Good Teachers Need Technology.

Adobe Connect

"... a web conferencing solution for web meetings. eLearning and webinars. It delivers exceptionally rich interactions......"

How this tool will be useful for language teaching?

I would use this tool as a revision session outside the classroom.

If fate decided that I'll be teaching in a well-equipped school with majority of the students have the internet connection at home. I would be happy to use this tool as a medium for discussion with my students. Maybe once a week.

In the discussion session, I will come out with the latest topic that we cover in the class. I bet it will be useful for students especially to those who don't really understand the lesson in the class.

Or

Suppose one of your students has missed some lessons so you decide to give a catch up lesson. This tool may help you to arrange a replacement class for those who keen to learn what they've already missed.

How does it link to current idea about language teaching?

1) Captivate students with rich, engaging, and interactive experiences.

2) Possible in for anyone and anytime. Because this tool makes students available to virtually anyone, anywhere, on almost any device, with just a click of a button.

3) Assessible. Allow students to easily attend your virtual classroom without the need for additional downloads.

4) Enable rich, highly collaborative interactions between students and teacher.

5) One type of students that you may find in a class is 'the invisible'. So, this virtual discussion might be an advantage for them to express themselves. They may be quite shy and passive in a real classroom but active in a virtual discussion.

Limitations?

1) Not really appropriate to do all the time as a main lesson where you actually teaching a new knowledge to students.

2) You don't have eyes on the back of you head. You can't always monitor students at home. either they're actually actively participate in the discussion or playing around after they joined the discussion group.

3) The internet problem may hinder the progress of the discussion.

4) Cannot pass the power to control the cursor or discussion to others.

5) The only way to interact with the students is through the chat box. Sometimes you can't attend to all the questions and interactions.

Hello hello ellloenglish !!!

http://www.elllo.org/

Look at the red arrow:

This tool is divided into 5 sections: VIEWS, MIXER, GAMES, VIDEOS and NEWS

When you click on Mixer there're 2 more sections you can get: SONGS and POINTS.

There're one more feature which is SCENES as shown below:

You can see 3 tabs:

1) Transcript

2) Audio Slide Show - you can turn on the text to get the subtitles

3) Audio Notes where you can click on the highlighted word to hear the pronunciation of the word and how it's used in a sentence.

You may download the audio and do the quizzes as well.

How I would use this tool?

Easy peasy lemon squeezy! I would simply use this for listening activities.

This tool can suit my secondary school students at all level depends on how I'm going to use it.

There're a lot of topics you can choose but I will make some adjustment for the activities or maybe adding more activities for students.

The website will be my favorable source for any listening sources.

How is this tool underpinned by current understanding of language learning?

1) Can hear variety of accents spoken by people all over the world.

2) Authentic materials: Using the real English that we hear on the street.

4) Personalising the learning to students' interest. Important to motivate students.

5) Develop listening skills - Loads of listening activities (audio + transcript).

Most importantly, it not only provide the audio for listening but create the reason for listening as well that will create the reason for students to communicate and talk about the topic.

6) Variety of topics - world & cross cultural knowledge

As in the picture above: The topic is about Korean Family. Students can listen to the audio and do the exercise while learning about other culture as well.

Kill two birds with one stone!

7) Promote autonomous learning - a good autonomous learner will look at other way to learn English and this tool will be one of the best choice.

8) Language learning is skill-based. This tool has variety of skills: writing, reading, vocabulary and listening.

9) Extract language from the context. Learning language while learning other stuff as well. (Content and language integrated learning; CLIL)

10) Let students to gauge their level. Good learners will always reflect themselves.

Limitations:

1) The organisation of the main page is quite messy and confusing.

2) The website can be easily corrupted. Especially when lot of people using this webpage simultaneously.

3) The video provided not really helpful and interesting.

Learning by Clicking

http://clicknlearn.net

You may wonder how this website work.

Well, you can try it out. Just click on the link above.

This tool is actually designed for Spanish students learning English. That's why the levels of the activity is classified based on Spanish education system.

Basically, this website is aimed to let students have fun while they learn.

I would recommend this on account of:

1) This tool is actually interesting and quite helpful.

2) It is a good practice for beginner and intermediate students.

3) It is free!

4) Printable version is provided. Teachers can print it out.

5) Combination of visual + audio + written explanation.

However, there're several things I dislike about this tool.

Taking example of one of the activity:

(1 BAT: grammar: Futures)

1) The topic is depressing. The effect of airplane crushed in the air is terrific.

2) Confusing. The pictures in this activity don't really represent the name. For example: sleeping bag in this picture don't look like sleeping bag.

