Mailvu: Video emailing has never been easier.

What it is.
MailVU is a full featured video platform which enables businesses and individuals to record and distribute video content.



Who can use this tool?
All students and teachers at all levels.



How do you use this tool with students?
1) Ask the students to debate an issue. Teacher gives a motion, and students need to do the debate online. They have to use Mailvu to send their arguments against or for to the other students and teacher. Then, teacher reviews the debate and discusses in the next lesson.


2) Students can use Mailvu to talk about their most precious moment in their life and send the video emails to other students and teacher.


3)Teacher can give students feedback for what they have done e.g. assignment using this tool.



A simple guide to assist you.

This is the layout

The stop button will appear after you hitting the record button.

You are almost there..

1) Please make sure that your computer is connected to a web cam and a microphone.
2) Click on the record button to record your video.
3) Click on the stop button if you are happy with the recording.
4) Click on the play button if you want to review the video.
5) Click on the send button and fill in your and the receiver(s) details and messages.
6)Congratulations. You have successfully used Mailvu.

OMG..I do like it..
1) It is free although it has the paid version.
2) It provides up to 10 minutes recording time.
3) You do not have to type your email anymore.
4) The layout is simple and pretty straightforward.
5) The video message is only available for the sender and the receiver(s) viewing unless the sender makes the video available for public viewing. 
6) This tool hopefully can help to reduce students' affective filter when speaking.


Points to ponder.
1)The paid version has more advantages though the free version still offers a number of brilliant basic features, which can be used during and after the lesson in the classroom.


Link to the website:
http://mailvu.com/index.htm


You can learn more about Mailvu from this link.

Elllo English..Its not Hello English..

What it is..

Elllo English is a website for learners to learn English naturally through listening. It has six different components which are views,mixer,games,videos,scenes,talking points and news. This website provides authentic materials for students.

Who can use this website?
All learners with no particular ages or levels.

How can teachers and learners utilise this tool during and after the lesson?

1) Teacher can use one of the videos as listening activity material.

2) Learners can listen to one of the native speakers' videos to improve their pronunciation and listening skill.

Snapshots of the activities.

ELLLO-Views

ELLLO-Videos

ELLLO-Talking Points

ELLLO-News Centre

ELLLO-Music

ELLLO-Mixer

ELLLO-Games

OMG..I do like it..
1) It is completely free..
2) It provides a lot of authentic materials.
3) Students can learn variety of Englishes.
4) Autonomous students can learn the language e.g pronunciation on their own.




Points to ponder..
1)Although the materials are 'raw' and authentic, some of them are not really up to the standard. 
2) There is no level indicators. 


Link to the website:
http://www.elllo.org/

Just The Word..

What it is

JustTheWord is a completely new kind of aid to help you with writing English and choosing just the word. It shows combinations of words, suggests alternative to the searched words, and it can show errors which the learners always do.

Who can use it?

This tool is suitable for all learners at any levels.

How to use it in the classroom?

1) Teacher can do a word game. Student who guesses the most correct combination will win the game.

2) Students can use this tool to help them in writing English.

How to use this tool?

Type in the word you want to search

The results will come out like this.

You can link with this tool with Wordle.

OMG..I do like this tool.
1)It's completely free..
2)It shows a lot of combinations of words.
3)The website's layout is simple,well organised and user friendly.
4)It can link with Wordle.
5)It displays the error in word's usage which the learners always do.


Points to ponder.
1)None.


Link to the website:

http://www.just-the-word.com/

Wordle. Words and doodle..

What it is..

'Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.' I quoted this sentence from the website itself. They don't call it 'a tool' for reasons. This 'toy' is exceptionally brilliant. Why did I say so? It can help you to distinguish between the least common words to the most common words in a text in a single click. Furthermore, you can customize the font colour,size and type. You can also modify the layout . For your information, you can use any text, no matter how long it is( Isn't it interesting?). The size of a word in the visualization is proportional to the number of times the word appears in the input text.So, if you type

                                'football basketball basketball  hockey hockey hockey'

 into the create page's text field,you will see that basketball's font size is twice football, and hockey''s font size is 3/2 that of basketball's.

A sample of wordle.

Features which can be customised.

Who can use it?

Students of all English language levels and teachers.

How to use it in the classroom?

The teacher could use the Wordle as pre reading activities.For example, students need to predict the main idea of the text from the Wordle. The activity is simple yet really engaging(communicative) activity because the teacher will get lots of answers from the students and I bet the students (even the cheeky one) would love this. Give it a try and leave your comments once you have done it.

OMG.. I do like it..

1) It will cost you nothing(even a penny).

2) Students' attention usually can easily be captivated by fancy worksheets.

