Games, Simulations, Virtual Environments

               This week I will introduce two game sites and a virtual environment that would benefit Adult English Language Learners.

               WordBuster is an educational word creation / spelling game for people of any age who enjoy challenging their vocabulary retention. Players need to write as many words as they can starting with the 3-letter prefixes in 1 minute. You score more points if you can find longer and better words, which would be a great game using the mobile phones in class. Learners can be paired up and asked to compete each other using their mobile phones. At the end of the game, the teacher might ask which words they have thought of and those words are written on the board. The game also improves learners’ spelling as it tells you that it’s incorrect. You may try this game at http://www.learn4good.com/games/words/englishvocabularybuilding.htm.

            The Lord of the Flies, one of the true classics that can lead to great class discussion, has an educational game which can be found at http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/literature/golding/about.html. The writer, William Golding, was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today" (nobelprize.org, 2012). It could be done with Advanced ESL/EFL learners after they have read the book. They could do it individually to refresh their memories about the characters and reminded of the analytical aspects of the book. Or it could be done in groups competing with other groups and the discussion starts from there.

              Moviestorm is a virtual environment where the charactersare controlled by you as the producer.  It allows you to create your characters, place the characters on the set, move and interact with each other, change their mood , place camerasaround the set to film the action from different places, and record script fo them. Finally, the final movie can be put on the web to be shared with anyone. It would be a great group project for students. They could be asked to choose a theme and write a script for it using the vocabulary necessary for it. Or they can be asked to use recently studied structures in their dialogues. These animated movies can be shared on the class blog, or social networking site and learners could vote for the best one. They serve as a great tool for making presentation more effective and fun. Teachers can prepare mini tutorials on grammatical structures and present them to introduce them. Or they can write dialogues between celebrities, or politicians to start a discussion on current news. They would also liven up the dull dialogues in the coursebooks. Learners can share the listenings in the coursebook and choose their characters, read them, play with their actions and change the moods according to the feelings they would like to give. You may find many sample movies, lesson plans, and comments of educators who use them on http://www.moviestorm.co.uk/hub/movies

 

References:

"The Nobel Prize in Literature 1983". Nobelprize.org.29 Nov 2012

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1983/index.html.

Mobile Learning Technologies

Creating a podcast using your mobile devices is very easy. Podcasts serve as great listening and speaking opportunities for learners of all ages.  Audioboo is both a simple podcasting website and an application for İpads, Androids and Nokia phones, which makes recording available anywhere anytime. It allows learners to make their digital recording either by uploading one from their computer or record it using the recording button on the site. You may choose to publish it publicly or send privately as audio messages. I can incorporate this technology when communicating with my learners for giving feedback on both written work and their podcasts, making announcements, reminders, and giving assignments such as dictation activities.  Learners can create and listen to podcasts on any topic of their interest. Teachers can easily prepare comprehension questions related to the podcasts that may appeal to their learners interests. Learners can make comments on the podcasts they listen to. One great example of having them record their own is news stories. Nik Peachley (n.d) suggests having learners brainstorm news stories they heard recently and go online to do research to gather more information. Then the teacher goes over the structure of a new story in terms of the way main points are given by the anchorman, interviews with a witness and summary of the main points to the studio anchorman. Learners can be asked to write their news stories for the educator to give feedback before they record them. Groups could be asked to listen to two groups and leave a written or an oral message.  You may explore this site on www.audioboo.com

www.listen-and-write.com  is a great dictation site that does not require registration unless you want to track your students’ progress and make your recordings. It allows learners to dictate any recording either their teacher's own recording or the songs, news items, and the like the site offers. If it's the teacher's, then the teacher needs to add the transcript of the audio and split it into sentences. Then the computer breaks the dictation into chunks giving a hint if the learner gets stuck, and repeats them until the student has completed the sentence.  I could use this software in the call lab at the presentation stage of my grammar lessons. I could have them dictate a paragraph where target structures are introduced. They can discover the use and the meaning of them after the dictation exercise. Also, learners can choose the recordings such as their favorite songs or speeches of famous people or upload their own for their friends.  Some of the existing recordings are placed into different levels, so students can choose one according to their level of English.

References:

Peachey, N (n.d). Tech Tool for Teachers: Podcasting. Creating a News Broadcast. Retrieved from http://www.onestopenglish.com/8407.file 

Social Networking Technologies

www.edmodo.com

The first social networking site I will introduce is Edmodo. With Edmodo, teachers can connect with other teachers to share lessons and ideas, see what others in the field are doing in class, get ideas and feedback on them.  It is also a secure place for teachers to connect with their students to share content, homework, grades, class discussions and notifications by sharing a 6 digit group code. Teachers can also lock the group to avoid other people to use the password to enter the group, which is a great feature for a secure networking site. Once you sign up as a teacher with an email account you may create a group on Edmodo and give the 6 digit group code to your students to use it when they create an account for themselves. Edmodo seems to be a great social networking site for foreign language classes improving the writing skills of learners through writing projects, discussions, and debates in small groups. Class blogs would be a great tool to share comments, reflections on the day, on a text or an article read in class. Rather than having learners write a reflection paper on a text they have read in class, I would post questions to guide them to reflect on the text. This would also enable them to see what they each wrote and promote discussion. I would also use Edmodo to start debates in small groups. Two educators can also connect their students for discussions improving their language skills. With Edmodo, learners can connect to other students around the world, which would certainly increase learners’ self-esteem and communication skills in this free practice opportunity. You may find out more ideas on http://help.edmodo.com/teachers/teacher-rollout-resources/twenty-ways-to-use-edmodo/
 

The second technology I have explored is Sophia. Sophia is an educational platform where experts, and educators share their knowledge on a variety subjects such as English, Fine Arts, Mathematics, World Languages and the like. Once you have registered, you can create tutorials, provide ratings and reviews, post questions, answer questions, and also follow other users, and save the results of your learning preference assessment, earn points on quizzes, create.  Communication among the group members is only visible to that certain group so it would be a great training tool for teachers in a department. For instance, working with 100 teachers, we hardly collaborate or share our lessons. Everyone , especially the novice ones, would benefit a lot from the tutorials we created related to their field of our expertise and the site provides users with free screencasting for this. These tutorials would serve as training materials or used with learners who have missed a class. I have found so many useful reading strategies proposed and I would definitely use them before I do reading strategies training in class. I would choose the ones I want my learners to watch to determine which strategies they already use. Knowing what they know would help me plan my lessons accordingly. You can explore this site on www.sophia.org
 

 

Applications and Multimedia resources

          

      

In foreign language teaching, there are numerous podcasting, screen casting and video sharing websites supporting the skills of our learners. Podcasts are easy to access and teachers can find ones on various topics that are at the level of their students. Moreover, they can create their own podcast to share it with their learners, which can be even more appealing for their learners. Students can also prepare their own podcasts in their own time giving them the opportunity to record as many times as they would like, reflecting their interests, personality, and leaving room for improving themselves.

The podcasting tool that would benefit language learners is Voice Thread. Voice Thread offers many options for a language class. Reflections, projects, topic discussions can be done with voice thread. Learners can make effective presentations by including voice, video and text explanations. Using media allows language learners to express their ideas more effectively. All they have to do after they create their voice thread is to send the link or embed it in a web page. An asynchronous conversation can occur when viewers make comments by using a microphone, webcam, phone, text or uploading an audio file. In addition to presentations, I would use voice thread for extra drilling purposes. Foreign language students are not exposed to the target language because they live in environment where the mother tongue is used. Therefore, they need extra pronunciation practices and dictation activities. Therefore, language teachers can record sentences using the target language structures for their learners to listen, practise saying them and writing them, and finally compare them with the original one. I could also use it for reflection purposes on my lessons to be able to see what puzzled them, and what they enjoyed doing to plan the following week's lesson. Pictures can be uploaded for them to comment on them, which could be an excellent speaking practice for all levels. For upper levels, learners can discuss the two side of an issue, which is a meaningful pair work discussion and learners can listen and comment on them. You may find more information on voice thread in the following link: www.voicethread.com

          A video sharing website that would benefit language learners is TokBox. TokBox is a free video communication platform that anyone can use by creating an account. Then all you have to do is to use your webcam to record your videos along with texts you can add to the message part. After you do your recording, you can send it to anyone's email. You can also have live communication with people in your contact list by clicking on the chat button. Another great aspect of it is that it allows you to upload videos from YouTube creating the opportunity to discuss on them by inviting people through Tweet or Facebook or TokBox contacts. Language teachers can use it for many purposes. A very effective way would be uploading videos from YouTube and invite them to an online conversion. Nik Peachey (2009) suggests another task that would engage the learners in a meaningful way. He suggests using a video that has many people in it and having half the class choose one of the roles and describe what happened by recording a video and the rest to be detectives to take notes and compare it with the original one to have a complete understanding of what happened. Whole class can reflect on what they did well and determine what they missed in the video. For more information on TokBox, please visit www.tokbox.com

References:
Peachey, N. (2009, September 17). Nik's Learning Technology Blog  [Web blog]. Retrieved from: http://issuu.com/nikpeachey/docs/web20-tools-for-teachers/1 

Welcome

There are so many emerging technologies that can be used enhance the learning of a foreign language both in and outside the class. Mobile devices, interactive whiteboard, multimedia resources are just some of them.