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-