3) Wordle reliefs the teachers from stress(it gives them a resource idea)

4) It helps the teacher to create a communicative classroom.

Points to ponder..

1) You cant save it in other format.

2) It needs java plugin but it can easily be installed.

Link to the site:

http://www.wordle.net/

Brainshark- Suprisingly,its not alive...

What it is..
Brainshark is a website where the user can create,share and track online video presentations for e-learning and more. Users can add their voice to powerpoint slides, documents, photos and more; transforming them into engaging and interactive video presentations, which then the users can share via emails, social networking or play it on blog and website. The audience can assess the video presentations online on-demand at their convenience.

This is a sample of video presentation using Brainshark.

Who can use it?

Teachers and secondary students of all English language levels.


How to use it in and outside the classroom?
1)It could be used for classroom presentation. Instead of letting the students do the presentation in front of their mates, why not let them prepare this incredible video presentations at home and play them later in the classroom.
2)Teacher might want to use this platform to provide students with extra notes. This can be beneficial especially during the examination weeks as the students revise the notes to the utmost. 


OMG..I do like it..
1)It is free. They do have paid version with some extra but the free version is not that bad.
2)It can help to lower students anxiety when doing the presentation because nobody sees them. Some students do not like to do presentation. So, this tool will help them to develop their confidence and sooner or later, they can stand in front of their mates and do the presentation.
3)The content can easily be accessed.
4)Brainshark honored as Best of E-learning! Award Winner.


Points to ponder.
1)If you are using the free version, your video presentations will be made public. In terms of privacy, this is not good. However ,if you use the paid version, you can choose either to make it public or private.


Links to the website:
http://www.brainshark.com/

Bookr. Learn to create a book full of photos.

What it is

Bookr is a tool which allows users to create a photo book. You can get the photos from Flickr.It is quite easy to use it. First, what you have to do is, search for images which you want to put in your story book(s). There is a search engine (the purple box) on the same screen as the book editor. 

Who can use it?
The activity suits all levels of English proficiency


How to use this tool in the classroom?
1) Learning by pictures is good because usually students can remember the lesson better with pictures. For example, if the teacher wants to teach the students a poem about nature, the students can search pictures with describe nature and paste them onto the photo book. Isn't that simple?easy peasy lemon squeezy..

2)For low level students, this activity might be interesting for them. Let say they are learning about family tree(the topic could be anything). The teacher can ask the students to create a photobook which represents family tree. For example,

OMG..I do like it..


1) It is free.
2) Pictures can be easily searched from the search box.
3) Lots of classroom activities can be done with help from this tool.
4) This tool offers variation in learning and teaching styles.


Points to ponder..


1) Who owns the copyright for the photobook? The author or the photographer(s)?
2) Time consuming.
3) It could be a boring activity sometimes.
4) Students may access inappropriate contents. 




Link to the website:
http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/  

British National Corpus..It is certainly not corpus luteum though

What it is    

The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English from the later part of the 20th century, both spoken and written. The latest edition is the BNC XML Edition, released in 2007

How to use it

1) Go to the website http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ .

2) Type in words which you would like to search. You can search for a single word or a phrase, restrict searches by part of speech, search in parts of the corpus only, and much more.

The layout of the website.

The results of your search will come out like this.

3) The search result will show the total frequency in the corpus and up to 50 examples.

Who can use this tool?

Every single person can use this tool.

How to use this tool in the classroom?

1)Students can use this tool to assist them in writing.

OMG..I do like this tool

1) Its free..

2) It shows a lot of sentence structures which relate to searched word.

Points to ponder.

1) There is no audio files available. Students cannot learn to pronounce the words.

2) There are too many sentences which show how the words can be used. Its too complicated..

The link to the website.

http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

Listen and write:A review from me

What it is..
As the title suggests, the learners ought to listen to the news and write it back.  There are plenty of language exercises ,suitable for secondary school students (age 13 and above) and students of all English language levels.

                     You might want to watch this video to get some ideas about this website.

How to use this website in the classroom.
You can ask students to choose one video which suits their level and do the activity with a partner. Write the students final score on the blackboard. Usually, students would be tempted to be the high scorer and this would help to increase their concentration when doing the task.


OMG..I do like it.
1) Its free. There is no need for credit card.


2) Its fun, believe me. You can try one of the activities and tell me about it.


3) It can help to enhance students' vocabulary. Students can learn new words and different structure of the sentences if they do the activities.

                 I tried on one of the activities. Just wanna give you an overview though.

Points to ponder.
1) Some of the sources have not been validated. This is because, all the subscribers can upload their own audio clip on the website. Therefore, we can say that some of the audio clips are not up to the academic standard.


2)Then again, like my previous post, this website requires internet access and computer. Thus, if the students do not have one of these or both, they could not do the activity.


