Open Topic / Reflection

For your final blog post, please feel free to write about any topic related to the course.  For example, you can reflect on what you have learned about in the course and your e-portfolio project and also discuss any future goals or plans you have to use technology in your classroom.

WOW! Time flies like an arrow. I can't believe that I completed my e-portfolio, and I am now writing my final blog at my computer.

True to be told, I have doubted that I could complete e-portfolio from the beginning to the end by myself using a variety of tools I learned in class since I took the first CALL class at the second day of school. I still remember vividly the day when I was shocked when teacher assigned me to create the activity using Prezi, one of the presentation tools and embed it on my google site. Even though teacher elaborated on how to do it in class, I couldn't understand at all. Others seemed to be very comfortable with handling all the stuff. I felt like a fish out of water. I am good at searching information on the Internet. I know how to use Powerpoint and Microsoft Word. That's it! I would say I am almost computer-illiterate. I was so freaked out and worried every time when I get an assignment of creating something, using NEW tools. For a couple of weeks, taking a CALL class itself was hard for me.

At a certain point, however, I happend to realize that I started enjoying this class and all the useful tools for teaching. How amazing it is to use Pixton or Storybird to teach writing. Although creating activities using these tools is a daunting task because both teachers and students are required for much creativity, I am sure that both of them could learn something more than they expected : the way to express their opinions concisely but clearly through deep thinking. I think that VoiceTread is also one of the greatest tools. Learners can use it to improve writing skill as well as speaking skill. There is a saying that killing two birds with one stone, and I think that VoiceThread fits well in this proverb.

While making e-portfolio, I learned a lot about teaching ESL/EFL students, using the technology.
I kept trying to think about how I can make a useful and efficient activity for students.
Had it not been for the CALL class, I would never known such a lot of useful and awesome tools for teaching, and I would never experienced these fascinating tools. The CALL class led me to a totally new world. I still need to understand these tools better and hone my computer skill in order to apply the technology to my class at will. Yet, I bet I will definitely use these useful tools to teach English more effectively and more interestingly.

This class is not easy, but it's worth taking it.


 

Mobile App Review

Mobile App Review

Search for a language learning application designed for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.  Provide a link to the application's website.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bluedroiddev.speakenglish

Write a brief review of this application that includes information about the app's functions, which devices it is compatible with, and how it can assist or enhance the language learning process.

This is an Android application that provides learners with opportunities to learn British English.
This app consists of 183 episodes.You can choose one of the episodes and listen the diologue. Besides, each episode comes with transcript and provides different language points such as verb patterns and various idioms.Ths app also has audio speed change feature that is good for those who are weak in listening comprehension. It also has dictionary feature, you can learn the definition of word, its synonym and antonym.  What a good application it is to learn English!! You can also do self-assessment with a variety of quizzes provided  by this app. If you listen and memorize the diologue, and study related vocabulary and grammar every day or at least every other day, I am sure that you could find yourself improve your English ability.

   

 

Digital Storytelling

DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Write brief reviews about the two tools you used to create short lessons.

Storybird  http://storybird.com/

Children like stories and even love writing a story using their imagination. In this point of view, Storybird is a very facinating collaborative storytelling site that provides various pictures for you to choose and then either you or your students have an opportunity to write a story based on these pictures. Changing the position of chosen pictures are simple. Storybird is an extremely engaging site that allows students to focus more on the content of their writing rather than drawing pictures.


Pixton http://www.pixton.com/

Pixton is a flash-based comic creation tool that is free and fun to use. Once you create your account, you can browse other users' comics. Users can choose from many different characters, background scenes, and objects to create their own online comic strip. Pixton allows you to choose from a variety of backgrounds, and characters, and alter just about everything in the scene. You can immediately design characters, give them expression, move them into any position and use customized props such as dynamic speech bubbles.

How could these tools be used by teachers AND students? 

Storybird

With Storybird, students use collections of art provided by the site to write stories. One of collections of art is chosen, students are able to build their story by dragging pictures and creating a story to match. If they want to make a long story, they just need to add another page, choose a picture and write a story. Simple but very fun!
However, there is one thing to keep in mind: make the students chose their artwork first to help them think of story ideas as there are all different sorts of artwork to illustrate their Storybird.
It’s also great for teachers because they’re able to easily create student accounts and assignments for students. Teachers can check if their assignments are done. Also, they can pair up students and have them cooperate in writing a story together.


Pixton

Students use Pixton to convey their ideas concisely, or to explain the results of their most recent science lab.  Or students create a comic to illustrate their classroom expectations. Students can also comment on other students' comics with a click of a button.They also could record their voices speaking the text of the comic. Therefore, students could practice and perfect their pronunciation at home before recording their comic and submitting it online. Teachers can use Pixton to customize each classroom's settings in order to control what students are able to see and do. Also, through Pixton, teachers can comment and grade the students' work online, letting students read the feedback and then make necessary changes.

