Showing posts with label Presentation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Presentation. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

9:27 AM - ,,,,, No comments

V-Mails?!?

Mail Vu (mp3)
Introducing the all new Mail Vu


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:





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
  • It's free
  • Allows video recording and sending it to other receivers by sending it directly to the receiver's email.
  • Allows users to connect with family and friends, disregarding the location, time and distance
  • Allows a new form of activity, called the connected classroom, as it allows users to connect to each other despite the location of the learning take place.
  • Allows language learning to be done at the school or at home, and can be sent instantly to the teacher via V-mail.
  • Motivates the students to learn language as a purpose is provided to use the tool and students are able to speak freely, without any constrains from the teacher's monitor.
  • Allows retaking the recording if the student is not satisfied with the previous recording.
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




Friday, November 11, 2011

10:43 AM - ,,,, No comments

Presenting your PowerPoint with a Voice of its Own

Presenting your PowerPoint with a Voice of its Own (mp3)

Brainshark Presentation
Brainshark, an online presentation technology, is basically designed for business individuals such as marketers, sales people and executives for them to upload and present their presentation for business purposes. Users are able to upload their personal presentations onto their secure online myBrainshark account. When users uploaded their presentations on Brainshark, the system will automatically convert the presentations to a format supported by the system itself. Files such as .ppt, .pptx and .odp are accepted by the system to be converted to be used for the online presentation. Besides that, the maximum file is as large as 200mb and users are able to apply background music for the online presentation. Below is an example of Brainshark and its link to the webpage:




As stated above, brainshark is able to accept Microsoft PowerPoint as one of the sources to be converted to fit its compatibility of its system. After uploading the PowerPoint, users can use the telephone or computer microphone to record voice narration. Users will narrate the points and elaborate what they wish to convey as the voice recorder records the voice of the user on the particular slide. After saving the best voice narration for the slides, the user can move on the next step on narrate the next slide. Furthermore, users too can add additional features such as background musics. Below are some pictures of steps to be taken notice during narration of the slides:

Types of presentation that can be done :

  • Add voice to Power Point
  • Narrate a document
  • Upload a video
  • Make a photo album
  • Produce a podcast


Steps to be done for a PowerPoint narration:




Number of slides

As shown in the picture, that column shows the number of the slides. The slides is in the same order when the PowerPoint presentation is uploaded.

Visible part of the current slide

The large screen on the left of the column will show exactly what is in selected. This screen will ease the users to narrate what they wish to convey in the current slide.

Voice recorder (controller)

The voice recorder will act as the controller for the awesome device. Users can retake the narration if there is an error during narration, discard useless or error voice recording and also save the voice recorded.

Time duration for voice recording

In this column, there will be timers recorded for the duration of the narration for selected slides. Every slides has its own time duration besides it.

In the final stage, after saving and editing the voice-based presentation, the final Brainshark can be delivered via a Web link or can be embedded in a Web page, for example, in Blogger. Below is a product of narrated PowerPoint Presentation of my bibliography:




You can even go to my Brainshark page to view it through this link:

Is it useful for language learning and teaching?


This website is very useful when it comes for language teaching and also sharing ideas with all the educators around the world. By preparing a PowerPoint presentation, the user is able to voice out his or her opinion on a certain subject or field and viewers can ask or give advises or opinion on the presentation itself. Besides that, language teachers can use this website to provide the classroom with a narrated PowerPoint Presentation, which may excite the class more and making language teaching in the classroom more enjoyable. Students may even learn more because students will not only listen to what the teacher narrated, but they will view as well what is the teacher talking about, enabling them to understand more about the subject being taught.

What I like about Brainshark:
  • Is free
  • Provide a list of services for users
  • Is easy to use
  • Providing visual and sound materials in a same time to the students in the classroom
  • PowerPoint presentation can be viewed by every viewers, as long as the slide is set for public views.
  • Sharing ideas to every educators on a particular topic
What I dislike about Brainshark:
  • Takes up a lot of time for narration
  • Requires constant use of internet as recording is activated and saved using internet
  • Facilities such as computers and laptops are needed
  • No face-to-face interaction





Thursday, November 10, 2011

5:39 AM - ,, No comments

Say It, Paste it!!

Say It, Paste it!! (mp3)

Voice your thoughts through the magnificent device - The Wallwisher

By the name itself, the original function of this free public website is to enable people to wish during any celebration, such as birthday wishes, anniversaries or other type of wishes. However, people got to know that this website is useful too for education purposes. This is because, basically, online visitors are able to 'paste' a comment to the wall by double clicking on the wall and typing in text. The online stick notes is a very useful tool as people around the world can voice their opinions or advises on the wall based on the main topic of the wall. The stick-notes may include pictures, you-tube videos, Power Points, Excel documents, and also PDF files. However, the creator of the wall must set to 'public' so that the public viewers can add their comments on the wall.

How can I use it as an educational tool?

As stated on the above, WallWisher is a website that allows viewers to voice their comments on stick notes on the wall. There a few ways how a teacher can make full use of this website not only to teach students language, but also to make language learning an enjoyable process. One of it is by making a wall for the students to voice their thoughts and ideas during class or giving the students time to think, and 'paste' their ideas on the wall at home. All the teacher have to do is to create a wall for the students to view and comment on. Below is a link to Wallwisher and how to use this amazing free website:


http://www.wallwisher.com/

Register

This website requires the users to register themselves for using the tool, but the registration is free. All the user have to do is supply his or her email address, and Wallwisher will send a password to the address inserted. Below is an example of the registration page:



Create a wall!!

