Bubblr

Bubblr is a site where presentation is made easy with huge amount of images at hand.

Why is it useful in language teaching?

• Fosters creativity  and thinking through wide selection of images. Students need to choose the best suited and appropiate pictures.
• Allows students to create a presentation or stories.
• Develops speaking skills from the presentation.

Advantages:

• Huge amount of images to select from various themes.
• Use of different shapes as caption box.

Disadvantages:

• Requires internet connection to access the presentation.
• Images are generated only from Flickr. Some images are not in database.
• Limited amount of words can be used in caption box.
• The font cannot be changed.
• The caption box covers the images when placed.

Here is an example:

TodaysMeet

TodaysMeet is a virtual, backchannel chat room which allows students to speak, give comments and ask questions at the same time and for teachers to conduct discussion in realtime without interference of raised hands or students disruption. It is free and  requires no account or passwords, only the url for anyone to join the room.Once there, students login to Todays Meet simply by typing their name and clicking Join.

  Application in language teaching:

• Online discussion
• Brainstorming
• Revision
• Language assessment

 

Advantages:

• Easy to use interface
• Allows every students to participate actively in the discussion at the same time.
• Previous points or ideas can be retraced and acts as notes.
• Can decide how long the room is active-no need for hassle to deactivate it.

 

Disadvantages and limitations:

•  Need for every students to have resources to the Internet or mobile devices.
•  Responses are limited to 140 words or less. There is no development to the points given.
• Minimize real face to face interaction between teacher to students and students to students. This could hinder development of  students' communicative competence.

Dvolver - animated video maker

 Dvolver is an animated moviemaker which allows students to practice making dialogue in contexts. This software provides basic elements of a story such as characters, background settings, and  plot where students can choose from the various selection and create their own dialogues to make up their own stories. The step by step procedure eases its use for the students while allowing them to share their works at the end of the movie, which helps teacher to evaluate students' work directly.

Application in language teaching:

• Teacher can demonstrate language functions such as inviting, describing, and persuading to the students through dialogues more effectively as it depicts real life situations.
• Teacher could ask students to share their works and comment on each others works.
• Class project or group work on making a movie sets on certain themes and language points learnt each week.

 Advantages:

• It allows for learning language in contexts.
• It encourages creativity in the students as they can play around with the animation to create their own dialogues and stories.
• It is fun, interactive and engaging for the students since they have control and choices of their own works/learning.
• It helps in language learning as it caters different learning styles(multiple intelligences), especially visual and music intelligences.
• It is free, easy,and quick to use, thus avoids much time spent for teaching the procedures.
•  Students can share their works by sending emails and able to have immediate responses through the comment section below it.

Disadvantages:

• The characters' lines do not match with their expressions and there is no voice when they are talking. Thus, students cannot learn pronunciation.
• Some of the characters' profiles are not appropiate to Malaysian context as they could be opposing the mainstream culture.

Here is an example of a complete mini movie: