Mailvu

Mailvu is one of the useful tools that can unleash the power of video with the simplicity of email. It functions more or less similar to Keek. We can make video using both tools and teachers need to be creative in manipulating these tools for language teaching. Activities that can be conducted using this tool might be suitable for students age from 15-17 years old.


It is important to note that, to use this tool, webcam is needed while recording the video.


Teachers might create several activities to be collaborated with this tool. In order to get students to engage themselves into the class activity, for example, students can conduct an interview session among themselves and record it using the technology. Teachers might ask students to work in pairs and get students to firstly, make questions to ask another friend such as, 
1. How did you get your name?
2. Which character in Harry Potter do you like the most? 
3. What do you want for your next birthday present?
And, the list of questions go on as many as possible.

elloenglish

Elloenglish is a tool which consists of various activities including multimedia, free MP3 files, vocab tasks,

language notes, print page and more. 


How to use it? 

1. Just by clicking on the link and you will see this page is coming up from your screen: 

2. Students can choose which level they are and what genres they want. 

visuwords

Visuwords is a tool which offers students to look up words to find the definitions and associations with other words and concepts. It works like online graphical dictionary with colourful diagrams in showing the relations between words.


To use it, students can just type the vocabulary. For example, I'm trying to find the associative words to 'technology'. I could just type the word and press 'Enter', this is the diagram that coming up:

Learn English Through Sound and Media

The NFSA (National Film & Sound Archieve) offers educational community a very good website which has lots of digital resources like videos and audio clips that are available for streaming as well as downloading, to be used by teachers and students. 

There are several steps to be followed in using this website. Firstly, go click on the link below to get into the website : http://nfsa.gov.au/learning/digital-learning/.

You will see this page will be coming up on your computer screen:

Learn Language knowledge (Vocabulary, Grammar) And World Knowledge

Clicknlearn tool is a Spanish website which allows language learners to learn linguistic knowledge (grammatical rules) as well as world knowledge (Biology etc) depending on what learners want to learn. 


How to use this tool? 
1. Just click on the link and then enter site:

2. Choose the language. There are four languages available (English, French, Spanish and Valencia). In my context, I will choose English because English is my target language:

Enhance Your Vocabulary Items Through Technology

I will be introducing a new technology which is JustTheWord, a new kind of aid to help both students and teachers with writing English and choosing just the word. You must be really amazed in using this technology as it serves range vocabulary items, specifically the concordance. How to get into this tool? Just click on this link: Just the word. 

How to use it?

Encourage Language Learning Through Animation

Today, I am going to promote another useful website to make animation. This is really great for all users specifically the children.  It is the ZimmerTwins website; offers platform for students in creating an animation while creating their own story line, using appropriate language, choosing the right vocabulary to suit the story and being creative. 


How to use this technology? Well, 1. just click on the link above, then, you will find this page: 

Enhance Your Speaking Skills Through Presentation

How can target language teachers increase students' speaking ability through the use of technology? For sure, teachers need to really find a website or tools created by technology that offers students to practice speaking both inside or outside the classroom. Thus, I am going to introduce you to an amazing website: brainshark website.


What is it? Well, it is a website that offers people to freely make use of it to practice speaking, assuming that they are going to present something like power point/ video presentation by just simply adding their voice. It is actually not only for teachers/students' benefits but also for those businessmen or anyone else.

:: PIMPAMPUM :: Bubblr! .:.

Today, I am going to share another amazing website as above. It's Bubblr! This is a tool to create a comic strips using photos from flickr.com. I can search for thousands images and add bubbles to them to describe the images that I have chosen. To search for the images, I just need to type on tag column about specific related topic that I want.

Suggested activity that teacher can do with students of 14 or 15 years old using this tool is by first select a particular topic which is related to the students. For example, favourite sport, favourite food, places that they would like to visit etc.

The upper tab, circle in yellow is used to search for photos by just typing the key word  and press enter. There will be a lot of photos available to be selected.

Learn English Through Listening and Writing

The third website that I'm going to share with you is http://www.listen-and-write.com/. When you click on the link given, you will see this page coming up from your laptop or computer screen: 

This website allows learners to listen to news items and to do dictations. This simply means, students need to dictate and transcribe the reported news that have been intended for for reproduction in writing.

Learn English Through Songs And Musics

The second beneficial website that I've been introduced to by my superior lecturer is http://www.lyricstraining.com/ , which allows learners of English as their target language to learn language  through songs and musics. This is an interesting approach of learning as through this special website, students are able to improve their foreign languages skills through the music videos and lyrics of their favourite songs. 


How does this website work for the students?
The tasks that have been designed are gap-filling activities or a kind of game which the songs are categorised into three modes: easy, medium and hard and the activities are depending on students' level: beginner, intermediate, advanced. This simply means, the tasks prepared are for all students, regardless which level they are in.

Learn English Through Making Movie

To start with, what exactly is technology? Generally, I would say technology can be described in terms of objects, knowledge, acitivities, process and socio-technical system. 

• Technology as objects clearly refers to tools, machines, instruments or gadgets (the physical devices of technical performance) like computers, wireless etc. 
• Technology as knowledge means the know-behind technological innovation.
• Technology as activities describes what people do with the objects, including the skills, methods, procedures and routines.
• Technology as a process entails something that begins with a need and ends with a solution, involves making.
• Technology as a socio-technical system implies the manufacture and use of objects involving people and other objects in combination, shaped by the society and shapes the society as well.

For me, technology is something incredible that both students and teachers particularly can work with for teaching and learning benefits. Undoubtedly, technology is an ever-increasing part of the English language arts classroom. Today's teachers are developing new and exciting means of integrating language, writing, and literature with innovative technologies (gadgets/websites etc).