movie!

Dvolver Moviemaker!



    1. What is it?

 

Dvolver is an online software that allows you to make customized animated videos. According to Dvolver, "People have a lot to say, and they like to say it with animated characters." Dvolver is easy to use, free of charge, and you don't even need to sign up.

      2. How to make a movie with Dvolver?

Click the link:
http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/index.html

 

 

• Select the background and sky for your first scene. Each style has a fun description of the climate and culture of your chosen setting. Next, select a plot for your scene. "Rendez-vous," "pick-up," and "chase" are made for two characters, and "soliloquy" is made for one.

• Choose the characters for your scene. Similar to the background and sky options, each character has a fun written profile. Characters include normal-looking folks, celebrities lookalikes, aliens, animals and more. 

• Add dialogues if you want. Add up to three lines for each character. The dialogue will appear in a thought-bubble above the character's head in the finished movie.

 

•  Select the music for your scene. By clicking on the options, you can preview the sound and its recommendations for use. After making your selection, you'll have the options to add a new scene, or to finish the movie.

• Select a style for your titles. During this last step you can also add your name and the title of your choice. These will appear in the title sequence of your video.

     3. How to use it to foster language learning?

Teachers can use this tool in the classroom, such as asking the students to work in pairs, to stimulate communication between students. Moreover, it can also be done as a homework for the students so as to train them to learn language autonomously.

Reading Comprehension: Middle-High School. Students can transform the novel into a summary play. The students could create an alternative to something that happened in the story as well. This will have to depend on the type of story, of course, as there is a limit to 2 characters per scene.

Writing/Presenting: Have the students work on a documentary, summarizing a recent coup! You can assign a minimum number of scenes and ask students to create their own stories.

     4. Advantages:

• It is funny and attractive to students because of the music and animination, especially to younger learners.
• It is free.
• It can accelerate students' creativity and enhance their motivation. 
• It guides the students to choose and identify appropriate words and expressions to be used in appropriate context.
• It helps students to improve their communication skills through creating conversations in a movie.

     
     5. Disadvantages:

 

• Length limitation: there is a limit of words in a conversation, why brings much more difficulties for young learners.
• Only 2 characters can be chosen per scene. In a situation where a child is recreating a story, this won’t work.
• Voices can't be embeded.