Voice Thread is a popular online tool for teaching.
T he best thing of it is that it provides students and teacher a place to have direct interactions, and to comment by different types of media on an artifact.
Besides, it can be a great online classroom, because no matter where the students or teachers are,they can communicate with Voice Thread instantly and frequently. They can hear and watch each other to know the peers' thinking and the teacher's feedback/
Also, Voice Thread can help to record the progress of study,or even build an e-portfolio on it.
This week, I tried to make a Voice Thread class on the topic of language use in Quebec, it's quite interesting to hear myself, and see the class content I designed. I commented on 2 peers.Erin's and Yuechen's, I find they clearly explain how to use Voice Thread, and chose an interesting topic to let students talk more.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Interesting comic strip makers
Ele's sad news by Qinchun on GoAnimate
Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.
I used GoAnimate to make a little comic strip story. To insert a daily dialogue and an issue about the animal protection.On one hand,for a teacher, it has some benefits:
1. Time saving for curriculum-related classroom activities.
2. Interesting content make students hooked on reading comics, helps to engage students
3.Dialogue form is easy for students to learn target language especially daily use language.
On the other hand, for students, if they are assigned to make a comic strip, they will probably find it's great fun. By make comic strips, they can spark their creativity to express themselves. Students can also learn some serious social issues by reading or making funny comics.
Besides, I made a little video about Beijing winter by Animoto, which is also very vivid and interesting digital story telling tool. These tools can both help teacher to make classroom activated and help students to spark their creativity and learning motivation.
Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.
I used GoAnimate to make a little comic strip story. To insert a daily dialogue and an issue about the animal protection.On one hand,for a teacher, it has some benefits:
1. Time saving for curriculum-related classroom activities.
2. Interesting content make students hooked on reading comics, helps to engage students
3.Dialogue form is easy for students to learn target language especially daily use language.
On the other hand, for students, if they are assigned to make a comic strip, they will probably find it's great fun. By make comic strips, they can spark their creativity to express themselves. Students can also learn some serious social issues by reading or making funny comics.
Besides, I made a little video about Beijing winter by Animoto, which is also very vivid and interesting digital story telling tool. These tools can both help teacher to make classroom activated and help students to spark their creativity and learning motivation.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Bookr-Digital story telling
I like bookr so much! By connecting with flickr, it helps to share the photo easily. By making a digital book,the content become visualized, and more vivid. readers feel more attracted by the moving pictures and the texts. I made a book about my hometown Shanghai, I like the photos on flickr and I'm glad I could share them via bookr.
Students can use bookr to express their own thinking, sharing the pictures with texts, and make it look appealing. Also, it could be a e-portfolio to collect the information and progress of their study. I probably will ask students to make their own portfolio by bookr, or ask them to share their background information like creating a book about their hometown, their family or learning experience. Besides, students could learn vocabulary efficiently if the teacher create a beautiful book with pictures and new vocabulary.
Personally, I'd like to use bookr as well, for sharing new things or good memories.
Flickr-Digital story telling
Paris Exposition: Champ de Mars and Eiffel Tower, Paris, France, 1900, a photo by Brooklyn Museum on Flickr.
Digital storytelling is practice of combining narrative with digital content: imagine, sounds, video, to create a short movie. According to 7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling , the digital story telling is often begin with a script, in order to enrich the content, it is edited the sounds, images in to it, and it looks like a two to four minutes emotional movie.
Teacher could ask students to make a digital storytelling project for cooperative task, and help them to develop the creativity, and the technique skills, also, they can build their e-portfolio via it. For teacher, it helps to ameliorate the display by using digital storytelling which contains a rich content with different media.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Using "Escape the room"game in teaching
Gamification is the process of transferring the game design thinking into non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. According to the gaming theorist, Tom Chatfield, games, with their immersive quests and deeply satisfying virtual rewards,area a great place to test new approaches to real-world systems that need a reboot.
I like the idea of gamification, for us Asian student, study is really a burden for our childhood, and teenage period, then, playing games while learning would be such a great thing. Especially for language learning, it's a long and hard march, while with the help of games, it will and fun and interest for students to learn insistently. Game also help teacher to make a context that the learning content is meaningful and useful because the students need to know the meaning of the game instructions and purpose...It's quite motivating and challenging to insert games in the language class.
