bombaytv

http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/

Adobe Connect

http://www.adobe.com/support/connect/updates.html

What is so fabulous about ADOBE CONNECT? how would this tool benefit a language learning?
Well in this entry, I will explain how adobe connect may work for a language learning classroom. Basically Adobe Connect is the most basic tool which is needed for a long distance classroom. The teacher can always act as the mastermind in the classroom but it is the students who should do all the interactions and enthusiastically learn the language :)

How could this tool be used in the classroom?

1. The teacher could use this tool as an alternative to a new environment of language learning.
2. Students might get a little bit excited to involve in a long distance classroom therefore they'll be pretty much motivated to take part in the classroom and learn the language :P
3. This tools can act as an interactive board fro learning to take place since students are allowed to post relevant links, photos, audio and et cetera during the online classroom.
4. The teacher can also give make a summary of what they have learned in the real classroom, in other words, feedback session can be done in this long distance learning.

What I like about this tool?

1. Amazing website as it allows maximum interaction between the teacher and the students!
2. its free,in the first place so you really have to sign up for an account to permanently use this tool.
3. Fun and interesting way of learning!
4. Sharing files is always at your fingertip!easy and simple.
5. Many useful buttons and features available, they are all useful for language learning to take place.
6. Involves language skills like speaking listening writing and reading.Its a complete and 'all rounded tool'!

What I dont like about this tool?

1. Its NOT free unless you sign up for it.
2. No two way of interaction can really take place because too many noises made (during the discussion for example) may be quite disturbing!
3. You really need to know the function of every single buttons in the tool otherwise, real problem will take place!
4. That's so unreasonable for the teacher to actually monitor what the students are doing since they are all at different places.

Trial version of Adobe Connect
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/adobeconnect/index.cfm?event=trial

Some tutorials on how you would work in it by yourself!
http://www.adobe.com/support/connect/gettingstarted/index.html

Using MailVu and Keek in the connected classroom.

MailVu.com has offered a very interesting platform for not just language learners, but definitely suitable for all types of people in this world regardless of their careers. Having said that, this tool gives a vital impact to its users especially those who are interested in passing messages through an unbelievable medium- easy, quick, and free. Not just that, this mailvu also provides amazing video recording tool and it can just simply be sent to anyone else through emails. As simple as that and you can just get the message and the video straightaway!

The same notion  is represented by the other website which is known as KEEK. The only difference between MAILVU and KEEK is that the latter provides an embed code system for its users. This is absolutely amazing for students as they can keep their video for personal collection or they can just paste the embedded code in their language blog.

How can this tool be used in the language classroom?

Both MailVu and Keek are relevant to be used as medium for connected classroom in which allows students to get involved in such interactive way of language learning. The teacher can exploit these tools to encourage the learner to use the target language not just in the classroom but also in the outside world. There are many ways of using these tools, for example, the teacher can set up a speaking task which requires the learner to communicate meaningfully. In general, the teacher can start the lesson by drawing a timeline regarding his own personal life on the board before asking the students to interrogate the teacher by asking "what happened to you in 2002?" The teacher then can respond to the question by briefly explain the events happened in that particular year. This way of introducing a schemata for students is quite relevant as students will get clearer understanding about the speaking task. The students are later expected to draw their own timeline and use either MailVu or Keek to present their timeline. If the teacher wants to encourage more interaction, students may be asked to interview a friend about their timeline and record their conversation using these tools before sending it to the teacher for evaluation purposes. Other than describing a timeline, the teacher might ask the student to promote an object for business purpose, interview a 'public figure' (who are made up), present their favorite recipe or even recite an interesting poem of their choice.

The teacher also has to bear in mind that giving feedback is almost necessary in ensuring students' level of understanding of the language. the students may get pretty excited to know that their teacher is actually listening to their speaking and in a way it does motivate them to produce efficient outcomes. 

the positives about these tools,

1. Quick, easy, interesting and efficient tools for connected classroom.
2. MailVu allows you to make 10 minutes recording and that's more than enough while the Keek allows you to have only 30 secs of recording. the beginner and intermediate language users can go for the latter first before upgrading themselves to use MailVu,
3. Boost learners' confidence especially in speaking skill. It also helps those who are less active in the classroom participation to practice using the language personally.
4. If it is assigned as a homework, learners can have their personal time to re-do until they come up with the best recording.
5. Learners can also save, send and share their files with someone else from  all over the world and this definitely creates a real audience for them. Usually, most of the students will feel encouraged to take part in the lesson if they know that there will be authentic audience.

however, the negatives are,

1. The mailvu is a free tool but it only lasts for 14days of trial.You have to sign up and pay for the permanent account if you wish to.
2. The keek is absolutely FREE eventhough you have to sign up first before using it. However 30secs of recording will never be enough to evaluate learners' speaking skill!
3. The mailvu does not have the embedded code and even worse it cant be downloaded at all.

audioboo

http://audioboo.fm/

Poscasting has now becoming popular not just in the socialising world but also in the language learning world. Today I am going to present about a free, newly established tool which makes podcast-ing as something which is interesting enough to be introduced in the classroom. As all of you can see, the marvelous website is called AUDIOBOO. Eventhough this is a free tool, you still need to sign up for an account so that you can share your voice and your excellent ideas with your friends, family and the rest of the world!

