#8. Open Topic/ Reflection

 Technology in English, a shortcut to be interested in English

 CALL course was a big challenge for me at the very first time since I'm a kind of  computer illiterate. However, I shouldn't have worried because it was not a computer machine work but creative English educational works. I have had hard time to activate or create some tools but it was worth it.

 

 The biggest strength of the computer based tools is catching interests. A lot of Korean EFL students are still not familiar with 'English' itself. What it means, they have anxieties in English since it's a big part of the 'Language' which they have to learn and study hard. However, for example, for young learners such as elementary school or middle school students are pretty much into the cartoons, short movies or quiz games. Domo Animate, Zimmer twins and Story bird are fun activities to do for students. Those tools are not like boring 'text books,' instead, they have fancy characters, colorful visual options and short language materials that make students feel quite comfortable to study.

 

 Availiability for creating by learners is another attractiveness. In creating process, students are able to think about the topic once again and concentrate more. For teachers, it might take more time than just printing out some hand-outs, they can definitely draw students' attention and interests though. Sharing creative works with students and teachers all together using various tools will improve English education environment. For this environment, a big amount of respects should be based on preventing from infringement of copyrights.

 

 

 CALL tools let students listen and speak frequently. Tools such as Audio box, Voice thread, Pod-cast and Skype etc., make learners' ears open and provide the environments for speaking confidently. Attempting is one of the important elements of learning English. By teachers' instruction or without instruction, learners can try by themselves listening and speaking English through easy access via lap-top, tablets or smart-phones, the trials can be done. If these trials accrue, their English skills will be much developed.

 

 For my future lessons, I would love to use various tools that I learned from this course. I will focus on adults' teaching recommending and introducing them Synchronous/Asynchronous CMC tools, listening/pod-cast tools and reference tools especially.

 

 Again, I had a bit of hard time to learn all of those tools but very worthwhile to be aware of and practice. Introducing and recommending useful and efficient tools to students are important duties for teachers and instructors. I've learned this definitely.

 

 

 

 

#7. Mobile App Review

1. Application's website: Read4English Learn English  http://www.brainglass.com

2. Brief review of the application/ How this App can enhance the learners' Emglish skills :

 





Read4English app helps English learners' fluent reading. Their mission statement is 'Listen, Read and Learn.' It provides recordings so that the learners can repeat after their pronunciation, stress and intonation. Recordings include celebrities' addresses, lectures and stories as well. During the reading user can save words function and that underpins fluent reading memorizing the meaning of word. App has learner caring fucnction, it shows learners' progressing process to motivate them. Earphones and learners' will for fluent English reading are needed with Read4English App.

 



Through  this App, learner can acqire correct pronunciation and intonation and vice versa. It will help learners' English reading fluency as Native speaker. One of the EFL students' problems of reading English is incorrect pronunciation. However, Read4English will guide you the right way to speak and read English, further, it definitely improve and enhance the EFL learners' fluency.

 

 

#6. Digital Story telling

1. Breif reviews about the tools

1) http://storybird.com

: Storybird.com let us make a new e-book that anywhere exist at all. It is a very useful tool for creative activities. Teachers can choose the pictures and characters that they want to put in a new story including class materials. Also, it is able to make short and long story they want. It has also artwork tags, so that teachers are easy to access the certain subjects or characters.

 

2) http://domo.goanimate.com

: Domo Animate is a extremely aninated tool. Teachers can make cartoons first and it also available like short video. Instead of reading the cartoon, we can create a new cartoon video via Domo Animate. It has lots of fuctions such as background music, zooming, fading out etc,. Learners will enjoy wathcing this  and creating by themselves as well. Also, all characters has various looks so creators have lots of options to make.

2. How could these tools be used by teachers and students?

: If teachers want to make new materials for their students, these kind of tools would be the best since teachers' creativity can come out through the outcomes. For storytelling books or cartoon making tools, teachers can create short stories that includes their teaching target language rules(e.g: grammar rules and conversation etc,.). Students also can create their own stories including the lamguage skills that they've learnt. It will be much fun instead of just doing the solving problems or take tests. Teachers can use this tool as their classes' assignments and students can create and present in front of peers or can share their work all together.

3. How could they be incorporated into a class?

: In my opinion, it will take much time to create these works using various tools. Giving as an assignment for reviewing the class would be better. Students can create their own works without time-pressure with a variety of ideas and thoughts. After collecting the students' work, teacher can produce a cartoon book(printed) or a long video-clip for their class and share with other classes or learners outside of the class.

#5. Corpora, Concordance, Collocations, Word Frequency

Checking out the following 3 sites and report back on how they could be used to inform materials development and classroom instruction.

 

1. Compleat lexical tutor http://www.lextutor.ca/:

- I would use this for my future grammar class material. I especially impressed by Grammar-Corpus section. After teaching certain grammar rule for a day, I will provide students Grammar-Corpus part. And then I will let my students try to correct the grammar sentences before they clicking the 'CONC' for checking native's right uses. When students finished their trying, they will check the answers all together in the class with the teacher. Teacher should pick out students' most frequent mistakes and errors among the answers and make students click the 'CONC' to confirm natives' answers. Teacher will explain on the answers.

2. Corpus of Contemporary American English http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/:

- When I first search through the 'Corpus .byu' I found that the website could be helpful for Undergraduates and Graduates rather than younger students. I could use this material with upper Undergraduates TOEFL beginner class. I will have my students to check Corpus for improving their usage of words in the writings also grammar as well. If the students finish their TOEFL writing assignment I would give them a feedback with one more homework searching 3 diffrent uses of certain words, pharses or clauses in different sentences. This will allow to students to have a wide range of vocabulary development for their English learning.

3. Wordle http://www.wordle.net/:

 - I think 'Wordle' is a very neat website for learning vocabulary. It gives students good looking and animated visual aids with variety of words. I could use 'Wordle' when I teach rhetorical writing to students. It will be possibly used warming up for the class or after the class to sum up. I can paste a text related that day's topic and show it to students. And then make them brainstorimg with those words for their writing. Or, after studnets' rhetorical writing they can paste their work in Wordle to sum up with the key words and the frequently used words. Also, Wordle work can be used as their writing's front cover page.

#4: Podcast Review

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

1) Grammar girl link: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

2) Grammar girl is a one part of the podcast website named " Quick and dirty tips." The website has lots of categories such as legal, meth subject and money etc. I will explain here about 'Grammar girl' since it's a effective podcast for English learners. It provide mp3 recordings one by one for each month, sometimes it uploads 2~3 recordings per a month. A woman called 'Grammar girl' is broadcasting in the recordings. She gives us Grammartical tips. Each recording has a script so that listeners can check the contents and words more accurately and specifically. 'Grammar girl' has several sections and it is diveded like below.

You can click to choose 'Grammar, Word Choice or Punctuation' that you would like to listen firstly. The quality also perfect since the native speaker 'Grammar girl' explains and teaches us the tips that ESL/EFL students may be confused. She provides with simple examples and that makes learners more interested in grammar with ease.

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

1) Opinion for the podcast: I think the podcast is very, very effective way to ESL/EFL learners to approach English in interesting and easy way. Nowadays, most students are familiar with the computers, iPod and smart tablets etc. They easily can download the podcast recordings or videos and use it for their language learning. They feel boring to their text-book materials. However, podcast has variety of subjects and methods on English. Students can pick and choose the contents they like and teachers can use proper podcast materials for their students as well. Electronic devices like lap-top, smart-phones and mp3 players make learners to save time and effort with effectiveness.

2) Which type of learners could benefit from the podcast?

: I'm sure that many kinds of podcast have certain level of contents. However, I think podcast is a great learning tool for intermediate learners who have good listening skills and much interests in English already. For the beginners, the podcast can draw the learners' interests a little bit maybe, but it will be not that much effecctive way for the beginners. Intermediate learners can tell their level and enthusiasm for language goals, so they will choose and pick one for using very effective way.

#3: Synchronous and Asynchronous CMC Tools

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

- Synchronous CMC Tool website: http://www.scribblar.com

: Scribblar provides mutual interaction between teachers and students. It has a whiteboard function in the presentaion room so teachers can show students the class materials and teach by pointing and writing the contents at the whiteboard. Teachers and students also can speak and listen to class materials through the audio function. It will make students very convenient to take teachers' lecture or important announcements without going to school or academies. Teachers are also able to convey their lectures to students using this interesting and neat functions speak in person to students and get questions and opinions from their students. However, users have to pay for lots of plans that provides big amount of document pages, presentation rooms and numbers of users.

- Asynchronous CMC Tool website: http://vocaroo.com/

: Vocaroo.com is a simple online voice recording service website. Students easily can record the contents and save the files. And then they can share thier recorded files using embed or e-mail functions. It's comfortable and easy. Users also can upload the other audio(recording) files that they already got done before. This website has no complicated procedures or functions at all.

 

2) Your thoughts about how the Synchronous CMC tool and the Asynchronous CMC tool could support learning and the development of language skills. Are there any similarities and in how they could support languag learning?

 

- Synchronous CMC tool: Synchronous tools are likey to help listening and speaking skills in language learning since students have to open their ears and mouths to get information and participate their teachers' class contents or assignments. Teachers will definitely use synchronous tools for  supporting students' listening and speaking skills. Furthermore, teachers can directly give feedbacks to students in person so the effectiveness of various synchronous tools could be doubled compared to the Asynchronous assignments or classes. The most powerful strength of synchronous tools are animated interaction between students and teachers.

- Asynchronous CMC tool: Instead of the animated interactions of synchronous tools, Asynchronous has different ways to support language learners. By using the tools such as e-mails and recordings teachers can handle the large amount of students' works. In other words, asynchronous tools are effective for language assignments that needs evaluations and assessments of teachers. It is also convenient and comfortable to students. Students who do not feel comfortable for direct conversations or active participation because of the affective-filter for their language speaking, they can do the works individually and submit their works to their teachers only to get the feedbacks. They still can using convenient computer/Internet based tools to save time and efforts.

- Similarities: Synchronous and Asynchronous are both computer based learning tools using advanced technology. They have a little bit of difference on the direct interaction point but have same good points of  practicality and efficiency. Both can be interesting ways of improving language learners' listening and speaking skills as well.

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.

 

-English job interview simulation(for Undergraduates)using Skype

: First, teacher need one more interviewer who can help him/her. The interviewer should be a Native English speaker for describing real situation. Teacher will let each student know their interview-time so that make students can get access on the right time and start. If the interview starts, interviewers will ask several same questions to all students. After the interviews are finished, teacher will use the Scribblar.com presentation room to give feedbacks on the questions to students. Teacher and the Native speker will talk on the micro-phone with explanations about the interview situations, sentences and words and give tips for good answers. Students also can ask questions to them in that presentation room.


 

#2: Presentation Tools & Screencasting Tools

1. Describe the Presentation Tool or Screencasting Tool you used.

 - I used the website www.prezi.com for making a grammar class material.

 Prezi has lots of comfortable functions compare to the PowerPoint Presentations. Various templates are already set up so that users can easily choose and start to make presentations in a short time. Users also can create new templates as well. Moreover, Prezi let users embed images and videos easily. The most dynamic thing that I've been impressed is zooming function. I can go back and forth to the orders just pressing arrow keys(in keyboard) whenever I want to stress some points or present using more than two screen sections at a time.

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.

- I created a Prezi for a grammar class material. The presentation topic is 'Using Articles.' It will help learners to understand usages of the Articles in English. I used 'Into the details' templates to explain the Articles by dividing 'a(an)' and 'the.' It was very easy for me to make the presentations without concerning about the presentation designs for explaning two different Article features since I already chose the suitable template for my topic. I arranged the presentation orders having thoughts that students' usefulness to see the explainations and examples at a time for their understanding and presenting for me as a teacher as well.

https://sites.google.com/site/jamielee9459/home/homework/prezi

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

- I have already known and seen Prezi presentations few times, however, this was the first time that I made a presentaion using Prezi. It took for a long time to complete one even though my presentation does not include that much information. I think it will need some time to familiar with Prezi having various functions and embedding useful other materials. Otherwise, I was impressed by Prezi that enables teachers to show students with animated and dynamic class presentation materials.

- I would definitely recommend to other teachers to use Prezi for their technologically advanced English classes. Students will have more attention to Prezi than the exisitng old-fashioned presentation materials like Powerpoints or just video-clips. For teachers, it will play crucial roles for saving time and making sensational presentations for students etc,. Prezi provides easy sharing functions to users so it is very efficient for English teachers for saving, sharing and using their information and lesson materials in various ways as well.

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

- As a future English teacher, I believe Prezi will be very helpful for public school teachers to catch students' attentions during the boring classes. Usually in Korean classes, most classes are text-book focused and teacher lecture based. Of course, there are many worksheet activities or educational games exist. However, with providing various class material using Prezi, students will get access very easily to class materials. Besides, Prezi will enable the very active conversation between teachers and students since its sharing function is quite useful for them. If students have lap-tops, smart-phones and tablets etc,. they will be easily expsured to more free and interesting English education environments.