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.

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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.

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