Showing posts with label Visual. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Visual. 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




Tuesday, November 15, 2011

4:13 PM - ,,, No comments

Vocabulary in Word Clouds

Vocabulary in Word Clouds (mp3)

Introducing Wordsift.

What is Wordsift and the purpose of the website?

Wordsift is a website that allows teachers to insert text and play with the results. When Wordle makes colourful word clouds, Wordsift takes the most used 50 words of the passage that the user inserted and brings up Google images that use the Visual Thesaurus word-cloud web on the page. This is a quotation from the creator of Wordsift:

"Wordsift was created to help teachers manage the demands of vocabulary and academic langauge in their text materials. We especially hope that this tool is helpful in supporting English Langauge Learners. We want Wordsift to be a useful tool, but we also want it to be fun and visually pleasing. We would be happy if you think of it playfully- as a toy in a linguistics playground that is available to instantly capture and display the vocabulary structure of the texts, and to help create an opportunity to talk and explore the richness and wonders of language. " (Wordsift, 2010)

By looking at what the statement made by programmer in Wordsift, there is no doubt now that Worsift is a tool for education. By what is the usefulness of this website? Below is the link to the Wordsift and steps that can be done in the website




After inserting the text, Press Sift.

On the lower right corner of the picture above is the previous page before proceeding into the current page showed. Users are allowed to copy and paste a text into a blank space provided. After pasting the text, press Sift and Wordsift will take the most used 50 words of the passage that the user inserted.

A cloud of vocabulary will appear after pressing the Sift button.

After hitting the Sift button, a word cloud of the most used 50 words of the passage will appear. There are different sizes of the words appear in the cloud. The words are clickable, and by doing so, pictures from Google will appear under the tag of the word. Besides that, there will be a visual thesaurus at the bottom of the word cloud. The website will show parts of text that uses the vocabulary below the visual thesaurus, enabling the students to understand more on how that particular vocabulary can be used in an actual sentence.

Here are some pictures of the Google images, visual thesaurus and the parts of texts:






What can be done using this tool?

There is a lot of activities that can be done by using this tool. One of the basic activity is by using the text and images to create worksheets of important vocabulary words. Students too can sort words by subject area to create vocabulary cards with synonyms. Wordsift will aid the students in finding important vocabulary words from the text, and acquire those words for their future use. Besides that, teachers or the students can make use of the vocabulary words and images to be presented through PowerPoint or Word to be share among everyone.

What i like about Wordsift.

There are a few advantages that makes me prefer this website to teach vocabulary. These advantages are:
  • Free
  • Allows copy and paste of text
  • Sort out the 50 most used words
  • Visual thesaurus provides synonyms for the word
  • Google images provides pictures linking to the word
  • Provide the example of texts using the particular word

Disadvantages

However there are a few weakness as well:
  • Words that are useless, but is frequently used in the text, such as pronouns (name of a country, etc) is in the word cloud as well
  • The words can confusing and overwhelming, as the students need to look at 50 words in a go.



1:32 PM - ,,, No comments

Colours, Clouds, and Vocabulary Combined in One

Colours, Clouds, and Vocabulary Combined in One (mp3)

Wordle- The Online Vocabulary Tool

Generally, today's students are mostly visual learners and word clouds provide visuals for students to interpret and understand the words and language on a deeper level. In addition, colours effect memory and the brain;s capacity to retain more information. In other words, a colour picture is easier to remember compared to a picture of black and white. Hence, by combing colours and visuals in language teaching, teachers may increase students' attention and retention. Will you teach students new group of vocabulary by using a plain text, printed on a plain white piece of paper, or teaching students using this example:

I will definitely will agree teaching the students by using the word cloud above, filled with wonderful colours and word style. Hence, in this post, I will introduce a new website called Wordle. Wordle allows not only teachers to create word clouds as above to teach the students, students themselves can make full use of this website to search for new and frequent vocabulary in a text. By providing a short text or full article into a blank space in the website, this magnificent will produce a visual Tag Cloud of the most common words used in the text. Below is the link and a picture describing how and what can be done in creating a word cloud using Wordle:




1) Insert your text.

There is a large white blank space in the middle of the webpage. In that blank page, users are allowed to copy and paste a short text or an article into that space. After pasting in the text, press Go, and the webpage will lead you to the next page.

2)Word Cloud created.

After clicking Go in the previous page, a word cloud of the new and frequent vocabulary used in the text will be created. Users are allowed to edit the word cloud, which i will describe in the following step. When the user is satisfied with the cloud created, the user can either save it, or PRINT it out.

3)Editing your word cloud.

In this section, users can edit the word cloud in any ways that they desire. There are a few options available for the users to edit their word cloud.
  • Language- Insert or cut out any language that the user wants in the word cloud from the text.
  • Font- Users get to choose from a large variety of beautiful style of fonts.
  • Layout- Edit the way of the words is shown in the word cloud, such as horizontal, vertical, mix, etc.
  • Colour- Users get to choose a variety of colours prepared by the creator of Wordle to use for the vocabulary in the word cloud, or the users can edit the colours of the word cloud by selecting the colours manually.

Below are a few beautiful examples of word clouds:





Is it useful in teaching language in a language classroom?

Wordle is basically link to vocabulary, so it has a direct link to language teaching and language classroom. It all depends on how the teacher wish to teach the students and also the level of the students. However, the level of students is usually related to the level of the text inserted to make the word cloud. The word cloud can be used in language teaching in many ways. Educators can use it to teach it through traditional way of teaching, such as having the students to define or explain to each other each vocabulary in the word cloud. This activity can be done as a post-reading activity, at the very end of the lesson. Besides the traditional way of teaching students language using Wordle, these are some other ways that a teacher can use to teach using word clouds:
  • Have the students to create a Wordle themselves as an ice breaking activity.
  • The teacher could assign each group of students of what they are about to study and have them come up with as many facts as they can. After writing down their words, they can present their Wordle to the class and compared with other groups.
  • Students are required to create a Wordle from a reading assignment to use as a pre-reading activity.
  • Give students a specific topic, such as 'friendship' and have all the students to use Wordle shown in the screen to seek out all words related to friendship.

Advantages

Wordle is a superb website and now is one of the most famous vocabulary teaching tool, spreading among all teachers around the world. This is due to the advantages the website got to offer, such as:
  1. It's free.
  2. No account is needed
  3. Wordle is easy as 1,2,3
  4. Users are able to print out the word cloud for classroom activities purposes

Disadvantages

However, there are too disadvantage in using this website; and the weakness is that the users could not edit the format of the words shown in the word cloud.



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





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