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.

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.