Good news to anyone who already have their very own Twitter account, you can simply sign in using your Twitter account. To the rest who have not got a Twitter account, dont worry because you can follow the steps below in order to sign up for a new Audioboo account.

There are 4 basic steps which you need to follow. Firstly, key in your email address followed by a username of your choice. After that, please create a memorable password and confirm it. Once you've done this, please refer to the next picture as there are quite important information which need to be filled in. To make your account more recognizable, do upload an image of yourself.

Once you have successfully logged on to the website, you are now be able to follow any other users available on the user listings. This is quite similar to the Twitter concept in which allow you to freely follow anyone whom you would like to listen to and definitely closely  related to your field.

This tool is designed to integrate with other available social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, Tumblr and Friendfeed. Although Audioboo is just a tool for podcasting, the needs of Audioboo has become massive. This is maybe because people have realized that information should be spread quickly and effectively and they, at some point may prefer to listen rather than to spend time on reading a long article. 

The positives of Audioboo are:

1. Learners can simply record their audio thoughts and ideas and post them quickly to real listener all over the world.

2. It encourages them to be more confident in speaking the target language as the tool provides them an environment for practicing the speaking skill.

3. Audioboo is absolutely a free tool but all you need to do is sign up for your very own account.

4. Easy peasy lemon squeezy type of tool, information can be spread just by clicking on the recording button and post the audio quickly!

However,

1. Learners need to have a high level of confidence before posting any audio post as any minor error and mistakes made represent their level of language. Learners might easily become less motivated if their weaknesses are revealed publicly.

2. A great podcast, a latest advanced gadget, a powerful skill of speaking do not make any sense if the learner are incapable to get an excellent connection to the internet. Make sure you have a great access to it otherwise, the speaking development could not be carried out.

just click and learn :)

Isn't it amazing to know the fact that language learners can actually make full use of just one website in order to learn new languages? In this entry, I would love to explain about a website which is called click and learn, an educational language website developed in Spanish, and specially designed to meet the needs of modern language learners. This website is quite special since it provides 4 different language versions, which are English, French, Spanish, and Valencia. The first thing that catches my interest about this website is definitely the variety of language activities provided therefore this website is a highly recommended to all learners from all over the world.

In order to begin the exploration of many interesting language activities in this website, you just need to click on the MENU button and within seconds, a few small boxes will appear at the upper left of the screen. These buttons are actually representing the level of students and the activities which have been specially designed for them. If you are a 2 ESO learner, just click on the specific button and a few selection of activities will pop up.

The good thing about this website is that for most of the activities, the learners will be introduced to the form and function of that particular grammar point. As for the example, the relevance of using past tense form is highlighted in the first slide of the activity page. By explicitly explain how past tenses should work in the sentence, it will definitely boost up the learners awareness thus prepares them to be familiar with the sentence structure. The example of the so called notes are as below.

After you have successfully explained the use of past tense in the sentence, the learners will then be assigned with a few exercises in which purposely created to test their understanding about the grammar point. Usually, a clear instruction will be given in the first place in order to facilitate the learner through out the exercises. Examples of exercises are as below.

The pros and cons about this website are :

1. Visual and oral activity are quite balanced and students may enjoy its colourful layout.
2. Level of interactivity / clicks might be a bit interesting as students need to deal with kineasthetic learning style(clicking the mouse in order to move the cursor)
3. Quality of images is quite good and attractive to young learners.
4. Most instructions are clear enough to be understood.
5. Engagement and interest are available as personalisation is very much focused on especially while selecting the task.
6. Feedback is provided at the end of every practice therefore the students may know what their weaknesses are.
7. The flow of the task is NOT that organised and it differs in different tasks.
8. Context of the lesson is organised according to students' age level 
9. Focus on practice
10. Navigation: too bad because once you've made a mistake,you will always need to start all over again.
11. There's an enormous amount of activity available!
12. Level and age are provided.
13. Unfortunately there's no back button in case you wanna go to the previous page.

http://clicknlearn.net/

wordle

http://www.shemrock.com/little-red-riding-hood.htm

www.wordle.net

Hi everyone, today I am going to introduce a tool which works similarly to WORDSIFT but it also has a few interesting additional advantages compared to the Wordsift. In general, Wordle is designed to generate word clouds straightaway from any text of your choice. The clouds will give an enormous effect on each word, from  the most frequent word used in the text to the least one. Basically,there's no need for you to sign up for an account. All you can do is just go to www.wordle.net and click on the CREATE button in order to create your own word clouds.