I tried playing one of the escape the room game: The great living room escape, personally, I played three times,finally, by watching the walk through, I reached it.
This game could be inserted in the speaking or writing class for the purpose of learning vocabulary. The objective of language learning could be the reviewing of direction prepositions or the leaning of the nouns in the living room, students could also learn how to describe an environment through playing this escape game.
At the same time, teacher's role could be a guide to introduce these nouns or prepositions, and also help students to learn how to describe the environment by giving examples. Teachers could test and check the understanding and comprehension of students by using this game as well.
In my opinion, I will use the walk through for the game, because the escape the room game needs a clear instruction, if not, it's hard and time costing for students to solve out. And by the explanation of the instruction or even only describing the walk through may help students to learn more vocabulary, and practice the listening comprehension. I will also use the image as well, for instance, as the following picture shows, students could learn from the picture description, how to describe up, down, under, beside...these prepositions....
For the assessment, the teacher could let students to have an oral or writing test by introducing their way to get out of the room, or describe a given picture from the game. Teachers could get the feedback quickly and directly through it to see if students really understand or
I like the idea of gamification, for us Asian student, study is really a burden for our childhood, and teenage period, then, playing games while learning would be such a great thing. Especially for language learning, it's a long and hard march, while with the help of games, it will and fun and interest for students to learn insistently. Game also help teacher to make a context that the learning content is meaningful and useful because the students need to know the meaning of the game instructions and purpose...It's quite motivating and challenging to insert games in the language class.
I tried playing one of the escape the room game: The great living room escape, personally, I played three times,finally, by watching the walk through, I reached it.
This game could be inserted in the speaking or writing class for the purpose of learning vocabulary. The objective of language learning could be the reviewing of direction prepositions or the leaning of the nouns in the living room, students could also learn how to describe an environment through playing this escape game.
At the same time, teacher's role could be a guide to introduce these nouns or prepositions, and also help students to learn how to describe the environment by giving examples. Teachers could test and check the understanding and comprehension of students by using this game as well.
In my opinion, I will use the walk through for the game, because the escape the room game needs a clear instruction, if not, it's hard and time costing for students to solve out. And by the explanation of the instruction or even only describing the walk through may help students to learn more vocabulary, and practice the listening comprehension. I will also use the image as well, for instance, as the following picture shows, students could learn from the picture description, how to describe up, down, under, beside...these prepositions....
For the assessment, the teacher could let students to have an oral or writing test by introducing their way to get out of the room, or describe a given picture from the game. Teachers could get the feedback quickly and directly through it to see if students really understand or
Serious game: Half the sky
A serious game is a game designed for the first purpose not only for pure entertainment. Half the sky is a serious game which is a new facebook game for raising awareness and funds for women and girls from all over the world. It turns online social experience to real-world activism.
The game is based on a poor Indian woman who wants to collect money to help her sick daughter. She is faced with the loss job of her husband, she has to sell the fruits to the market, she has to face with different problem from the local police and hospitals...
There's no counting of times for playing it. I logged several times to play it, and "I"'m now still stay in India (because of lack of "money"...) Later, if the" money" is enough, "I" can also travel to other countries and experience and see how other countries look like.
The Half the sky is not only a game for NGO purpose, but also it can be used in language learning classroom. For the social skills, communication skills, and the learning of different cultures. For me, I'd like to use it specifically for vocabulary and oral class to increase the vocabulary and the communication skills. Because, there appears a lot of new worlds in the roles' dialogues, and their are different language in using in different places, to different people.
Students can play it not only in class, but also after class, and they will probably continue to play it because of the good design of the story . And also, because they can see different cultures from this game, I guess they will learn more deeply.
To assess the learning of vocabulary, and the communicative skills from the game, teachers can give some quiz about the vocabulary in the dialogues of the roles, besides, teacher can let students to role play to perform a dialogue for example between the main character and his husband, or between the doctor and the little daughter, etc.
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