Reach for the Star on Storybird Have you ever heard of Storybird?Storybird is a service that uses collaborative storytelling to connect friends, teachers-students and also families. Two (or more) people create a Storybird in a round robin fashion by writing own text and inserting pictures that they select. After that. they have the option of sharing their Storybird privately or publicly on the network. The final product can be printed, watched on screen, embed to a blog, or shared through a worldwide library.
How does it work? Someone starts a Storybird by writing a few words (for title and then the stories) and grabbing a few images. For the images, a few options of arts is available to choose from. All of the pictures are interesting and colourful. Students can choose images to fit their storyline. Then the other person takes a turn, adding more words and pictures. They can do it sitting side-by-side or across places. 1. Working in pairs, students have to collaborate and write a story. It can be any genre of story. 2. They then publish and embed the story to class's blog where everyone can read.
Strength? 1. It promotes imagination, literacy, and self-confidence in students. According to the website itself, 'children who play with words and pictures early in life tend to score higher in cognitive and aptitude tests later on. They read and draw more, and are better able to understand concepts and ideas. Plus, they become comfortable with the act of creation: turning nothing into something. In an idea-based society, that’s a key advantage' (Storybird.com). 2. Students are encouraged to write more in an enjoyable way. The task is not demanding as they can work in pairs. 3. Develops a sense of ownership. 4. Teachers can assess students' writing skills and teach them on the frequent errors made. Weakness? -Not that I know of- :) p/s: Above is an example of the story I made with my partner: Nuras. Enjoy!
Effective
communicative language learning may not take place without practicing to use
the language. Typical problem faced by students in rural secondary schools in
Malaysia is to speak using the second language; English. Basing from my
personal experience, most of my English teachers only focused on how to teach
us to write well. This happens because language teachers are struggling to
prepare students to face the exam-oriented system in Malaysia due to washback;
the effects of language testing on teaching and learning. Hence, speaking
skills are less emphasized in classroom teaching. As a student, I felt
demotivated to speak in English as there is no encouragement and motivation for
me to speak the language in class.
And for this week, Russel has introduced us to a very useful website, Vocaroo!
What is it?
Vocaroo is a simple and super easy way to record your voice and create podcast. When you click on the link of the website, it will straight away bring you to "Click to record" button. Isn't it the simplest? You do not have to sign up or anything to record your voice.
How can it be used in class?
First of all, there are two options that you can do after you're done recording your podcast:
1. You can send it to your friend/teacher/lecturer (through email)
2. You can post on the Internet and embed it to your blog.
Teachers can use Vocaroo to teach and assess students' speaking skills weekly.
1. Teachers assign students to podcast their journal voice recording. Students are free to talk about anything that they want.
2. They are required to send it to their teacher and then embed it to the class blog.
3. Teachers will respond to the podcast with another podcast, by teachers themselves.
4. Comments on strength, weakness and how to improve is made in the recording.
5. Basing from the frequent language errors made by students, teachers will teach in class and revise, as well as show the students how to use the language well next time.
Strength?
1. Formative assessment to assess students' speaking skills
2. Encourage students to speak outside the classroom
3. Students may have a platform to impress teachers and friends with their topic and way of speaking.
4. Students have the opportunity to speak outside of the classroom setting (where some students may perform well outside the class as in the classroom setting they will feel nervous)
Weakness?
1. Internet connection may be hard to get in rural areas
This week, we have been introduced to Brainshark. Above is my example of presentation using Brainshark. Do you enjoy it?
WHAT IS IT?
It is a very brilliant tool where people can create on-demand video presentations quickly and easily. On-demand communications involves people sharing and accessing information at different times on their own schedules, such as via email, social media or online video.This website provides a high impact and low cost means of communication. It also enable viewing activity and collect interactive feedback from your audience. Therefore, with the help of this tool, one can measure how impactful his/her presentation is. Presentation can be in power points, photo albums, podcasts and many more.
Brainshark is often used by Marketing, Sales, Channels, Training and HR to deliver on demand communications to internal and external audiences, and to better engage and communicate with prospects, customers, partners and employees.
How to use it in class?
1. Teacher introduced the website and its key benefits and uses.
2. Teacher demonstrated with the students to create a content of a presentation. For example, about their family or pet.
3. In pair, students are required to create a presentation. Audio, music or anything can be added to make the presentation more interesting. Grammar,word stress and etc. are expected to have in the audio recording.
4. Teacher and students pick the best presentation and do reflection on the activity.
Benefits?
1. Students and teachers can always refer to the records of presentation to assess learners' progress in learning
2. Train students to practise their presentation on their own, and less intimidating as there is no real audience.
3. Teacher can save lots of time especially when there is time constraint in listening to each of the students' presentation.
4. Great tool for distance-learning.
Weakness?
1. When it is overused, sometimes it might not really help students to build their confident level as there is no real audience when they are presenting.
2. Teachers cannot view students' facial expression and body language while presenting. They are the important elements in a good presentation.
3. Without the teachers supervision, students may not pay attention to the presentation.
4. Not all computers have a good sound system for students to record their audio.
Below is another example of my presentation using audio recording. Enjoy!
Today, we learnt to use another interesting tool which is Bubblr.
It is a tool that you can use to make your presentation using images from Flickr. You can also add on bubbles to make your presentation more interesting. How would I use it in class?
1. First, teachers show students an example of a presentation made using Bubblr.
2. Then, teachers introduce the tool and how to use it. Step by step information can be given on a piece of paper as well.
3. Teachers give freedom to students to make their own presentation using any pictures that they prefer.
4. Teachers present the best presentation made by the students in class.
Why it is good?
