[Tool sharing] Today's Meet

Have you ever had issues with trying to get students to actively speak up in class whenever you ask them questions or are trying to hold a discussion? Especially with Asian, shy, or students that are not close, sometimes it is difficult to nudge them to voluntarily answer your questions or chip in some thoughts and ideas to the topic. It does not mean that they do not know the answer or are not thinking; they probably just feel less motivated to speak up, intimidated by the anticipation of their teacher and peers looking at them as they speak up. Thus, Today's Meet is a good online chatroom for teachers to use to stimulate student response during class discussion.

What is Today's Meet? 

Today's Meet is a simple and free tool that anyone can use. You can log in with your Google account and create a chatroom for your students to use. In the screenshot above, you can see the different kinds of settings you can adjust for your chatroom. The name for your room is also the URL of your chatroom to share with the students, so there might be a limitation to picking a suitable name that has not been taken already. But this function is quite convenient, since once you have selected a name, you can just post the URL to your students via email, social media, or just have them type it in their URL bar on their own since the link is quite simple and straightforward.

Next, you may adjust the availability of the classroom. You can keep it from one week up to one year. With this function, you can keep the chatroom open for a longer period of time and assign students to go on the chatroom to talk about discussion questions assigned as homework, or to reflect with their peers about the in-class activities. Since the interface of Today's Meet is very simple and straight-forward, teachers will not have to worry about students getting lost or confused with using the website.

Advantages and disadvantages of Today's Meet 

As you can see from the screenshot above, the teacher can post a question in the chatroom and students can key in their response to the question. There is a colorcode function which can be visually easier for teachers and students to distinguish between each other. However, if you notice the character limit above the message box, you can only key in 140 characters at once. There are pros and cons to that-- with the word limit, Today's Meet would be quite fitting for a pre-task as teachers can ask general questions as a gist task to activate students' prior knowledge. The short limit will help ease students' anxiety as it reassure them that they do not have to write a whole academic and professional paragraph to answer the question, but just a simple, brief idea that they have. On the other hand, the character limit restricts Today's Meet to just gist tasks. If teachers want to go in-depth with the task and want to stimulate more communicative output and critical thinking, then Today's Meet would not be suitable as students cannot fully express themselves, therefore, this may restrict their flow of logical reasoning and thinking. This also implies that the word limit and the lack of variety in functions also hinders natural and collaborative interaction between the students. It may restrict more interaction than in the physical classroom when students are conversing face to face. 

Lastly, Today's Meet allows teachers and students to save the transcript of the conversation. This function is helpful for teachers, since they can use the transcript to assess students' interlanguage and use this to structure and design the next language focused task. This is useful for evaluating and teaching spoken English grammar, collocations and vocabulary, but may not be suitable to assess writing ability since the restrictions and function of the chatroom only allows casual, simple and brief responses. 

Therefore, I suggest using Today's Meet as an icebreaker instead, to help students open up and warm up to their peers, and to help them feel comfortable expressing themselves with other colleagues. Today's Meet may possibly be a good support for the teachers to encourage students' participation and reduce their anxiety as they are gradually lead out from their comfort zone. Today's Meet is simple and easy to use for digital-immigrants as well, so teachers that are experiencing student anxiety or silence may give this tool a try!

[Tool sharing] WebQuest

What is a WebQuest?

ž“A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web. WebQuests are designed to use learners' time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation.” - Bernie Dodge

WebQuest is a "design-specific, technology-rich" online program that is follows the task-based-learning principles. WebQuest is structured this way for students to complete the task: Introduction, task, process, conclusion, evaluation. The introduction is used to explain the aim of the task, so students can find meaning and the need to complete the task. The task section gives students an overview of what the task is going to be about, for example, they have to design an itinerary for a 7 day trip in UK. Then the process illustrates the steps of the task, assigns different roles to each members, and provides links from authentic sources as input for students. The conclusion reminds the students of the skills or knowledge they gain from the task that may be applicable to real-life situations, and the evaluation section allows students to reflect over their learning procedure. 