 

 

 

How could they be incorporated into a class?

Storybird

Storybird is excellent for many writing assignments. It’s an engaging site that will offer hesitant writers a good chance to write their own story. Storybird can be used as a way to collaborate between parent and child.  A child and their parents take turn writing pages in Storybook.  Teachers could then offer an opportunity for students and their parents to come and read the story with their child to the class.
Teachers could also choose one topic like family, for example. Then, talk about the topic and make students create and describe their family using Sorybird. Students could use Storybird to write simple sentences to describe their family using words they've already learned in class.

Pixton

Students could get the opportunity to work deeply with information or to deliver information creatively, using small amounts of texts to frame a story. Teacher could have students provide personal thoughts on subjects ranging from historical events, environmental issues as well as other controversial topics. Or they could have them use comics to write summaries of currrent events. With younger students, teacher could have them create a comic about one of the most familiar topics ' My day', and then each student could make a short presentation about it  to the rest of the class. Or after teacher creates a comic about cyber-bullying, students could discuss the sensible ways to use web-based tools together in class.

 

Corpora, Concordance, Collocations, Word Frequency

Check out the following sites and report back on how they could be used to inform materials development and classroom instruction:

Compleat Lexical Tutor: http://www.lextutor.ca/
Corpus of Contemporary American English: http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/
Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/

Compleat Lexical Tutor

This website has a variety of tools for students to improve their academic vocabulary. With its focus on academic vocabulary, this site will perhaps be of greatest interest to learners with academic purpose.  It contains a vast range of resources for teaching and learning vocabulary and garammar. It is devided into three sections: Tutorial, Research, and Teachers. Resources include diagnostic tests of vocabulary, frequency-based exercises, and online texts with “click-on lexical support". With these useful resources,  learners can test their vocabulary, explore their vocabulary levels, compare active and passive vocabulary, use new words, read and listen to a novel, and test their grammar with concordances.

Corpus of Contemporary American English

The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is the largest freely-available corpus of English. Sources include popular magazines, newspapers, spoken language, academic journals and fiction.which can be used to accurately track and study recent changes in the language. Lots of information on one screen: overall frequency, frequency by genre, collocates, concordances, and synonyms. Interestingly, learners can even know which verbs are really on the rise during the last couple of years.

 

Wordle

Wordle is a kind of tool which generates “word clouds” from text that you provide. You can create an interesting word clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The more times you type a word, the bigger it will be on your Wordle. Using Wordle, you can make your own unique word clouds.


Until now, I checked out what Compleat Lexical Tutor, COCA, and Wordle are, and what special features and fuctions they have.

Then, let's look at how all these three websites can be used to inform classroom instruction.
Using Wordle, a teacher let students dissect a famous speech. That is, enter the text of a famous historical speech into Wordle. Analyze the results by looking at the most commonly used words, or even the words that are not used. By doing this, we can understand what the speech tries to tell us and the orator's intention. I think it is a good idea to make use of  the most well-known  Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" Speech. In elementary classrooms, a teacher can use Wordle to poll about what their favorite food is and then talk each other about the result.

With The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), a teacher can give students some adjectives and ask them to find out what words commonly come after the given adjectives. Through this activity, students get to know exactly which adjectives come together with which nouns, which could lead to the development of writing skill.

In conclusion, these tools are great helpful especially to language learners to improve their vocabulary skill.

Podcast Review

PODCAST REVIEW

Listen to one or two of the podcasts

Family minute with Mark Merrill

Provide a link to the podcast on your blog. Give general information about the content and quality.

http://www.familyminute.com/


The Family Minute provides a daily advice for building strong family in just 60 seconds. Hosted by Mark Merill, the Family Minute is dedicated to strengthening the family.The Family Minute with Mark Merrill offers listeners practical, everyday advice on marrige, parenting and family relationships. This family relationship-focused broadcast reaches listeners with practical, impactful and relevant advice. You can sign up to have the Family Minute delivered to your inbox for free every day or you can check out the Family Minute Blog for the latest post.

What do you think  about the podcast? Which type of learners could benefit from the podcast?

I think this podcast is for EVERYONE. It is great for parents who have difficulty with their teenagers as well as for couples who are going through tough time in the relationship. That's because this podcast could suggest possible solutions or tips to get over with it, although the exact answer you want to get could not be offered. Besides, this podcast  provides very useful source for English learners. You can practice listening comprehension while listening a daily article.  Plus, you can download the articles, which can give you a chance to learn useful phrases and expressions as well as authentic English. If you make time to memorize some part of the article everyday, you could realize the improvement of your speaking fluency. I hope that everyone builds a happy and sound relationship between families as well as improves English abilities through Family Minute.