This tool is very much recommended to be used with texts which will be taught in the classroom learning. Teachers may find this tool is very helpful in transforming the text into attractive and colorful word clouds. All you can do is just a simple thing of copying and pasting the text in the box provided. As you can see in the red circle, a bunch of text has been pasted before the tool does the job to create the word clouds. If you don't wanna use this method, don't worry because alternatives will also be provided. Below the main  box, there are two other options which allow you to either paste the URL of any blog, blog feed or any other web page that has an Atom or RSS feed OR you can simply enter a del.icio.us user name in order to see their tags. However in this example, I have chosen a short story entitled The Little Red Riding Hood from a website http://www.shemrock.com/little-red-riding-hood.htm. Having that bunch of text pasted in the box, I then click on the submit button and just within seconds, the word clouds will appear!

This is the example of the word clouds. The biggest word you can see is definitely the word WOLF followed by the word RED, RIDING, HOOD, GIRL COTTAGE, GRAND,MA, BIG, FOREST and the list goes on an on as they are in the below picture. In pedagogical aspect, this tool can actually act as a stimulus for the learner to actually predict what may come up in the real text, in which to prepare them to have a little bit of knowledge about the text. I would also emphasis that the teacher can use these word clouds to activate the learners schemata before giving them some space to guess the chronology of the story. After all, it is all depending on the teaching aim and what the Students Will Be Able To ,SWBAT's aim at the end of the lesson. As the teacher, the control is in your hand :)

The sweet things about WORDLE

1. Fun and interactive learning for students. The colorful layouts are very attractive and suitable in catching the learners' attention.
2. Teacher can save and print out the word clouds in order to facilitate a reading activity (especially in activating schemata and introducing vocabs )
3. You can just simply copy a text and paste them in the box before getting all the words in the nice word clouds.

The NOT so sweet about WORDLE

1. You cant make your masterpiece private once you've saved them, the whole world will get the chance to see them.
2. Students might get distracted because the colours are too colourful!
3. Not suitable for all colourblinders~

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.

zimmer twins

In the previous entry, I talked about the usage of DVolver in which helps learners especially in their writing skills. As compared to Dvolver there's not so much different can be found between these two tools but I will definitely explain how this ZIMMERTWINS can benefit ESL learners in their language classroom. The first thing to do is absolutely to create an account to have an access to the website. Once you're logged one, you can just simply click on the available buttons such as talk-bubble clips, action clips, close-up clips and star clips in order to create a simple cartoon strip of your choice!

First thing first, this tool allows you to be select a topic of the day in which gives you more options about what kind of movie you wanna create. For an example, various topics or titles are posted in the website everyday and all you can do is choose the one which you wanna deal with. Every topics or titles are usually halfway done by the designer of the tool therefore, your main job is to finish the cartoon strip by creating / predicting how the previous and the next strips should be like. Basically, this tool needs a higher creativity from language learners to intelligently become an amateur cartoon director. This tool is occupied with many interesting nuttons and various wonderful it can totally benefit the learner if a few identified drawbacks can be overcome. The downside of this tool will be discussed after this.

As stated above, Zimmertwins has a lot of functional buttons and selections which will help the learner to decide what should be there, particularly in their cartoon strip. You can always be creative in planning the sequence of your mini cartoon project as you are allowed to be exactly like a real cartoon director. In terms of pedagogical point of view, a few advantages have been identified so far.

The advantages:

1. This tool acts as a medium for student to exploit the new language that they are learning in a fun way. It is an undeniable fact to say that this website encourages the learner to be creative while dealing with the mini cartoon project.

2. By exposing learners to this kind of tool, they are actually becoming more autonomous learners in some senses. It is vital to say that more frequent exposure to the target language means better outcome for the learners.

3. This website also allow the learner to create authentic dialogue in the bubble provided, hence more practice of language among the learner will definitely turn them to better users of the language.

4. The teacher can also set up a homework task for learners just by using this tool. Since this activity might be a little bit time consuming so by giving a homework,  the learner can spend the necessary time.

