Easy tool for creating word clouds- Wordle

Hello, everyone! How are you doing today?

These days I feel so great with the nicer weather! And, It’s almost end of term! J
Today, I am going to introduce a free online word cloud creator. I bet you have seen word clouds or would know what word clouds mean if you see the picture below.

I found this quite useful as an English teaching tool, especially for vocabulary teaching. We will talk about its potential use later, after take a brief look at what word clouds are and how to use the tools.

What is word clouds?

“A visual representation of text data, typically used to depict keywords that appear more frequently in the source text.”
 

How to use Wordle?

It is very simple and easy! I am sure everyone can use this tool including even my mom! J
Go to the website: www.wordle.net
 

Can you see the "Creat your own?" then, click it to literally make your own word cloud.
If you see the blank squre like below, paste text, upload a document or open an URL to automatically generate a word cloud.

 

Customize your cloud with shapes, themes, colors and fonts. You can also edit the word list, cloud size and gap size.

 

How to use it as a teaching tool? (My personal ideas)

1. For a pre-reading activity (Having topic knowledge and priority vocabulary)

Before reading the text, show the word cloud to students to guess what they are going to read. Students can learn vocabulary that they are going to encounter in the text according to the importance(frequency). Have students focus on more frequent words to make a topic sentence. Especially, present them proper nouns such as GPGP in the text above, then let the student guess.

2. For a post-reading activity
 

After reading, show students the word cloud but remove some keywords so that students can fill out based on what they have read. Compare them with peers.  

 
3. Also, I think it would be so nice to use for

• Comparing lexis in two or more texts with similar topics

• Comparing lexis in formal and informal vocabulary if given spoken conversation and written communication over the same content

• Categorizing lexical group and posting them in classrooms so that students can learn

As you can find out, Word clouds are attractive enough to get students attention because it does not look boring even though English vocabulary itself could be for some kids. Why don't you try by starting using it as a vocabulary list sheet?
Cheers.

Yuna :p

Teaching asynchronomous speaking with Screencast-O-Matic

Hi, everyone!! How have you been doing?

In this posting, I would like to talk about teaching oral fluency with an asynchronomous speaking tool, Screencast-O-Matic.

 

Go to the website and download http://screencast-o-matic.com
 

I think I am not the only one struggling with teaching productive skills especially speaking with a lot of students in one classroom! I cannot give students equal chances to speak out in limited-time classroom and if I start to focus on group or student to give feedback, other kids just start to chat in Korean! :(

Problems with speaking in reality

l   Difficult to practice speaking in a meaningful and authentic way inside or outside class (Nakazawa, Muir & Dudley, 2007).
l   Difficulties in engaging introverted learners in classroom speaking activities          (Poza, 2011).  

ICT tools can help us with this practical problems in teaching speaking!

 

Even though there are some disadvantages of using CMC(computer-mediated communication) such as the absence of real human interaction, technical preparation and learning, etc, it allows learners to

l have more enough time to plan and check their language

l improve richer grammatical, lexical structures

l elicit more equal chance to speak especially to introverted, lower level students.

Thus, let's give a try with Screencast-O-Matic!! :)

Screencast-O-Matic is a simple, easy recording tool to create a video file using pictures and web camera or both. You can download it for free and the free trial offers maximum 15 mins recordings and three functions: recording screen, webcam, and both.

1. Sign up and main dashboard

If you sign up and download the programme, you will see the main dashboard. You can also see the list of your work in your account.

2. Features

 With "Screen" botton, any pictures on your computuer screen is captured in the virtual square like above. Then if you finish selecting and adjusting the picture you want to use, press the read "Rec" to start recoding. With "Webcom," you also record your own video clip. Or using both pictures and webcom is also avaliable with"Both."

 

One thing I really like is scripted recording in pro features. To try that function you need to pay but It will be very useful to have students practice speaking and listening at the same time. Also, by watching peer videos with subtitles, linguistic mistakes or patterns can be more easily found out.

