MailVU : Mail You Can View

What is MailVU ? MailVU is a tool which you can swap from sending people a boring plain email into an interesting video email. You can record yourself talking up to 10 minutes and send it to your friends. It is a simple and easy website, with a couple of clicks - click allow website to use webcam, record youself and click send - you can send a video email to everyone and they can reply with their own video email too! You can never imagine the excitement of sending and receiving MailVU until you try it yourself!

How MailVU can benefit English learners?

1. Learners can use the tool to send video email to their friends and family instead of writing an email. This way they can practice to use English in speaking and it is a good way to express themselves. They can always record and re-record the video message until they are satisfied with the speaking. At the same time, they can listen to their own speaking, making sure they are using the correct language and they can improve themselves if there is any mistakes such as wrong pronunciation.
2. This is a great tool to be used as a connected classroom. Connected classroom is when an activity that has been done in the classroom is extended and the interactive activity is done outside the classroom as well. Let say, in the classroom teacher discusses with the learners on how would they spend their Christmas and winter holiday. As a homework, teacher might ask the learners to produce their own MailVU message and talk about the topic for a maximum of ten minutes. This way, learners can practice to speak in English not only in the classroom but also at home. What teacher can do is, listen to their recordings, make some notes on their use of English and send them a reply video to give them any comments or feedbacks.
3. It is a good opportunity for the learners to improve their speaking skills. It is useful for learners who are afraid to speak in front of other people. They can practice speaking by themselves without having any interference such as other people which might discourage them.
4. The examples of speaking activities that teacher can suggest the learners to do are interview (where learners can do the interview in pairs), advertising or promoting a product (practice speaking to get a market for a product), telling a story about themselves or people that they admire (personalisation) and even a mini cooking show!

The advantages of MailVU:

1. It is free so you can record, re-record and send as many video emails as you like. You don't need to register to be able to use the tool.
2. It is fast, simple and easy to use. Even younger learners can use it easily.
3. It encourages learners to do speaking outside the classroom.
4. A new way to learn English despite of the traditional classroom language learning.
5. The video messages can be sent via email and you can play them on smart phones!

The disadvantages of MailVU:

1. There is no such embedded code so you can only share your videos through email and view them online.
2. It is not suitable to be used in the classroom as the recording process might get interrupted by interference such as background noise, time constraint and of course we need enough computers for all the students.

-Suze-

EllloEnglish !

This week website is another useful tool for improving listening skill. Elllo offers loads of listening materials ranging from audio clips, video clips, songs, news and etc. It is like an online library for listening materials!

The website is organized according to the theme for each listening materials types. There are a few types or sections – View, Mixer, Game, News, Videos, Scenes and etc. Each section provides lists of listening materials. You can click on a topic and it will link you to a Listening Lesson. The listening lesson comprises the multimedia, free mp3 files, transcription, vocabulary tasks, language notes and many more. Learners are not only having the access to the listening materials but also the tasks. They can do the listening activity online. Even more, they can easily download the listening materials together with the listening activity if they were to do the practice some other time on their computer without having to use the internet.

Learners between 13 to 17 years old might benefit from this website and they might find Elllo interesting and easy to carry out because of the well organization and layout as well as the variety of topics offered.

Here I am showing one example of the listening activity. The topic I chose is 'Boys Camp'. It has an audio clip for the listening, the transcription, audio slide show, vocabulary focus and the comprehension questions.

Why I should recommend Elllo to learners?

1. Elllo offers numerous listening materials which are recorded by the people from the different parts of the world. Hence the English used by the speakers in the audio or video clips are differing in accents. Learners can learn the differences between native speakers and non-native speakers’ uses of English.
2. The advantage of using authentic materials in learning language is learners can adapt how the language is used in the real world situation.
3. The variety of topics including culture surrounding which learners can choose to complement their personal interests in additional to their knowledge. This is also a good example of integrating content in language learning.
4. Encourage autonomous learning as learners can do all the activities outside the classroom without the help from the teacher.
5. Learners are exposed to different types of text which require them to engage with different language skills (listening, writing, reading, vocabulary). It offers learners the opportunity to learn and practice the skills.
6. Enriched with vocabulary - vocabulary enhancement in terms of pronunciation and information on how to use the words correctly.
7. Provide learners with the reason for listening so that they can complete the tasks afterwards.
8. It is free to download all the contents and it is legal to copy and distribute the materials for educational purposes.

Some limitations to this tool:

1. The videos cannot be downloaded. You can only download the mp3 files of the listening materials.
2. The website sometimes corrupts and when it happens, it changes the layout, loses all the images and might result in discouraging learners to continue using the tool.
3. The advertisements on the page are sometimes distracting. I get confused between the video for the listening material and the ads video.

Nevertheless, I would still recommend this website for learners to improve their English language uses and skills.

-Suze-

Digital Learning Sources: National Film and Sound Archive [Australia]

NFSA

which stands for National Film and Sound Archive is an Australian nation's living archive that collects, preserves and share their audiovisual heritage. The collection includes films, television and radio programs, videos, audio tapes, records, compact discs, phonograph cylinders and wire recordings. It also encompasses documents and artifacts such as photographs, posters, lobby cards, publicity items, scripts, costumes, props, memorabilia, oral histories, and vintage equipment. (taken from the website)

One of the useful contents in the website which can help the English learning is the Digital Learning Resources that are specifically offered for education. Learners can choose a variety of resources from the digital resources finder or simply click on the any featured topic that you like. I would like to remind you that all the contents in this website are about Australia. However, both teacher and learners can still make use of this website for teaching and learning purposes. It will be a good source of improving language as well as gaining knowledge about Australia. This tool will provide the listening materials as well as the guidelines on how to use the materials. Some topics have the examples of activities which are available and ready to be used in the classroom.

I am going to show you how to make use of the website. If you scroll down the digital learning page, you will find a topic which is Talkback Classroom learning journeys. Click on the topic and you will be directed to Learning Journeys webpage. Then I choose the learning journey under the topic of 'Energy'. Click on the learning journey button and you will see a list of digital resources tagged with 'Learning Journey Energy' which are differ on the topic and level of learners.

You can choose any topic that you like but here I have chosen Global Warming issue for Year 7 and 8. Click on the link and you will find a webpage with a video clip and all the information about the clip.

You can see on the right hand side, a box which shows what are on the page - about the page, curriculum focus, background information, classroom activities and further resources - and on the left hand side, the links to download the video clip. So if teacher and learners were to use the content on this website, they can easily download the content, refer to the information provided as well as the suggested classroom activities to assist the teaching and learning process.

What I like about this website:

1. The website offers a wide range of topics for the learners to choose such as environment, history, culture etc.
2. The listening materials and the activities are arranged according to different levels to suit learners abilities.
3. It is free for educational use and always free to download the copy of the audio and video clips.
4. It is printer friendly page.
5. Learners can use the contents of the website and the further resources link to widen their knowledge about Australia.

I can say that this website is very effective and practical for learners to enhance their language skills. One thing that is for sure is it is an Australia-based archive so the contents are limited to Australian context only. Hence some learners might not be able to engage with the activities because they are not familiar with the content. However, this will be a good opportunity for them to discover a new knowledge.

-Suze-

Just Click and You will Learn

is a website tool which is specially designated for Spanish learners to explore the use of English language through the didactic approach to teach lexical and grammatical contents as well as the cross-cultural issues. Even though it is designed for Spanish learners, the instructions and the activities are in English so everyone can use this website. Besides, the forms and the functions of English language are taught through a variety of fun and interesting activities and games that are clustered according to the different level of difficulties. In this case, the level of difficulties are arranged according to the Spanish system (degree of ESO & BAT). Below is the example of the different level of exercises.

By looking at the list of topics, it is easier for learners to choose which content they would like to tackle. I also recommend learners to go through the lists first rather than selecting the topic straight away from the 'home menu' because the introduction of the topic ( either vocabulary or grammar content) is in Spanish. This is one disadvantage of this tool that I found quite problematic because even though we can choose our level and topic, we don't know what are the grammatical content unless we click and go through the exercises. Thus, I suggest teachers to tell their learners to choose their topic preferences based on INDEX provided and it will be easier for them to select the activity from the menu. The INDEX is really helpful because it gives us the information about what are the level of difficulties, topic, functions and the activity we have to do.

The example of activity that I use here is focusing on 'descriptive adjectives' and 'introduction to the Present Continuous'. The topic content is about friends and learners are required to remember their names and their appearances in order to answer the questions. The first part of the activity, learners have to click or drag the correct adjectives to describe each character. The second part of the questions, learners are still required to match the correct adjectives but the use of Present Continuous is associated in the sentences.

Another disadvantage of this tool is you cannot jump or skip one question but you have to answer all the questions correctly before you can move to the next one. Therefore if you are unable to complete one section, you can never move to the next section. In case you want to go to the previous questions, there is a previous button but unfortunately you have to redo all the questions to get to the current question you are doing. The correct answers are not provided so it would be a little bit frustrating for the learners and might demotivate them.