5. Again, this is a free tool as long as you have a registered account to the website.

However, the drawbacks could be:

1. Limited platform to fully use the language since the bubble does not allow many words to be typed in thus might limit the learner creativity in playing with words.

2. This activity is definitely a time consuming and the teacher should know how to make sure that learners will never be carried away with these attractive cartoons.

3. This tool is only suitable for certain age group of  learners, as younger learners will be more attracted to the website rather than adult learners.

4.Some videos might also not able to published due to some technical reasons. If it is a homework which has been assigned to, the learner might have sent the cartoon movie through email but still the teacher might not be able to watch it!

my brainshark

Have you ever come across doing an online presentation using your own slides and your very own voice?? Here is a free tool which is very useful for many people regardless of who they are. Be it a student, a law  practitioner, a marketing executive or anyone else on this earth, I am sure that Brainshark will be the savior of your life in terms of presenting your ideas to the whole world.

Looking from the classroom point of view, Brainshark is certainly a new invention and a breakthrough which benefits both teacher and learners. This website provides a medium to promote writing, speaking, and listening skill among the learners. The only thing that need to be done before engaging to this tool is that you have to sign up for the my brainshark account. Once you are a registered member, please make sure what kind of presentation file would you like to upload. The example is as below:

Notice the Great Uses for myBrainshark column on the right side of the picture. Basically this website allows you to upload a powerpoint file, to narrate particular document of your choice, to upload useful video to scaffold your presentation, to create your own photo album as well as to produce a podcast file. However, among these five choices, I would only like to show you on how to upload a simple powerpoint file, add some voice recording for each slide along with some background music in the presentation.

Once you have uploaded the file, there are many other things which can be done. As you can see in the above picture,there are two main columns available. The first one is the Things you can do and the other one is the three sub columns which contain presentation properties, security and options. If you wanna manage the audio section, just click on the manage audio, with sub links;record audio and background audio.

In order to record an audio for each slide, you are required to have an Adobe Flash Player Settings so that your camera and microphone can have access to the brainshark tool. If a small pop up like in the red circle appear, just allow the access so that the recording can take place.

The good thing about this tool is that it does not only allow you to use your microphone but it also gives you a number to be dialed so that you can record your voice by phone. Ain't this amazing? Before recording the audio just please make sure that you type in your presentation code as well. This might make your life easier and simpler and I believe that brainshark also helps a lot particularly in the speaking skill development.

Why this tool is beneficial in the language learning classroom?

1. It provides a medium for learners to get used to way of presenting ideas through an interesting tool. 

2.This tool allows learners to create their own slide presentation and use their own voice to explain each slides with the needed details and explanation.

3.Encourage speaking skill development among second language learners, build their confidence and allow them to make some changes and modifications especially to their voice presentation.

4.Brainshark provides an environment with low affective filter which means less anxiety, self-doubt and mere boredome among the learner. This may encourage them to produce a better outcome especially in acquiring and learning a second language 

5. Since this coolest tool sparks a vital interest, provides a low anxiety environments, it also bolsters the learner's self esteem.

6. It makes life easier for learners and teacher in terms of preparing the slides as well as assessing the presentation. Learners can always prepare for the task at home within the time allocated, and especially when the task is regarded as a homework. On the other hand, the teacher can also assess the presentation once the learner send the completed task assigned through email. In other words, myBrainshark is definitely making life easier and accessible.

The drawbacks which can be found are:

1. It needs a very good internet connection especially in the school or even at home where learners are expected to be able to upload the file and record the oral presentation.

2. This tool might be useless if any of the teacher or the learner cant have access to the internet.

3. The speaking activity might be done consciously,in which make the learner aware of their language use. If this happen, the teacher will not be able to find the real language problems among the learners as they might just read through a planned written text provided by them.

4. Just like another tools in this blog, this one is also free of charge. All you need to do is just sign up for your own account and everything is under your control.

http://www.brainshark.com/mybrainshark

wallwisher

Dreaming of having an interactive wall for discussion with your students/colleagues/mates/friends etc?

wallwisher.com is THE ONE that you're looking for!

This amazing interactive white board or wall is designed for open brainstorming, discussion or even thoughts sharing among a group of people. The only main thing which is needed is the builder of the wall,whose account should be signed up to the wallwisher account. During general use in a language learning classroom, the teacher must sign up in order to be the builder of the wall. Once you have signed up for the wallwisher account, you can simply create the topic of the day. Say for an example above, the information about the wall builder can be found at the upper right of the wall. The group members do not have to sign up in order to post their opinions on the wall but they can just type in the url which has been set up by the wall builder. For example in this discussion the topic of the wall is about bubblr therefore the URL of the wall is 

www.wallwisher.com/wall/bubblr

The good things about this tool:

1. Learners can freely express their thoughts and ideas by directly post the notes on the wall. Since this is a public wall (they must know the exact url in order to join the discussion set up by the builder of the wall), all of the invited members are able to see and respond to any of the sticky notes.Usually the notes are presented in bubbles which allow you to put in your name, add image, audio or video link.