 

3. Trial

I tried recording a screen recording like below.

Once you finish recording, the file can be save in your computure or even you can upload it to YouTube right away. Here is my trial! As you can hear, outside noise should be controled when recording! >.<

**Use it Inside and outside classroom!...**

 

I believe Screencast-O-Matic can give students equal chances to speak in a more student centered way. It can be used to describe, present opinions, explain procedures with pictures about a particular topic given. Also, I think it can be a perfect tool to use as a post-reading activity such as retelling, summarizing texts students have read both individually or collaboratively.

Thank you, any comments and ideas are more than welecomed!
 

Amazing Mobile Learning Tool- Nearpod

Hello, everyone. How are you doing? I feel it’s been a quite long time since the last posting. :P Today, I’d like to talk about M-learning and introduce an amazing app “Nearpod.”

I believe all you have some experience with mobile assisted learning or teaching. I very often online dictionary and podcast through my phone for my own learning. You will undoubtedly agree that M-learning (learning using personal electronics) allows distance learning, encouraging online interaction, access more authentic, richer learning materials and activities.  In Korean classrooms, it is not allowed for students to use wireless internet due to the difficulty of controlling imprudent use of it, but “Nearpod” is an app I’d definitely like to incorporate into my class but probably outside class time.

You can download the app through you mobile appstore or also use it on your laptop. With your Google account, you can easily sign up. One thing you have to make sure before you are going to bring it into your class is that everyone should have his own phone with the access of wireless internet.

• Search and download “Nearpod” at the appstore

• Go to the website: https://www.nearpod.com

If you are in, you will see the main three taps on the top of right.

• EXPLORE LESSONS

• MY NEARPOD

• JOIN SESSION

 

 

 



     1. EXPLORE LESSONS

Nearpod offers ready-to-use lessons you can just download and use. There are hundreds of different subjects lessons available from math to social studies. All lessons show you for what grade the lesson is for, so it is not so difficult to find suitable lessons for your leaners. But most of them you need to pay around £3-4.

      2. MY NEARPOD

Now, it’s time to create your own mobile learning. With this platform, you can create new slides or easily turn your Powerpoint, Google Slides, or PDFs into an interactive Nearpod presentation.

 

If you click “New Presentation” as bellows, you can add your slides just like using PowerPoint. Not only the content with your own words, but also content from web, Twitter, videos, Nearpod can added to create a lesson. Furthermore, you can also add activities your leaners actually can do while learning such as quizzes, drawing, poll, open-ended questions. It means Nearpod is not just a medium for conveying information one-way, but an interactive learning tool.

Basic platform

Activity platform

 

I tried making a class for “Asian culture” using slides and the functions such as Field Trip and Quiz making. 

Now you can see there is my Asian culture class made in my library(my nearpod).

    3. JOIN SESSION

 

Click “Live session” then you will be given the pin number which should be provided to your students to join this class. All your leaners have to do to join this virtual classroom is download the app and enter the pin number into “JOIN SESSION.”

    

 

 

If everyone is in (you can also see who’s in or not once you start the session), you need to control the presentation in order not to go too fast or slow considering your students.

One really good feature is that you can get immediate feedback on how your learners are doing. For example, when learners are given some questions as review on the lesson, they answer the questions and send them. Then, you can check how they did right away. It would be really nice especially in terms of open-ended questions since everyone in the session can share theirs to each other.

It seemed quite innovative to me because it implies that learning and teaching can happen anywhere just with a phone. We cannot even complain the quality of teaching. As you can see Nearpod does offer rich recourse teachers make use of. Some might worry if leaners can more easily get distracted using their phone, but we need to have a think about the advantages of learning in action. If my classroom is allowed to have wireless internet, I would try the lesson using this app, especially when my leaners seem too bored with traditional communication in classroom.