3) The idea of linking Facebook to this website could be good or bad. As we know, the majority of Facebook users are teenagers . Therefore, the students might be distracted and the learning process could be disrupted.

The Facebook button.

Link to the website:

http://www.listen-and-write.com/

Lyrics training. Using music to learn or to teach foreign language.

What it is..

Lyrics Training is another FREE website which allow the learners to learn and improve foreign language skills through the music videos and lyrics of their favorite songs. The idea of using songs to teach the learners is quite good because most of the songs are popular and the learners should enjoy it. 

Learners can choose the game mode according to their level.

The activity is available in 7 languages.

Who can use it..
The activity suits all levels of English proficiency (If the learners want to learn English) and age because they can choose the difficulty based on their current ability.


How to use this tool in the classroom..
The students can do the activity on their own. The teacher should roam in case the students need some help.


OMG..I do like it.
1)What more can I say? Music and learners are meant to be together. I guarantee, there are no learners who do not like music in their whole life. Come on.. Its music. While they are listening to the music, they will learn language(new set of vocabulary,sentence structure & etc). They also need to type in the lyrics so that the music would not stop playing. See,that is the trick to make them stay focus on this activity.

This is how the activity looks like.

2) This website provides the teacher and learners with plenty of resources. Jason Mraz,Bruno Mars, even ABBA are available on this website playlist. Hence, learners can choose the materials by themselves ( They would choose the songs which they like to hear.  How do I know? because I used to be a student :) )




Points to ponder.
1) One of the disadvantages which I noticed is, it is impossible for the teacher to check the students' performances based on this activity alone. The teacher would not know whether the students do the activity by themselves because the students who do not wish to do the activity on the first place might find another alternative way to complete the task such as searching the lyrics on Google. This is not good,innit?


2) Then again, like the problem from my previous post, students who do not have a computer or internet connection in their house might not be able to do the activity. Though, the teacher could do the activity in the classroom, due to the time constraint, it wont be necessary for the class to spend two periods on this activity.


The link to this website:
lyrics training

Dvolver:Flash video in the classroom

What it is..

The activity in this website makes language learning in or outside the classroom become more entertaining.   The layout is so simple and easy to assess(I guarantee you will find it hard to browse the website if your age is more than 50-year old)  , the characters are limited which is not a good point (you are allowed to use up to two characters per movie) and also there are only six boxes which the learners could put the dialogue for the characters.The most IMPORTANT point though, this website will cost you nothing.....Its FREE!!!(I know you will be extremely glad to hear that.Yes,I know. Don't hide your feeling..Say 'YEAH!!!!!')

I made this video specially for you to show how it works..

Who can use it..
Assessing the website from its layout and content, I would say this website is suitable for elementary school students who have a pretty decent language level and it could be useful for lower secondary school students who have basic command of language.

How to use it in the classroom.
It is good to use the tool when your aim is to teach them sentence construction. If your classroom has computers, then you can ask them to create a movie using the tool and later on, you can discuss the structure of the sentences which they use as dialogues. However, if your classroom does not have any computers, then you can ask the students to do the  movie as a homework and send it to your email.

OMG..I do like it.

1)  It gives students chances to develop their creativity in using language.

This website allow the learners to play with words. Learners need to fill in the boxes with dialogues. Thus, this activity could help the learners to enhance their vocabulary(by using adjective to describe the character etc) and also give them a platform to practice their writing.

2)  It makes language learning fun.

Its really fun. For your information, I tried the activity and I could not let my eyes off from my computer screen.  This is a good news for teachers.  Instead of doing drilling aka boring activity, why not trying something new and refreshing to make language learning fun? Mind you, you will be completely 'out of date' (unnecessary adjective which I love to overuse it) if you don't wanna use the activity from this website to teach the learners. Steven Spielberg used this website to create several characters like Anakin Skywalker for Star Wars(did he do that?Nay,I was joking).

3)  Autonomous learners will surely love this website.

What more can I say? The learners can create a movie, and send it to anyone that they want  ( Ask them to send it to Steven Spielberg. It is worth a try). Surely for students who like to do the learning on their own, it will help to keep them busy.

Points to ponder.
1)  The boxes for dialogues are quite limited. 

Let say if the learners want to put more than 6 dialogues, why not let them do that? Lift the restriction and let their creativity drive you crazy.

2)  One issue which I would like to point out is this activity needs an internet connection and a computer. 

In Malaysia, most of the learners have computers at home but the internet connection could be an issue here. So, learners who do not have one of the resources could struggle to do the activity at home.

Well, despite the disadvantages, this activity worth a try for teachers who short on ideas  (Not you though =) ) and for learners who want to learn the language in different way. I bet you're gonna love it..


Link to the website:
http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/make.html