With WebQuest, teachers can choose to either pay for membership to use the template and create their own WebQuest, or use the pre-made WebQuests for free!

What can WebQuest achieve? 

As March (1988) states, the WebQuest is created not for students to passively receive information through rote memorisation and drilling and spitting it back out. WebQuest aims to train students' cognitive abilities through collaborative work and discover contextual and linguistic knowledge from self-exploring with the structured process to scaffold them into the right steps to complete the task and achieve the anticipated outcomes. When students use WebQuest to learn English, they "transform information into something else: a cluster that maps out the main issues, a comparison, a hypothesis, a solution, etc."*


"The goal then, and now, was to create lessons that make good use of the web, engage learners in applying higher level thinking to authentic problems, and use everyone's time well." - Bernie Dodge, founder of WebQuest 

By using WebQuest, students will not feel too overwhelmed because it does not straight away expect them to be fully independent and autonomous in finding their own information. Not only does the clear instructions of each procedure scaffold students to completing the task, the sources provided also prevents students from feeling overwhelmed by the unlimited and wide ranged sources on the internet. The pre-selected authentic texts gives students confidence for being able to read and work with useful and real-life material for meaningful purpose, such as finding information to learn more about a social issue. 

Students may also use these pre-selected materials as a reference to know what types of sources they can find on the internet to get the kind of information they need in the future. This guided-independent learning is helpful for helping students move on from reliant, dependent and passive learning in the traditional classroom to self-discovery and autonomous learning. 


See this link to find out more about WebQuest:http://questgarden.com/

Why should teachers use WebQuest:

WebQuest is a tool that allows teachers to integrate technology into their classroom.  it is quite suitable for teachers, especially those with limited experience, because WebQuest already has a logically constructed task planned out for teachers. When teachers do not know how they should manage or organise the lesson to achieve effective learning goal, they may use WebQuest (especially the pre-made ones for beginners) as a guide and observe whether or not she can and enjoys teaching with problem-solving tasks to improve students' English skills. Also for novice teachers who have limited experience in teaching, they may also have little experience in material design as well. Thus, using WebQuest helps them save time from figuring out from scratch on what teaching method and management works best and finding suitable or appropriate materials which they may not have enough sources of. With this time saved, teachers can put more attention and focus on the students' needs and interests, strengths and weaknesses, and individual learning styles. 

WebQuest Example: An English Holiday 

Here is an example of a pre-made WebQuest for students to learn and complete a task for a meaningful purpose- to plan a holiday to an English speaking country. This WebQuest gives clear instructions of each and every step, and also provides clear description of the different roles for students to take on. With each procedure well structured, teachers may use this kind of WebQuest to train students to independent learning with their peers. Instead of listening to the teacher give instructions for the entire task (which might take a long time since there are a lot of steps, and may potentially bore the students), students may figure out the task on their own, which may be more engaging and interesting for them. Students may also read the instructions and figure out the purpose of the tasks and selecting roles on their own pace, so they will not feel stressed when they are trying to keep up with the teacher's instructions.

Limitations to WebQuest

As wonderful as WebQuest sounds, there are still possible limitations to the platform which teachers should keep in mind. Teachers should not just randomly select a pre-made WebQuest and just send the students the link without changing or adapting anything and just sit back; teachers should look over the WebQuest and see if there are any weaknesses or loopholes that need to be supplemented or amended. 

First of all, teachers should check the links selected in the tasks to see if it is appropriate and suitable for their particular learning group. Not all links chosen will fit the needs and level of every learning group. Also, the context of the links may not be culturally or socially acceptable in every group as well. Thus, if teachers do find something inappropriate for their learning setting, it's best for them to find different links as a replacement to meet students' needs and interests. 

Another limitation to WebQuest is that if teachers want to use pre-made WebQuests, they cannot directly revise anything on the link. Everything is already set, so it is difficult for teachers to use the link to directly adapt it to match the teachers' teaching aims. The teacher might possibly need to create one on her own and use the pre-made WebQuest for referencing or as a template instead. 