 

Blended Learning and Blendspace

Blended learning and Blendspace

Hello, everyone. Today I am going to briefly talk about blended learning.

The definition of blended learning

To simply put, face-to-face classroom methods are combined with online educational tools and activities in a blended learning programme while e-learning is totally based on online classrooms.

Benefits of blended learning

• More individualized learning (leaners work on at their own pace)
• To motivate students’ autonomy
• Time and money saving (once it is created and kept being used after)
• No limitation on learning space as long as learners have access to PC and the internet
• Can supplement constraints of face-to-face classroom learning (time/ leaner’s proficiency gap/material and activity preparation)
• No limitation on times of reviewing what learners have learned

Disadvantaged of blended learning

• Difficult to develop high qualified programme and expensive at the first developing stage
• The success of learning depends too much on students themselves because there no teacher(monitor) exists
• Technical difficulties (it requires proper digital equipment (both software and hardware) to operate properly)
• More burden to teachers (even consider aesthetic aspects)

Blended learning tool-  BlendSpace "Create digital lessons in 5 minutes!"
Go to the website: https://www.tes.com/lessons

How to use?

As long as you have a google account, you can log in without any bothering sign-up process. When you log in, you will see already created featured lessons in the dashboard.

To try one out or actually take a lesson about a particular course, you can just go to the Gallery. You will immediately see existing digital lessons vary from math to fun animal things.

Now, let's try make our own online lesson using this tool for our students' extra work! :)

Click "Lesson" and type the title of your lesson. Then you will have your blank online learning space right away as seen blow. 

For example, I will try making an online lesson for basic English. I can search online materials related to it using the search box on the right side of your template. As you can see below pictures, the searching engines are tes, youtube, goolge, search gooru, flickr and also my own video clips can uploaded.

 

I believe this tool will be very useful to give students extra lessons and work. Once the teacher have created a lesson, she can keep updating it and students can easily join the class by just entering a class code!

My thoughts on blended learning in ESL context 

When we are to implement blended learning, the leaners' autonomy and self-motivation is crucially required to keep them on track. Since no one is going to monitor and give feedback immediately while learning happening online, it is really tempting to just skip a few pages or unfold model answers even before having a thought on questions. Or even learners might consider learning outside the classroom not that serious. Thus, no matter the purpose and contents it might be, for effective blended learning, some rules or sort of devices to control online learning alongside the off-line class will be first needed.

Online collaborative learning in ESL contexts and useful tools

Hello, everyone.
Thank you for coming. How are you doing? :)
Today, I am going to talk about some benefits and disadvantages on online collaborative learning in ESL contexts and introduce very useful tools!

In fact, I did give a try on collaborative work in the class today not as a teacher but a student. We were divided in groups and asked to discuss about advantages and disadvantages of online collaboration in ELS classrooms and write an essay about it using the online collaboration tools. Does it sound exciting, doesn't it? Each of use was of course supposed to be somewhere in different places. (Thus, no talking happened.)

To complete the essay, idea sharing would be the first step. To brainstorm about the essay, we used the tool, "Stormboard."

One minute review on Stormbard from YouTube

Go to the website: https://stormboard.com


Stormboard is a synchronizing collaboration tool that uses virtual sticky notes for brainstorming and sharing ideas. If you create an account, you can create a collaboration platform and invite your colleagues to participate in or can just join a project where you are invited.

When you create new one, just select a template from different types of it like just blank one, calander, problem solving one, etc. You can also choose the sticky note type which is most appropriate for your project characteristics. You can text, draw, make comments on it and even upload files, images and videos in ONE sticky note! I found this very useful for the first step of process-writing in groups in our classroom.

 

In line with theoritical bases for benefits of collaboration learning at both the level of cognitition and that of social cohesion,  L2 learners can co-construct their language knowledge and understading through collaboration learning process where peer interaction and practice of scaffording occurs. Of course brainstorming is the first phase of collaboration work and THIS tool fits for quick exchanging ideas and feedback. Why don't you try first on your personal plan like making trip itinerary with friedns?