3) Inflexible. You will stuck in one activity forever if you don't get the right answer.

For example in the activity above. You have to get the answer right before you can proceed to the next activity.

4) If you click on the 'back arrow' and click 'next arrow again', all the answers you've filled in are gone. You need to do it again.

That's all!

But I still believe this tool would be useful to the some extent.

Try it and see what'll you think of this tool....

Writing while listening

Writing and Listening are fundamental skills that need to be focused on in language learning.

Here is an useful tool to get these two skills polished up:

There are so many topics and issues we can choose from this tool.

After we decide on the topic, we can begin by selecting the mode for this activity; Full Mode, Quick Mode, and Blank Mode. Every mode presents you a different principle.

But, you need to choose the level of the acticity, beforehand. If you use this tool with your students, you need to decide on the level which suits your students' level of English. The red arrow show you where you can find the levels by clicking on the 'Level' tab.

After I've chose the topic, I can start by listening to the audio provided and start to dictate it by type in the words on the space provided and click on the 'enter' tab on your keyboard. It will appear on the box above it:

If we opt to listen according to the track, then we can simply click on the 'track' and select.

If you can't get what the word is, simply play the audio again or click on the 'hint' tab below the box.

This tool would be suitable for all secondary school's students depends on the level of the article. That would be our' job to determine on what level our students are.

Pair work might be a great way to do it in the classroom. We can try it once in the class and ask them to do it again as homework with different topics or issues.

One thing about teaching, we always need to think of the advantages and disadvantages of the tool we want to use.

Let me list down the advantages and the disadvantages for us to consider.

Advantages:

1) It supports autonomous learning.

2) Suitable for all levels

3) Students are able to work on vocabulary

4) Can enhance listening skill

5) More exposure to the language

6) Students can evaluate themselves

7) Focus on multiple skills (listening, writing, spelling)

8) FUN and FREE!!!

Disadvantages:

1) The news or issues in this tool may come from unreliable sources

2) May not have the facilities and internet access.

3) Facebook advertisement on the right side can distract students' focus.

Now we know one more interesting tool to teaching. Why don't we make use of it creatively and wisely!

Sing and Write

Do you think activities that involve singing are enjoyable?

I do!

One reason why I found them fun is because I love singing. Especially when I'm all alone.

I don't even care if I discovered that my singing pitch is consistently more off pitch on particular part in a song. Most importantly I can remember the lyrics. Sometimes you will find remembering the whole lyrics is useful and blissful especially when you are in shower listening to the mp3. Then, the catchy and favourite song of yours is played, you can sing the entire song without a word missed, until the whole world hears! That's a bliss~

However, memorizing the lyrics of a song isn't an easy task for most people. But with a little time and effort, you will come to know every word of the song. Whether you will be able to sing it is another story.

Memorising song can be very hard but all you need is practice, practice, practice and soon you will know every word to a song backward and forth. Therefore, I found Lyrics Training is very practical for me. It's kind a good practice not only to memorise a song but also in developing the language skills especially listening, writing and spelling.

There are so many songs we can choose from the list. As shown below, I randomly pick 'just the way you are' by Bruno Mars:

If we look at the Game Mode in the picture above (in the black circle), we can see that there are three levels of this activity that we can choose depends on our ability. There are Beginner, Intermediate and Expert.

For Beginner mode, 10% of the song is deleted and we need to complete it by listening and write in the space provided (as shown by the red error). The higher the level, the harder it get.

As for Expert mode, 100% of the lyric is deleted. In other words, we need to complete the whole song!

If you cannot catch up the lyrics or any particular word you can simply tab the backspace button on your keypad and it will play the line again.

It is quite interesting isn't it? You've the chance to have fun and also polish your language skills.

I might suggest this activity to my students in future. They will be very excited with this tool because it is very engaging for them. I've tried it so many times and believe me, it works! Once I start doing it, it will be hard to stop. Very engaging!

Most importantly, I learned a lot of new vocabulary only by listening to songs and my spelling is improve too. Thus, I am quite sure it will be an appropriate tool to be introduced to all level of secondary school's students.

This will be an alternative way to make your spelling session in the classroom variety. I might say it enlighten the mood!

This tool can be a very good practice for students as a homework. You may show them once in a classroom and practise it as a whole class. Then, they will start to sing together and complete the song. You may ask for a volunteer to type in the missing word in the screen. I can imagine it will be like a choir.

Nonetheless, there are pros and cons for every thing. There might be some downside of making this tool as an activity for students. Maybe I should try it first and see how it will turn out.

It is good to try. So, TRY IT OUT!