Lastly, when students are working on the collaborative task simultaneously, it is quite difficult for teachers to monitor every step they are doing. If the teacher is monitoring group A and then group B does a step wrong or misses a step without realising, it may be difficult or may take time for the teacher to realise and help trace back where the problem came from. This might waste more precious class time and may even cause teachers to delay their teaching agenda even more. 

Therefore, there are many strong benefits for teachers to use WebQuest to facilitate discovery, tasked-based, and communicative learning. However, teachers should also be mindful of how to integrate WebQuest to their lesson to help enforce their teaching focus, not as a complete replacement that may blur the learning outcomes the teacher expects to gain out of students. 


* cited: http://www.internet4classrooms.com/why_webquest.htm

[Tool sharing] Breaking News English

Have you ever felt that there is not a single textbook in the world that completely suits your teaching and learners' needs? Do you often have other ideas and authentic materials that you want to use to supplement your coursebook but you just don't have the time to design them? Fear not, as Sean Banville's ready made lessons and exercises on Breaking News English have you covered!

Breaking News English is an English teaching website that provides articles and exercises relating to current issues and topics. Each article is graded from level 0 to level 6. This is very useful for teachers as you can select the difficulty that suits your learner's level. Here is a table that gives you a clearer idea of the range of difficulty for each level.

LISTENING 

1. GRADED AUDIO CLIPS 

Not only are the reading passages on Breaking News English graded, the listening clips are also provided in different paces and accents to fit students' needs. If students have trouble listening to native speakers, then the teacher may use the "slowest" or "slower" audio clips to practice their listening skills, and gradually move up to the faster paces as they have a better understanding of the content. 

Using the graded audio clips is very useful for learners to observe and pick up the correct pronunciation and natural intonation. Since native-speakers normally do not speak at the "slower" or "medium" pace, having the "fastest" paced clip provides more authentic and natural practice and prepares students to interact in a real-life setting. 

2. ACCENTS 

Many learners also have trouble understanding different accents, especially British accent since most listening materials used in English classrooms are based on American accent. Having audio clips of different accents available is very beneficial for students' listening skills, especially if the teacher is non-native or the class is from an EFL setting. 

As students are exposed to different accents, their listening abilities will become less rigid as they can pick up on different varieties of English speaking. This may also reduce the discrepancy between the English language used in the classroom and English language used in the real world. 

3. MP3 FILES 

A helpful function Breaking News English provides is for teachers and learners to download the audio clip as MP3 files. We can never take technology and the internet for granted; sometimes the wifi disconnects when we need it most and it's quite troublesome for teachers, especially novice teachers, to have to come up with alternative exercises on the top of their head. To prevent such disaster from happening, teachers may download the MP3 files beforehand as back up and to ensure smoother progression of the lesson. 

Another advantage of having the MP3 files is that learners, especially autonomous learners, can save the MP3 files on their smartphones or tablets and listen to them when they're commuting to school or on a lunch break. Listening skills is difficult for learners of EFL context to enhance since they do not have much exposure to the L2 outside of the classroom. Hence, this function is a great boost for learners to become proficient listeners. 

EXERCISES 

Banville designs over 40 different types of exercises that go with each article that covers all of the four skills, spelling, grammar, pre and post reading exercises and many more (the categories may vary according to level). The reason why there are so many exercises for each article is that it is the total amount of exercises created for the topic, and different tasks fall under different levels according its difficulty. 

Russell Stannard suggests teachers to be selective; he states that he usually only goes over three exercises from the site in one class. Therefore, it is important for the teacher to keep her teaching aim and focus in mind while she is selecting the exercises for her students.

Clear instructions for each exercise are provided at the top of the page, which saves time for teachers figuring out how to use the exercise and the underpinning learning goals. This is also helpful for autonomous learners that want to study English on their own time but do not have a teacher to guide them. 

