Wordsift- 4 in 1

Wordsift is a learning tool which main function is to summarise text into keypoints in form of word clouds. The site also provides additional tools in relation to the text 'sifted' where it draws the mind map of the keypoints, provides alternative links and videos as further references, a thesaurus, and a dictionary with examples of sentences from the text.

Application in language teaching:

• For teacher:

1.  Helps  teacher in the process of designing and adapting materials. As teachers need to select the suitable materials, wordsift helps in skimming and scanning process.This means, teachers are able to have general view of  texts through the word clouds which saves time for teachers.  
2. The site also provides several other references/articles related to the text as alternative or further readings. This provides teachers with alternative of variaty of texts to choose from if the selected text is not suitable, which saves time for teacher to search for new article.

• For students:

1. Pre-writing/pre-reading:

a) Guess the content of the text from the word clouds. This activity can be used as pre-writing activity to activate students' schemata.

b) In groups, asks students to read an article and list out keypoints of the article. Then, asks them to compare and discuss their lists. Finally, teacher gives them the word clouds to confirm their lists.

     2.   Writing activity:

Create a story using the word clouds. This activity helps to develop students'cognitive ability since they need to use all the words in the word class to create a whole new story. The process is similar to matching up pieces of jigsaw puzzle. 

      3. Speaking activity:

Match pictures with suitable word clouds and justify. In groups, students are to match given picture with several word clouds. After they have chosen the suitable one, they are to justify and present their choice with other groups. This activity allows discussion which helps to develop communicative competence and stimulate their cognitive ability.


     4.   Vocabulary learning

Fill in the blanks with suitable words. This activity can be done either as pre-writing/pre-reading activity or as post-activity where it supports vocabulary learning through the contextualisation of the words from the examples from the text and helps reinforcement of the vocabulary memorization if done in post activity .

Advantages:

• It is free and  no need to sign up or  have accounts.
•  Teacher can custom own wordlists into word clouds.
• The words can be sorted out  in  few categories which includes common to rare, rare to common, A to Z, and Z to A.
• The words can be identified according to genre or subjects such as Social Science, Mathematics and Language. This helps students to understand words use according to its contexts.
•  There is workspace available if teachers want to use it. This workspace could ease students' note taking or copy some exercises.
• Examples from text of selected word, which provides students its contextualised word use.
• Thesaurus and mind map at hand to foster study skills and encourage autonomous learning by students.

Disadvantages:

• The design of the word clouds is simple and of only one colour. This issue is resolved by alternative site which is Wordle, which offers more designs for the word clouds. Below is an example:

• Need to have suitable Java software, which is a hassle as one needs to download it if their computer/laptop do not have it.

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:

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: