#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.