Synchronous and Asynchronous CMC Tools

             Synchronous and Asynchronous CMC Tools

1. Brief descriptions of the tools and links to their websites.

* Tokbox (synchronous CMC tool)
    - Tokbox is a useful software supporting video-conference and video-chat. Tokbox allows
       users to chat with others at the same time but in different places.
        http://www.tokbox.com/opentok/plugnplay

 *VoiceThread  (asynchronous CMC tool)
    - Voicethread is a website that allows users to create slideshows as well as comment on
       presentations using audio recordings, writing text comments, and uploading an audio or
       a video file. In a nutshell, VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slideshow that holds
       images,documents, and videos.
       http://voicethread.com/
      

 

2. Your thoughts about how the Synchronous CMC tool and the Asynchronous CMC tool could support learning and the development of language skills. 

Synchronous and asynchronous CMC tools could help both teachers and learners. Both CMC tools are student-centered ones in language learning to faciliate interaction, discussion and collaboration among learners from a variety of background. In language learning project, both written and spoken skills could be enhanced via CMC tools. Teachers could use these tools to have students share their learning in order to have a better understanding of a subject or topic. They also use these tools to send video messages to their students to give visual or verbal instructions for assignments.

Are there any similarities and differences in how they could support language learning?

* Similarities : Both tools could help learners to improve listening and speaking skills. Besides,
                         Learners could use these tools broaden their knowledge by sharing others' ideas,
                         which ends up playing an essential role in enhancing their language learning.

* Differences : Tokbox(synchronous CMC tool) may be suitable for brainstorming and quickly
                         sharing ideas during simultaneous interaction while VoiceThread(asynchronous
                         CMC tool)  could allow more time for considered opinions and are more effective
                         deeper discussion of ideas.
                        

3. Some of your ideas of possible activities and ways that the tools could be used in a language class to supplement in-class content and instruction.

* Activity using Tokbox
 - For young beginners or low intermediate students
   : If a teacher gives one or two simple words, students could make a simple sentence using given
     words.
 - Above upper-intermediate students
   : If a teacher gives a controversial issue, students could debate the pros and cons of the issue.

* Activity using VoiceThread
 - For young beginners or low intermediate students
    : Ask them to draw their family and talk about them. Or ask them to draw their favorite animal or
      fruit and say the reason.
 - Above upper-intermediate students
    : If a teacher uploads an image or a picture of a person doing something, students describe it in
     detail in English.

Presentation Tools and Screencasting Tools

PRESENTATION TOOLS & SCREENCASTING TOOLS

1. Describe the presentation tool or screencasting tool you used. Provide a link to the website.

I want to introduce one of the useful and interesting presentation tools called "PREZI".
Prezi, the unique online presentation tool, makes it possible for users in different places to work on the same time. Prezi is "slideless", so you don't flip through a presentation page by page. You can also zoom in details, and add  images, drawings, and even videos. I think it's very nice to those who tired of  traditional Powerpoint presentation.

If you want to know more about PREZI, visit here http://prezi.com/. It's FREE!

2.  Describe the presentation or activity you created using the tool.  Provide a link to the location of your embedded presentation on your Google Site.

Using Prezi, I gave an explanation on the difference between simple past and past continuous. Prezi has a variety of templates, so I chose one of them suitable to explain the grammar part simple but clearly to learners step by step. With the use of the convenient presentation tool, I tried to help learners understand better with arrow marks and line, using "insert" function.

Here is a link to my presentaion : https://sites.google.com/site/jooransenglishworld/

3. Describe your experience using the tool.  Would you recommend it to other teachers?  Why or why not?

At first, as for almost computer-illiterate like me, no matter how easy to operate and how good it is, using Prezi was not easy for me. But..... I was so surprised when I found myself getting used to using various features of Prezi and delighted with the fact that I finally made my presentation. That means.... anyone can use it and make any presentation you want easily and conveniently, and you can even find yourselves enjoying it.

If you ask me to recommend it to other teachers, I would absolutely say "YES!". Teachers could use it to make your lessons with memorable visual, and in turn, immerse their students in a visual journey. Using zoom-in feature, teachers could focus on important parts of their lessons and deliver thier lessons to their students effectively. In addition, students could enjoying learning.

4.  Describe potential uses the tool could have in the Korean EFL learning context.

With a growing number of on-line courses around the world, Korea is not the exception. Although there are little use of the tool in the Korean EFL learning context, I am sure that in the near future, lessons using the tool could be dramatically increasing in the Korean education field. That's because this appealing tool full of visual effects is very easy to draw attention from students and can make students focus on the lessons provided by teachers. Plus, teachers use more various ways quite different from existing teaching methods to offer information and knowledge to students in both an effective and interesting way.