2. Students can also enhance their language use by expressing their opinions in the target language.

3. Fun, funky and acts as an interactive way of learning. Students might be interested to join the discussion as it provides various choice of colours, movable bubbles, as well as the delete or undo button in case they need to remove or make some changes to their bubbles.

However, the downsides might be:

1. Too little too explain since the bubble only allow 160 characters in one bubble.

2. This tool does not really encourage proper use of language since learners might only go for short forms or even simpler sentence to meet to word limit of the bubble.

3. The wall might become too crowded if there're too many bubbles being posted on the wall. This might distract learners' focus and might overlook the most important and relevant ideas.

4. Only compatible images, audio and video links can be posted on the wall.This may demotivate some learners if they cant post the link that they prefer.

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.

lets listen and write!

Hello peeps, now let me introduce another superb and catchy website for learners to master English in a fun way. You can actually improve your listening skills as well as know current issues that happening all over the world just by clicking this listen and write. Its gonna be pretty much exciting for most level of  English learners.

This website allows learners to select authentic topics provided in the list. Once the choices are made, they are expected to listen to the recorded voice and write down the whole sentence in the box. Here is the example of 3 types of mode available for learners, absolutely differed in terms of difficulty level.

Useful things about this website:

1) It can act as a medium for students to practice their listening skill, independently.

2) Students can always take time to listen carefully.

3) There's no time limit to finish the listening task.

2) Expose students to real and authentic listening materials.

3) Encourage autonomous learning.

4) Definitely not a boring,but a fun way to learn new vocab and new language style.

However:

1) It can be quite annoying to listen to the repeated recorded audio as long as you did not get the correct 

    word typed in.

2) You can never playback the audio even though you click on the pause button, everything will start from the beginning!

lyrics training.

Beatles - All My Loving, Music Video, Song Lyrics and Karaoke

Here comes another awesome learning website for English learners throughout the world. Lyrics Training.com is a very well recommended website for learners who love learning English with music. From this website, learners can choose any song from their favorite singers,listen to the lyrics and fill in the empty gaps,all at once. Don't worry if you missed any of the words because the application will automatically pause until you get the right words keyed in. If you still unable to find the word, just click on the help button and everything will be sorted out.

This website is suitable for all level of English learners as there are three selections of level provided which are for the beginner,intermediate and expert.

The positives about this site:

1) It is undeniably amazing to learn language just through listening to songs.

2) It may act as a tool for personal listening practice for learners.

3) Suitable for all level of learners.

2) A very precise tool. Both listening and writing skills are compiled in just one activity.

3) Young learners may see this approach as one of the most suitable way to learn a language.

4) Increase learners' vocabulary and lexical item as they may discover any new word in the lyrics.

5) It is a quite efficient application since learners just need to type in the missing words but if only they were 

     unable to get the correct word, the song will automatically pause for awhile.

The not so positives may be: 

1) Some songs may not be appropriate for learners especially the young ones. It could be in terms of the      

    appropriateness of words, the spelling, the grammar as well as the sentence structure. 

dvolver.

What is Dvolver?

Dvolver.com is definitely the coolest website for students to come up with their very own movies. Acting as the director, students are allowed to choose their preferred settings, characters and write down their own scripts in the timeline. This website is suitable for students with low and intermediate level of English, as this activity provides a platform for them to freely write about their thoughts. Precisely,  the young learners, aged between 10 to 15 years old can make full use of this website to indulge in their creativity by creating an interesting short movie.

The advantages of this website are:

1) Students can express their thoughts and creativity through making movies.
2) Flexible choice of words and language allow students to practically use the target language.
2) This activity encourages students to work on things by themselves, thus increases their level of autonomy learning.
3) If the activity is done in pairs or in groups, students may develop a face-to-face interaction in which may enhance their communication skill.
4) It can expose students to the world of technology and motivates them to learn new language.
5) The colourful visual may enhance students interest in learning language and make the lesson fun to the fullest.


However,the drawbacks could be:


1) A little bit time consuming as students with different level of proficiency may take longer time to finish the task.
2) Limited choices of settings,characters and situation thus may limit students' creativity.
3) Inappropriate use of language may occur as students are not fully monitored while creating the dialogues.