Congratulation, you have successfully created your own account for this amazing website. The next step is to learn how to create a wall. After we are logged in, all the user have to do is click on the 'Build New Wall' option, and the users will be taken to the setup screen, as the example below. In the setup screen page, the user is able to add a title, a subtitle-text and a corner picture as well for the wall. In the wall URL, the teacher or user can insert any URL ending as all walls will commence with www.wallwisher.com/wall/(URL ending). As a reminder, in the privacy settings, if the wall is for the use in class or for students, do tick on everyone on both 'who can view' and 'who can post sticky notes' in the setup screen page.



Below is an example of a wall full with comments on sticky notes:



This website is very useful in language teaching as well as getting ideas from students. The flexibility of this website has made this website famous not only among educators, but also to the public. These are the advantages of using this website:
  1. Creator can view and delete any inappropriate messages.
  2. Creators are able to highlight important points during presentation or discussions in class.
  3. Student will be able to voice their ideas and thoughts using computers and will not be demotivated as some students may feel awkward to voice their thoughts in the class
  4. This website is free.
  5. Students can insert comments at home.
There are too disadvantages in using this website. This is because the creator need to regularly check on the wall for spams and flamed messages on the wall. The other disadvantages are:
  1. Posting inappropriate messages that will annoy or offend other viewers.
  2. Internet and computer facilities is always a need.
  3. Wall may have too many posts, causing lags from users to log into the webpage.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

2:52 PM - ,,, No comments

Lets PIM PAM PUM !!! Is That Easy!

Lets PIM PAM PUM !!! Is That Easy! (mp3)

Photos as presentation for Language Teaching
In this 21st century of learning and teaching languages, whether it is English, Mandarin or any other languages in any part if the world, the teaching and learning of the language does not entirely lie on the content of the language anymore, but is whether we are able to motivated the students to learn and acquired the language throughout their whole live. Old learning styles such as drilling no longer seem designed for the modern world, and are instead relics of the 19th century. Hence, teachers need to bring learning of language, well, in my case, English to a higher and advanced level. Visual learning and teaching techniques are one of the best a teacher could use in a class as almost everyone, especially students, learn best through visualization.

In this post, there are two websites that will be introduced. Even though both of the websites are different, the concept of using these websites are the same, and they share one same similarity, which is using photos to make presentations slides to teach students through visualization. Usually, whenever teachers mentions about presentations slides, the first answer they will give is "Let's just use Microsoft Power Point then.". Using Microsoft Power Point is always a choice provided, but PimPamPum-Bubbler, and also PimPamPum-Bookr differs vastly compared to the common used Microsoft Power Point. Both Bubbler and Bookr use real human-taken pictures in Flickers to be inserted into slides in both websites and present the whole presentation to the class when it is done. Below are examples and the links of Bubbler and Bookr:
































How to use Bubbler?

Everything will be explained by using the picture below:



1. Insert the name of the tag, and Bubbler will search the photos for you.

Under the 'tag' column, insert the topic or name of the tag that you wish to search. By inserting the name of the tag, Bubbler will search through all the pictures using the same tag in Flickr. People insert pictures in Flickr for public view and usually, they will tag those pictures with certain names, such as Albufeira, Chinese New Year, Forbidden City and ect. So, the pictures with the same tag as inserted in the 'tag' column will prevail.

2. 17 pictures under the tag from Flickr will be presented.

After the hit the search button, all the pictures under the same tag will be presented in front of your screen in a small horizontal way beside the tag column. There will be 17 pictures presented once in a time. Users can hit the next button at the very end of the line of pictures to search for other photos if they could not find any pictures they are fond of.

3. Picture can be drag to the slide to be used as presentation.

When the users have found pictures that they like, they can click on the picture and drag it to the blank presentation page in the middle of the screen to make it as an official slide of the presentation. Users can drag the pictures to the middle again to make a new slide or by dragging the picture onto a new slide after inserting a new slide at the bottom of the blank slide. You can inserted a blank slide before or after the current slide.

4. Bubbles can be inserted to insert words in the slides.

If the picture have some special part or event to be mentioned, users can insert bubbles onto the slide, so that they can insert words into the slides. This is to make explanation of the picture slide more convenient and visible to all spectators. There are three types of bubbles that the users can get to choose from.

5. Publish it.

After the users is satisfy with all the slides, they can publish it for public view or for their own presentation. Below is a example of a complete and published pimpampum-bubbler picture presentation:





What I like about this website:

  1. Students are able to work on their own and this not only will encourage autonomous learning, it will too creates personalisation.
  2. It's free
  3. A very fun way to create variety in terms of activities in class or topics
  4. Does not violate copy rights as pictures are taken straight from Flickr and users will not be able to copy those pictures.


What I dislike about this website:

  1. The aim of the lesson maybe diverted as students may search for inappropriate pictures.
  2. Time consuming
  3. Once published, the slides can't be edited.
  4. It maybe boring.
  5. Schools need to provide internet and sufficient computers for students and teachers.

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