There are so many exercises provided on Breaking News English that it makes adapting textbook materials or supplementing courses for teachers a lot easier and is a lot more time efficient! Teachers won't have to spend time creating the worksheets on Word, searching for templates and content! The exercises on Breaking News English serves as a good guideline for novice teachers that do not have enough experience in designing effective and purposeful exercises. Using the exercises from the site may give them more ideas into teaching. 

Flexibility- Online exercises or print PDF worksheets 

Another useful function Banville has blessed EFL/ESL teachers with is the downloadable PDF file of the exercises! As I have mentioned earlier, you can't expect the internet to be working all the time! You can just print the PDF files as worksheets for a back up plan or when there are insufficient devices in the classroom! 

 There are so many exercises and possibilities for teachers to utilize into the classroom, but today  I will just focus on the two exercises recommended by Stannard-- Text Jumble and No Letters. The two exercises ask students to rebuild the text, which is suitable for post-reading activities, after the students have worked around the text thoroughly. 

1. Text Jumble

With Text Jumble, students need to reconstruct the text with the giving segments of the text. Stannard suggests organising the students into pairs to complete this task, as it will generate knowledge exchange and discussion about which segment works together grammatically and the logical sequence of the series of events in the text. 

Stannard says often times students might break into their L1 while figuring out the correct order, but it does not interfere with the students' learning as they go through a lot of cognitive and contextual language processing when they read the text carefully. This would be a good practice for students' reading skills as they are not just skimming through it, but they're reading it to pick up meaning and language structure at the same time. 

When students get the wrong answer, the tool will indicate the error with an 'X', which may generate more discussion between the students about WHY their choice is incorrect. The exercise also keeps score for the students, which may spark up excitement in the class as they get competitive or determined to score the highest.  

If you select the wrong choice, an 'X' will appear 

2. No Letters

No Letters is another text reconstructing activity. It is more difficult than Text Jumble as students are not given a word bank to select from. Instead, they need to jiggle their memory, knowledge and understanding of the text to complete this exercise. Therefore, it is even more crucial for teachers to ensure students are very familiar with the content and language of the text. Stannard also suggests teachers to conduct this activity in pairs to generate more discussion. 

The purpose of this exercise is to generate students' vocabulary and grammatical knowledge that fall under the same genre. For instance, students may think about words related to the topic,  "lack of sleep causes late night cravings", such as "fat", "calories", "sleep", etc. For each word the students get right, it will appear on the text, and gradually chunks of the sentences and passage will formulate. It gets harder as students use up most of the vocabulary words they know. Students may guess the words from the context and trigger their collocation awareness, which may also stimulate more higher thinking discussion and higher discourse analysis between students. 

The incorrect words inserted in the bar by students will appear on the side. This is worth noting for teachers, as they can have a clearer understanding about the students' thought process and may also base their follow-up language practices on the students' errors. 

Teachers should make sure that students are aware that the goal of the task is not to complete the entire passage, as rebuilding the entire passage from scratch may appear to be intimidating and demotivating for the students. Teachers should let students know that it is impossible even for native speakers to accomplish the task, so that students will feel less stressed when doing the task. Instead, the teacher may make this a competition for students to strive for the highest score. After time is up, the teacher may switch the task to asking students to summarise the passage in their own words for a more natural language output.

DRAWBACKS AND LAST REMARKS 

 I do not have any criticism about this website as there is so much for teachers to explore and integrate into their classroom. If I had to be picky, the only concern I have is perhaps the layout. It is quite simple, which may not be appealing nor attractive to young learners. Teachers who choose to use exercises with children may need to decorate the worksheets or arrange it in a more interesting way.

Overall, Breaking News English is a resourceful website that provides text, pre-, during-, and post- reading and listening exercises. The exercises are suitable for different settings, from learning alone to pair work and even group work as well. The exercises help busy teachers save time and give novice teachers more ideas into education.