I personally am not going to use this tool to teach English in the classroom, because of the limitations stated earlier, it might interrupt the teaching and learning process. However I suggest learners to go through the activities in this website as a supplement to their existing knowledge. Most of the activities require the learners to practise using the forms and functions repeatedly so they can practise their skills. In addition, some activities are provided with brief notes regarding the lexical and grammatical contents that can be useful for learners. Above all this, the website is absolutely free to access so learners can do the activities when they have free time.

-Suze-

What are the words again? They're Wordle and Wordsift!

This week I am going to introduce two websites which specialize in 'generating word clouds' from a text that you can provide. The word clouds can be helpful for learners to understand the gist of a text before they actually read the real text. The clouds are created from a group of vocabulary or important words that appear frequently in the reading text.

The first tool of creating the word cloud is Wordle.

When you enter the website, click on the 'CREATE' button to start creating your own word cloud. You can choose your own text, copy and paste it into the website OR you can enter the URL of any blog, blog feed, or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed to use the content. I tried copying a short story and pasted it into Wordle and this is what the word cloud looks like:

You can edit the word cloud according to your preferences such as changing the font, colour and layout. And when you are satisfy with the word cloud you have made, you can print it straight away!

The second tool created for the word cloud is Wordsift. Similar with Wordle, you have to provide your own text and paste it into the box, click the 'sift' button and you will get your word cloud.

Then you will get this visualization with the most frequent word appears bigger than the others. You can also change how the words are arranged by clicking on the available button. There are also a few pictures related to the words suggested for you to choose from. In my example, there are the pictures of Cinderella dancing with the prince, which in my opinion will help a little bit for the learners to understand or imagine the story. However, if a more academic piece is used, the pictures may not be related to the content at all hence the pictures may not be much helping.

You can find another interesting tools in Wordsift website, at the bottom of the page, where there is a box which is the 'Visual Thesaurus' and a box full with the example of sentences from the text. Visual thesaurus can be used if the learners are not sure of any words so the can look up the thesaurus and a find the other meaning for that word. Meanwhile the example of sentences are the sentences which contain the most frequent word appears in the text. By reading the sentences, learners can extract the main idea of the text.

The advantages of both Wordle and Wordsift:

• The website is free
• The idea of visualizing the important words can make reading comprehension more effective by activating learners' schemata
• Can be prepared as a fun pre-reading activity
• Can be used as an in-class activity which teacher can ask learners in group to create their own word cloud and personalize it

Fortunately I cannot find any disadvantages to both tools except the webmaster can improve a little bit on their websites layout to make them looks more interesting. But don't worry, the word clouds are awesome! I personally recommend teacher to introduce these websites to the learners so that they can benefit from both tools.

-Suze-

MyBrainShark : Transform your static content into voice-enriched video presentations

This week tool is a very useful tool for teacher to integrate the teaching process with the use of ICT . It is common for teachers to use static contents such as PowerPoint presentation, documents, photos or video clips as the tool of teaching process. With the help of myBrainShark, teachers can easily add voice into their video presentations. The tool also benefits the learners in improving their communication and oral presentation skills. I will touch in deep of the advantages of this software tool as we proceed to the next paragraph. But first, let's watch the example of the use of myBrainShark tools. It is a slideshow of my self-introduction that I have prepared to test this tool.

Video presentations usually contain only short sentences and bullet points. Sometimes it is hard to understand some of of the bullet points if the slide's creator or presenter is absence. This is where mybrainshark can be utilized to add voice over in order to make the presentation of the content even more clear. Teachers, for example, can prepare a document such as PowerPoint and add whatever they want to clarify about the content and save the documents to be used later. Once the presentation is ready, it can be be shared via email or any social media. An embedded code is available so that you can also post it on your website or blogs for other people to view. The interesting part of embedding the document is it can be viewed anytime via your computer and even mobile phone! In this case, teachers can provide this tool so that learners can have their own learning process apart from learning in the classroom. Learners can view the video presentation at home as their further references. Even more, the audio will definitely helps them in understanding the content without the presence of the teacher.

