word sift

http://www.wordsift.com/

Another cool website that I will introduce today is an absolutely amazing tool. WORDSIFT is very much recommended to language learners especially those who are interested in sentence formation and semantic relation between words. In this application, I will also explain why this tool can bring a lot of benefits for learners as well as the teacher. To begin this exploration, all you need to do is type in www.worsift.com in the url bar. Don't bother yourself about the registration thingy as this is a totally free website.

Looking from the educator's point of view, the teacher can make full use of this tool while dealing with language activity which takes reading skills as the main language point. This tool can actually find the most frequent words being used in a particular text hence allow the learner to predict what the text is all about. For example, the teacher can find and copy a short story and an extract of it directly from the internet. Once the teacher finds the suitable text, they can just simply paste it in the box provided and press the sift button. It may take a few seconds before the text is transformed to a new visualisation.

After clicking on the sift button, word clouds just like in the picture below will appear. As you can see, the word 'freedom' has the biggest font among the others therefore, we can conclude that 'freedom' is the most frequent word used in the text. The important tip in recognizing the most frequent word is definitely by looking the size of the font. The smaller the size of the word means the lesser the word is being used in the text and it goes vice versa. Besides that, the teacher can also sort the words appeared according to how common or rare the words are used in the English language. Notice that this tool only works with English language, not Spanish nor the most romantic language in the world, French :p This tool also allows the teacher to rearrange the words according to the ascending or descending alphabetical order.

 

Another cool thing about this tool is that it also helps learners to understand the text more using graphics and visualization. In the picture below, the left hand side section is for the images while the other side is for the visual thesaurus. The former section usually depicts related pictures of the most frequent word used in the text. This may help the learner to get the real picture of how the word may be represented in the real world. The latter section, on the other hand deals with the semantic relation of the word. A few lines are drawn to show the exact relation to the main word but I personally think that this thesaurus might not be that helpful in developing the learner's awareness. I shall elaborate more about this tool in 'the positive and the negative section' at the end of this entry.

Apart from that, this wordsift also provides a lot of relevant examples of how the words are being used in the real life. From this,the learner can actually understand the concept of how they should correctly use the word. Although these example might act as a passive stimulus, still, the learner can identify the word class of the word and imply it in everyday language context.

The positives :

1. This tool is very helpful in helping the teacher to sift the text in order to find the most and the less frequent words used.

2. Once the learners are able to identify those words, the activity will definitely give them a better idea or a gist of what the text is all about. This may lead them to autonomously think and predict what the text may be all about.

3. The learners will also get to know which words appear the most and the least in the English language. This might be a little bit helpful in providing them to be fluent speakers of English in the future.

4. Wordsift application also shows how the words are naturally used in the real life therefore the learner can apply and construct sentences using those words.

5. The visualization in the word clouds, the images and the visual thesaurus section are very interesting for learners as they'd be glad to work in such fun and interactive activity.

6. This tool is definitely free-of-charged so worry not about the cost!
7. 

The negatives:

1. As always, the teacher and the learner must have a reliable access to the internet otherwise the activity may not be successfully carried out.

2. The text must be carefully chosen as they must meet the standard of the learners capability in the language.

3. This tool only deals with text which is written in English language, not Spanish and not even French so for learners of any other foreign language, I would say that this website is not merely designed for any other second language users.

4.The images in the left hand side section may not always represent the word, literally thus may lead to confusion of understanding among the learners.

bookr

http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/

Hi all, this is another amazing tool for students to be creative in expressing their creativity while experimenting a new language. This pimpampum bookr is actually a tool in which allows learners to create and share their own photobook using Flickr photos. This tool is specifically designed for users to pick their own selection of pictures by typing in the tag box: for example if the learners wanna present about "The most beautiful place that I have ever been to", they might just need to type in the name of the place in the tag box and within seconds, those related pictures to the keyword will appear in the stripe below the main frame.

As you can see in the above picture, learners can start searching for images related to the given topic by typing in the keyword in the tag box, and after that you can just press the GO button. In order to begin creating a bookr, you are expected to find a suitable title or topic for your photobook,and yeah dont forget to put your name as the author as well. Its up to you whether you wanna use your real name or just your nickname, as long as people can have a look at it and be amazed of your masterpiece.

In my classroom, I have decided to present about the most beautiful place that I have ever been to and that place is Paris,France. As in the picture, I have typed in The City of Romance as the main title for my bookr and Kayla as the name of the author.  I have also selected a background image which portrays the central attraction of Paris which is the Eiffel Tower. Choosing the image is quite easy peasy lemon squeezy because you can just simply drag the picture to the photobook and it will just stay there.

The same draggy system is also applied to all of your slides in your photobook. You can simply drag the chosen image right into either right of left page of the bookr. As simple as that and you are now capable of presenting an attractive bookr with interesting images and explanations as well. As for the explanation part, you can write down a simple but precise explanation about the picture in the box provided below each of the pictures.

The pros of this tool:
1. This tool can definitely be a perfect platform for learners to combine the beauty of arts (images) and the use of language especially for the explanation section.
2. This tool also allows  learners to be familiar with descriptive sort of sentences while describing each of the picture in their photobook.
3. I would recommend most teachers to use this tool with students in the classroom as most of them are born with multiple intelligence, in which may related to VAK, visual, audio, and kinesthetic intelligence. In this case, learners with visual intelligence are totally at advantage since they can actually express their thoughts with the presence of beautiful images from Flickr.
4. Teachers can always manipulate this Bookr to be a medium for students to have an oral presentation scaffolded by the images and a few short explanation below each pictures. In the first place, Bookr may just be funky medium for learners to find pictures and simply describe them but if they need to stand on front of the class to present their photobook, this will absolutely boost learners' speaking confidence.
5. Since this activity should involve only individual effort to create a photobook, an autonomous way of learning can be developed in the classroom, hence learners can become an independent learner.
6. Free access, without having to sign up for the website is totally amazing for both teacher and learners.


The cons maybe:
1. Bookr only allows a limited number of words to be typed in the explanation box while learners need to specifically describe each picture unless the teacher can allocate some times for them to present their photobook orally.
2. While dealing with this tool, learners are expected to work individually therefore the teacher may not be able to monitor each of students' progression. This may lead them to be carried away with the task as they might also look for inappropriate images from the internet.
3. Be careful while creating the photobook as for some unexplained technical reasons, your photobook may disappear just like that! Once you have finished editing, be sure to click on the publish button so that your masterpiece can simply be accessed by other net users.