Can you think of any other potential problems with Breaking News English? Or are there any benefits of this website that I haven't mentioned? Is there another exercise that you strongly recommend? Leave a comment below! :)

[Tool Sharing] Movenote

Hi all,

Remember my last last post about blended learning?  Today I will share another tool that helps teachers implement blended learning in the language classroom, Movenote! Movenote is very straightforward, user-friendly and easy to use! It does not require any professional training or knowledge, so even if you're not a digital native, you can easily try out flipped classroom without spending too much time creating the videos and you can effectively earn yourself more student practice and evaluation time in the class! I have always thought flipped classroom is too innovative and complicated for teachers to carry out, until I came across this tool in ICT class this week. 

Here's just a brief list of the functions and advantages of Movenote: 

• User-friendly and simple template with your slides (PPT, PDF, or JPG) and your video (or recording if you wish to not make appearance) put together in the video. 
• highlighting function to draw students' attention to keywords 
• Directly converts and saves your video 
• Provides link and directly shares your videos to any social media of your choice (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Blogger...etc)
• Provides HTML for users to embed to posts
• Reply by messaging or creating your own video

Other tutorial videos on Movenote

Functions during recording process

Movenote is very, very VERY easy to use. You don't even need to create an account! Just log in with your Google or Facebook account! Once you're in, you can go straight ahead to start on your video! 

The template of Movenote is very straightforward; your slides are uploaded and shown on the left, and your video on the right. You may also choose to upload a video you've recorded earlier or found online to combine with your material; however, this disables the recording function. That means you won't be able to talk, describe of give instructions if you choose to upload a video instead of recording on the spot. If you want to create a flipped class, I suggest you to just record on the spot. 

Movenote has a pointer function that allows you to draw students attention to particular parts of the material. Especially if you have a lot of text on the slide, students might dose off or get confused of which part the teacher is talking about, so the pointer can visually guide the students throughout the lesson or lecture. 

The free version does not allow you to edit the video, so if you're afraid to create the video in one go, you can always hit the pause button whenever you want, and go back to the video whenever you are ready! Although the functions and dimensions of your video may be limited, but it saves you the stress from figuring out how to edit the video! Movenote might disappoint tech-savy teachers, but it is a life saver for those who are unfamiliar with technology and media editing, like me! :P 

Once you're done recording, hit the "Done" button and it'll help you convert your video!

Simple template of material and video put together

After saving your video- Share it!

When your video is done converting, Movenote will provide you a link for you to share the video. It also provides other forms of social media for you to directly share the link. 

You may email your video to your students to watch or share it to a Facebook group with your students. Movenote provides many options to share your video, which makes life a bit easier! :P 

If your students use blogs to learn and practice English, you may choose to embed the video into your blogpost! 

If you want to use the video in circumstances where the Internet is unstable or unavailable, you may download the video to your computer as well.

You can edit your video after publishing it!

More than 200 options to share your video

After watching the video- Use the reply function

When you share your video with your students, you may ask questions or assign tasks at the end of the video. Students may respond or complete your task with the reply function. There are two ways for students to reply- record their own video or send a message. The teacher can request students to make a video to respond as their assignment to assess their speaking ability as well. 

Unfortunately, the reply function is sent privately to the creator, so Movenote cannot be used to create discussions or collaborative work. 

Although the reply function isn't publicised like a forum, it may be encouraging for shy or introverted students to use this function to interact with their peers as they may be anxious to publish their comments or questions in front of the whole class. 

Further use of Movenote for Language learning

The teacher may also use this tool as speaking practice for students to create outside of the classroom. Like having blogs, Movenote would have a more realistic purpose for students to use the target language outside of the classroom since there will be a real audience that will watch and listen to their speech. This may motivate them to practice more, and may also elicit richer syntactic language. 

With the videos saved and shared, the teacher may also use the video to keep note of students' pronunciation, fluency, or accuracy, and correct their interlanguage during class. This saves in class time from figuring out the problems and errors of the students' interlanguage, but may also be more time-costly for the teacher outside the teaching hours. 

Here's a tutorial video provided by Movenote for the visual learners out there! :)

That's what I have to say about Movenote! Share with me your thoughts about this tool, whether you have other ideas of how Movenote can be used in the language classroom, or other limitations you found out about this tool that I did not realise!

Until next time! :P