Other than teachers, learners can also benefit from myBrainShark by using this tool to improve their speaking skills and become fluent in using English in the real world . Teachers could design an activity based on a specific topic for the learners to create their own documents or video presentations, and then insert their voice recording into the videos. The topic chosen can be variety or of the learners' particular interests so that they have some ideas of what they are going to speak. The advantage of using the voice recording is, learners can practice their speaking skills by narrating and elaborating the points in the slideshow. Teacher should encourage the learners to speak and use as much vocabulary as they can without paying too much attention to the language aspects as the main aim of the lesson is to enhance learners' fluency. For me, this is a very useful tools to practice speaking as well as presentation skills.

Some other good things about this software tool are it is user friendly and it is free to sign up and create account! When you upload a content and the voice recording, you can always go back to the video presentation and edit your works. You don't have to worry if you are not satisfy with the quality of your audio. Besides, you can even record your voice on your mobile phone and upload it into the slides. So you can record your voice anytime and anywhere when you have got the idea to say something and upload it later when you are ready to work out your video slides. Here I attached the links I've got from www.teachertrainingvideos.com which can assist you on how to use myBrainShark software tools in more depth.

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/brain/index.html

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/brain2/index.html

Hope you can benefit from this tools as much as I have!

-Suze-

Bookr - Blog the Book!

Is your students (or if you are a student) love to photograph? Then this is a great opportunity for you to integrate that particular interest into the magical of ICT to learn English!

Bookr is a tool to create and share your photo book using Flickr image. You can choose your favourite themes or topics and start to search for your favourite photos to be published in your photo book. All the images come from Flickr therefore there are a lot of images to choose from. When the photo book is ready, you can publish it for other people to view.

This website can be used by teachers to design tasks that can be more fun and less threatening for the learners to learn English. English language learning can be integrated into this task by asking the learners to write a description for each and every photo they have included in the album. This is the opportunity for the learners to express their thoughts and practise their writing in the target language by describing the photos.

Another task that teachers can do with Bookr in the classroom is the speaking activity. When the learners have created and published their own photo books, teacher can ask them to present their photo books to the class. Teachers should provide learners with the idea of what they have to say in their presentation such as why they choose the topic, what photos they have chosen and are the photos related to their life. By using the guidelines, learners can brush up their speaking skills as well as enjoy learning the language through a slightly different approach.

This website is absolutely free and all the images come from Flickr hence there will be no copyright issues as all the photos will be directly link to the original post. It is also very easy to handle this tool. Learners only have to choose a topic, search photos by typing in the words related to the content, select their favourite photos, write a few brief descriptions, click the publish button and voila it’s done!

However, in my opinion this website is more suitable for the speaking activity as there is a limited space for them to write the description for each photo. They can choose to write longer but the description will cover up the whole page and you can no longer see the photo! Therefore I recommend teachers to use this tool for speaking activity which the photo book can be a good stimulus for them to speak. Other than that, the photos may take time to load so it may take a longer time for learners to create one photo book and later present it to class. Teacher might not be able to carry both activities in one period.

In my personal point of view, Bookr is a fun website to vary the activities used in the classroom but it is suitable for a more leisure activity rather than teaching language for academic purposes.

Below is a print screen of several comments on the used of Bookr taken from Wallwisher.

Footnote: Wallwisher is a website which can be used for people to post and share comments or notes with other people. The wall or room is usually created by a person and others can join the wall to post and view all the comments. It is an alternative way of expressing thoughts when a group of people are having online class or so called the connected classroom.

-Suze-

Listen and Write

Listen and Write is another website which is designed to help learners of English improve their listening skills. It is different from other listening practice web which the learners practise to listen to the news. The topic and content of the news might vary according to learners' level of English. When we go to the website, learners can choose their levels and also the news they would like to practise with. They can play the audio and listen all audio at once before they start typing in what they have listened. The next stage, the audio is parted into several tracks so that learners can listen to one track and then write down the transcript before moving on to the next track until the end of the audio.

Here is the link which I get from the website, to demonstrate and explain how to use the website.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=KR&hl=ko&v=Av0XGEh-ZGQ

In my point of view, this tool is suitable for learners or beginners from the age of thirteen and above because news broadcasting is not an easy piece of listening materials. The news is authentic and the speaker use their own tone, voice and accent which might be difficult to understand. Other than that, the issue discussed in the news might be general and recent issues but younger learners might not aware of such content. Thus it is not giving such motivation to the younger learners.

Other than that, it promotes the use of multiple skills which are listening, writing and spelling at the same time which I think is quite hard for beginners to cope with. The news content also comes from various sources such as radio and bbc which might be easier for a more advance learners to understand. However the choice of topic is always updated and recent. This might motivate the learners to choose that particular topic to listen to the content while learning the language.