1. Train students to write comprise and precisely.
2. Helps students to organize pictures and ideas in a presentation.
Limitations? 1. Not many interesting pictures available 2. Limited space to insert the bubbles. 3. Not interesting- no music or animation
Hello everyone! This marks my first entry of this blog. During the first week of ICT in ELT class, Russel has introduced us to an amazing website: Dvolver.
What is Dvolver?
Dvolver is a simple yet interesting moviemaker website that allows users to create their own
animated movies and write their own dialogues. Users can choose the
backgrounds, music, scenes and characters from the options given in the
website. It consists of a few simple steps that will be explained further below. Step 1: Choosing the background
First, users have to choose preferred background and sky from a few options given.
Step 2: Selecting a plot
Next, users must select a plot that they intend to create in their movie. There are four options of plot given which are rendez-vous, pick-up, chase and soliloquoy.
Step 3: Selecting characters
On the next step, users have to choose their characters based on a few interesting options given. Characters will display their appearance, finger prints, name, job, age, occupations and also skills. These details will help users and make it easier for them to select suitable characters to suit their plot in the movie.
Step 4: Typing the characters' lines
In this step, users have to type the characters' lines and thus create their dialogues. Limitation of text's characters per character's line is 100.
Step 5: Selecting the background music
To add some interesting background music, users may choose from interesting music options available, from classic to funky.
Step 6: Selecting movie title design
Nearly towards the finishing step, users may write the title of their movie and also select movie title design.
Step 7: Preview and send movie Lastly, users can now preview and send the movie to whoever they want.
To see how it works via an on-line training video, log on to Russel Stannard's great website, one of the most outstanding websites for teaching and language learning through various web tools. How can it be used in the classroom context?
1. At the beginning of the class, teachers show students a short movie created using this tool to give students a general idea and also activate their schemata.
2. Next, teachers provide brief tutorial and also an instruction sheet on how to use this tool 3. For beginners, teachers may ask learners to work in pairs and create their own movie. Teachers may have to decide whether the topic is theme-free or based on certain issues. 4. For example, in the literature class, teachers can assign task to learners to do the summary of every chapter in the novel. Using their favorite characters and scene from the chapter, each pair of students have to transfer the information into dialogues in the movie. 5. As every movie created has a link, teachers can ask learners to send the link to them and their peers' emails. 6. Teachers can choose which movie is the best, show it in the class and provide some comments. 7. Teachers can also get feedback from the students on how to improve the movie especially in terms of content. Students' difficulties in completing the tasks may also be discussed. 8. Apart from that, teachers can publish the links on their blog, create a poll and make learners vote for the best. 9. To vary the learning styles and overcome the limitation of the movie, teachers can assign students to carry out role-play based on the movie as a continuation of their story.
What are the advantages?
1. Contextualized language
When creating a movie of their own, students learn to contextualize language by applying meaningful context in the characters' conversation. Contextualization is the meaningful use of language for real communicative purposes. It helps students understand how language users construct language in a given context. Language is constructed through a blend of purpose, situation, and social needs. Classroom learning experiences that incorporate these dimensions are more likely to lead to better learning outcomes.
2. Develops a sense of Ownership and Motivation Efficiency in learning is about taking ownership and responsibility of own learning process. First of all, a sense of ownership usually comes through a genuine feeling of belonging. Once one feels important and a part of something, one tends to be more motivated and desire more involvement. In using Dvolver as a movie maker, students develops their sense of ownership when they have to make decisions regarding their production, which is the movie. They involve in the decision making process in choosing the background, music, characters selection as well as the dialogues and title design. When this happens, students will have the freedom in learning and this also helps to personalize the lesson. The sense of ownership becomes greater when their movie is shown in the classroom and the teacher values their hard work. Once the students feel valued and their work is appreciated, they will be more motivated to take ownership and responsibility within their work. Therefore, language learning process may become more interesting to them., the element of freedom is taken into action and this also helps to personalise the lesson .
3. Involves Multiple Intelligence
Dvolver helps students to learn in a more fun and creative way other than using the traditional method. It involves multiple intelligence and helps students who prefer learning through visual, auditory and also kinaesthetic to be more interested and active in class.
1) Visual: Learners can enjoy seeing and exploring the characters, contexts and scenes in colourful animation type. 2) Auditory: Learners can hear the sound/music provided and involve in
discussion with their peers. 3) Kinaesthetic: Learners can try to act out the movie that they have produced.
What are the limitations?
1. Limited context
Regarding the content, the criteria given is limited, for example only two characters will be involved for each scene. The dialogue box provided is also limited to six boxes only. This somehow prevent learners from expanding the ideas of the story and retards their imagination and creativity. Moreover, the absence of voice for the characters also makes the movie a silent entertainment for the students. It may also be less interesting and demotivating for students who prefer to listen to characters' pronunciation, accent or voice intonation in learning a language. 2. Inappropriate use of English As students can choose their own dialogue for their movie, they might resort to the use of inappropriate vocabulary, colloquial language or slang. This may defeat the purpose of learning the right form of language in students.
3. Lack of facilities and intimidation In Malaysia, the lack of facilities in certain schools as well as at home is still a problem. Students may find it hard to continue working using Dvolver without computers and the internet connection at home. Not only that, students who are less capable in using the computer and internet may feel intimidated by their peers who manage to finish their task in Dvolver in a short period. Peer pressure and intimidation may lead to demotivation in students.
What are the advantages of adding it to a blog?
1. To show appreciation to students when their work is published in teacher's blog or their own blog
2. To share with other friends so that they can watch each other's creativity in making a video
3. To boost students' confidence in publishing their work for others to see
4. A good way of formative/summative assessment to evaluate students' performance
Let's watch the tutorial first! Then I will show you my movie.
Here is an example of a short movie made by Erna and me in the class. Enjoy!
