ELT through ICT

Email, sometimes written as e-mail, is simply the shortened form of electronic mail, a protocol for receiving, sending and storing electronic messages. Emails has gained popularity with the spread of the internet. However, as technology develops, from a boring written email, main sending have develop to video mail. If you are pondering what is a Video Mail, it is a tool to send a recorded video of yourself, as if you are writing an email to a receiver. Instead of writing long messages, you are able to talk live in the video, save it and send it as an email. There are a few websites that offer such services, and one of the websites is Mail Vu. Below is a link linking directly to the website and a picture of how the website looks like:

http://mailvu.com/

How Can I Use It for Educational Purposes? 

Unlike AudioBoo and Brainshark, Mail Vu not only allows recording of the users voice, it also allows the actually video to be taken. Users will be able to show emotions and body language as well when recording the video. However, users wont be able to do it Brainshark, where the PowerPoint presentation will be played during the recording. 

Teachers can use this feature to good use. One of it is by having the students to sent video mail to the teacher as homework. Students can record their response to a argumentative based question and answer it using Mail Vu, and sent it to the teacher's email address. The teacher then can reply the video by sending a Mail Vu back to the student. Besides that, group work can be done by using Mail Vu as well. Students can gather in front of a webcam and record the activity that should be done by the students, such as group presentation or role play. Teachers must be creative in creating lessons and activity which involves Mail Vu, so that they can put Mail Vu to full use and in the same time, practice the speaking skills of the students. Below is a picture of how to send your Mail Vu to a receiver.

Advantages

Disadvantages

• If users wish to use other services, they need to pay for it.
• Recorder video could not be embedded into any social websites such as blogger

Ever think of getting the chance to see all the listening materials that is available free for educators in one single website? Well, the search can come to an end as ELLLO, the All-in-One online English listening lesson library is available for anyone who wish to use the materials for their lesson plans or simply by motivating the students to learn English on their free time, in school or at home. There are a few sections available for the viewers to view, hear and use for any lessons: Views (general/culture), Games, Mixer, Videos, News etc. This sections are well organized by the top right side of the website, and viewers will be able to explore the website with ease. Below is the link to this awesome website, and a picture of the front page of the website:

http://www.elllo.org/english/home.htm




Convienient as it is, the categories are lined up in a horizontal way, making it easy for the viewers to choose from:

1. Views

In this category, there are recorded conversation based on various topics. Along with the topics and recorded audio, there will be transcription available for the viewers to view in order to have a better understanding of  the  conversation, as both listening and reading skills are involved in the learning process. There will be quizzes as well for the viewers to complete as a practice based on the focus of the recorded audio. The greatest criteria for this category, which may exist in other categories as well, is there are video responses with subtitles included, as a response to the recorded audio. Not only the video response tool is a great way to comment, but other viewers can listen to other people opinion based on the first person point of view. By doing so, students may increase their motivation to speak, as viewers may notices that there are various accents of English included in this website, and not every sentence uttered is grammatical correct. This may cause awareness, especially to second language learners, that speaking English is not always about uttering the correct sentences straight out from a book, but having the courage to speak up and learn the language.

2. Mixer

This category is special as all the recorded audio is based on various accents. Hence, the listening activity may be a little bit tough for students as they need to adapt the different accents of English language all around the world. But it will be a great and interesting activity because it will be so much fun to hear different accents speaking on the same topic. There are transcription at the bottom of the recorded audio, with Audio Elaborator for vocabulary found in the transcription. There are quizzes and comprehension questions available for practice.

3. Games

For the Games category, it almost have the same function as Views has, however, the difference lies on the task provided. If any viewers explore this category, they will notice that this category will primarily focus on 3 language aspects, which is vocabulary, reading and speaking quizzes. These activities may prove to be useful for beginners of English language learners as it will scaffold learners in learning English.

4. News.

In the News section, viewers will notice that there are only two different accents of English found, which is UK and US English. Learners will have the choice of choosing over 20 broadcasts to play, together with listening questions based on the recorded video. There are too vocabulary questions available for learners to answer and learn.


These are the four main sections which i found may draw teachers and learners attention in learning English using ELLLO. Students as low as primary schools will be able to listen and complete questions based on the recorded audio or video, but teachers need to monitor all the students, as they may have problems with vocabulary. Teachers themsleves can make full use of the website to design a listening activity for the students in the classroom or simply by giving them the topic based on the category chosen and labelled it as homework to do. But these may cause problems as not every child has computers or internet connection in their residence, so the best is by making it as a listening lesson plan.

Advantages

There are a number of advantages for this website. The advantages are as follow:

• It's free
• There a number of categories to choose from
• Quizzes and listening questions are included
• Hearing different accents of English
• Personalization - teachers and learners get to choose with topic interest them the most
• As a support website for designing lesson plans
• Autonomous learning
• Provide a purpose for the students to listening, read, answers the questions and learn the language
• One of CLIL websites

If you are satisfied with you recording, press 'Happy/ Add a title' button, and it will lead to the next page, which is the picture above. In this page, you can add a title to your recording. Besides that, you can insert some labels, regarding to what categories you recording. Below is a podcast of my blog:

Teachers can record lots of podcast for students to listen to. Students can listen to these podcast in the school, at home, for any specific reason, such as revising to what the teacher had taught, or listen back to what the teacher have to explain about a lesson of literature in class. By providing such teaching aid to students, teaching language maybe easier as language can be learned not only in the classroom or ICT classroom, but students can excess to the teaching talking lessons online, as these recording will be available in any social websites, such as Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook or even iTunes. Besides that, teachers can prepare their lesson plans by singing by their own, composing their own song, and making it as a listening lesson for the class. The authenticity of the music will make the classroom more lively and students often response to authentic materials.

ClicknLearn is a interactive website for different age of students to learn English using the content provided in the website. Besides English, this website to teach French and is originally made using Spanish. However, the content can be switch into English and used to teach English learners. Below is a picture of the website and the link to the page:

http://clicknlearn.net/

In this website, the activities is mostly about grammar and games. However, both are separated into a few categories, following the age of the students. Students will learn through the contexts provided by the website. For example, solving a problem in a specific situation or context, that requires grammatical correctness. The activities too include different exercises that can combine in various basic skills that not only will promote to problem solving, but too will promote the fixation and internalization of what have the students had learned. Besides that, the activities might be fun and motivating to some students, promoting a friendly learning environment in the classroom.

Some of the major disadvantages

There a few major disadvantages that can be spotted if teachers are to use this website. One of the things that i don't fancy of is, that there a lot of sound included in unnecessary places, such as the starting of the website, and some odd noises added into the games. For me, i personally think that if the programmer or creator of this website replace those sounds with voice projection of any tasks, will be more beneficial compared to some random noise. The second disadvantages that i can notice in the website, is that there are just too many texts. Students may get bored or demotivated with all the texts presence in the website. There are not many pictures included, taking language learning to the old days, of drilling and grammar-focused. Lastly, there are no assistance if the students have done something wrong, or unable to answer a question. The absence of such important aid for language learning eventually degraded such a high potential language teaching website.