Because it is a free website, learners can do the practise at home and this will lead to autonomous learning which is an excellent way of learning English language. Another brilliant and interesting content of the website is learners can keep a record of their performance. This record can be used to evaluate their language performance and improvement from time to time. My advise, teachers should model to the learners of how to use the tools because it is not really user-friendly.

-Suze-

Lyrics Training

Lyrics Training provides an easy and fun method to learn and improve language skills through the music videos and songs. It helps learners to learn language by practicing listening and writing (as well as spelling) skills. Learners can choose their favourite songs from a variety of music videos. While listening to the songs, the lyrics will appear at the bottom of the video with some words missing. To improve the listening skill and language, learners would have to fill in the blanks with the correct words.

This free website is suitable for all level of learners as early as eleven years old because learners can choose the difficulty at the very beginning of the practice to suit their level of English. For example, if beginner level is chosen, the missing words are ten percent of the song lyric while if the expert level is chosen, learners would have to type in all the lyrics.

The song will keep playing until it reach a blank and the song will pause to give time for the learner to fill in the blank. If the word is correct, the song will continue to play. While listening, learners can pause or replay the song for example to listen to the previous line. There is a 'help button' below the screen which can be useful for learners to complete the lyrics training.

When you managed to complete the lyrics, you will be given your score based on the count of right words you put in and the period of time that you consumed to complete the song. To make it more interesting, you can sign in to the website so that your score can be recorded and you can compete with other learners to be the high scorer. You can also post and share your score to facebook and twitter for your friends to see and join the competition.

The advantage of Lyrics Training is it is suitable for all level of English learners to practise and improve listening and spelling skills. This website can become a very useful tool of encouraging learners to learn the language on their own. They can do the practice at home or whenever they have free time. The use of songs in learning language is a very good approach. Learners especially the younger one can be motivated to learn from the new vocabulary to the sentence structure. The variety of songs selection gives the opportunity and freedom to the learners to choose their favourite songs for entertainment as well as enjoying the learning process.

However, this can also become a discouraging factor because learners might prefer to choose their favourite songs which they are familiar with. In that case, they can easily fill in the lyrics which they have memorized. There is a possibility that learners will not choose a song that they do not know because it might be out of their interest. Thus in my opinion, there is no point of practising the song we already know all the lyrics. To overcome this situation, teachers can carefully choose some songs which they think can entertain and draw learners' interest and introduce the songs for the learners to try.

-Suze-

Dvolver Movie Maker

What is Dvolver?

Dvolver is a very useful website which can help English teachers to conduct a lesson in a different and interesting way. It enhances the learners knowledge of vocabulary as they try to use as much vocabulary items to construct the dialogues. The website allows teachers and the learners to create a short movie by giving them the opportunity to choose from a number of cartoon characters and create their own dialogues to put them into a movie. English learners from the age of thirteen can be taught to use the website as it requires simple technique of using the ICT.

How to use Dvolver?

When you go into the website, you will first choose the background and atmosphere that you prefer your movie should be. The next stage, you will have to select the plot of the movie and two characters involved in the interaction. Then you will be able to start filling in the dialogue boxes with your own creativity based on the plot you already have in mind. As a final touch up, you can select a background music to give a mood to your movie and that's it, you have become a movie director! To learn more about Dvolver movie maker, you can go to the website and try it. Dvolver makes directing a movie is like A,B,C ! Here is the link to the web. http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/make.html

What I personally like about Dvolver?

• A new approach to teaching and learning
• Learners get to learn English language and the use of ICT at the same time
• The activity is fun and interesting to be done whether in the classroom or as a homework
• It allows creativity which learners can express their idea into the form of movie
• Step-by-step and easy to use web for beginners which they just have to click and choose from the available selection of how to create the movie
• Users can embed and share the link of the completed movie into their social network such as blogs, facebook, twitter and etc.
• It's a free web!!

However in my opinion there are some limitations to the use of the website:

• Some contents or characters in the web might not suitable for younger learners.
• The content is dictated by the tools thus it limits the learners' opportunity to choose their own content.
• Some learners might take the advantage of freedom to use their own words by using such inappropriate language in the dialogue.
• It might be time-consuming for learners to create dialogues to suit the plot in a very limited lesson period.

Dvolver is one of the various tool for learning language rather than learning the grammar or writing an essay. Learners can forget about the language grammar for a while and enjoy the exploration of the language in a different way. With a close monitoring from the teachers, I personally encourage them to integrate this tool into their language learning course so that learning English can be fun too!

-Suze-