Other very useful collaboration tools are also here:

http://www.tricider.com/home

https://vialogues.com/

https://voicethread.com/

https://padlet.com/

https://www.zoho.com/docs/writer.html 

Regards

Yuna

WebQuests- An effective tool for task-based instruction

Hi, everyone.

Today, I’d like to share ideas of WebQuest and its application to our classroom.

What is a WebQuest?

    A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. These can be created using various programs, including a simple word processing document that includes links to websites. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

 

What’s the difference between ‘Googling’ and WebQuest?

    There are also a good number of websites that label their activities 'WebQuests' when they are in fact 'Cybersearches'. Googling 'WebQuest' will not necessarily take you to 'inquiry-oriented activities' based on sound pedagogy! Try asking these questions: Do the students have an exciting, engaging task to do? Are they expected to transform information into something they themselves have created? Are they working collaboratively with others? Are they asked to evaluate as well as describe? If not, is it really a WebQuest??

(From Tilly Harrison’s page http://questgarden.com/author/create/preview.php?u=&l=16243-110202033926&a=&p=credits&pt=teacher)

 

What’s the benefit from it on EFL classrooms?

 

  It’s perfect for task-base language teaching where more authentic language use is promoted by having students do meaningful tasks with their target language. It is one of the effective teaching methods of real target language use and also I believe the application of a WebQuest allows the EFL classroom to escape from teacher-centred paradigms, to encourage learner autonomy and student interactions through problem solving. Also, learners’ metacognitive learning ability can be taken place.
 

What's the process of WebQuests?

You can create your own WebQuests normally following the six staged of it: introduction, task, process, resources, evaluation, and conclusion. Thankfully, there are now thousands of ready-made WebQuests that we can bring into our classroom.

Questgarden is one of the best sites for WebQuest lessons.

Go to the website : http://questgarden.com

 

  If you sign up for a free trial, you can access to ready-made lesson plans by teachers all over the world! It's very easy to search up WebQuest lesson plans for your target teaching skills. For example, if you put the keyword "reading" into the "research for example" you will see about 40 lesson plans shared for free and you can immediately check if it's related to your student's level and topics.

  Among them, Oh the Possiblirites by Kerry Ann McKevitt is one of my favourites which I’d like to apply into my classroom. I think it's more related practical life knowledge such as making a plan to convince others your ideas and searching for cheap but nice accommodations and restaurants. Students will actually learn English very naturally while doing these kinds of realistic activities and in particular, academically highly motivated students (who have a dream of studying abroad) will find it most useful and interesting as a way of learning more practical and authentic English.

The task given to the students is below:

You and your classmates have to plan a trip for three weeks. You will have to include a detailed plan of activities and a budget. Once you have made your plans, you and your classmates will present your proposal to the class. In this WebQuest, you will have to search for information about language courses in the city chosen as well as information related to the trip (flights, accomodation, food, free time, etc.).

This activity will have a positive effect on

• improving their reading skills by helping them become more familiar with materials in English
• developing both oral and wiring skills by giving both the written proposal and a presentation.
• Learning cooperative learning through collaborative activities with a group project.
• Extending higher-order thinking such as analysis, creativity, or criticism

 My suggested WebQuest activity for listening and writing skills

A group of students is given a price comparison website and they are supposed to give a present for mother’s day. They have to choose one best item among at least 5 different kinds of it within £50. They should write the comparison in different aspects and provide good rationale for the final choice.

Hope you enjoy my post. Many Thanks! :)

Yuna

Tripico- interactive whiteboard toolkit for ESL classroom activities

Hello, everyone! Thank you for visiting my blog (again).
How's everthing going?

Today I am going to introduce you a website, Triptico where enables ESL teachers to create teaching tools based on interactive whiteboards.


Go to the Website : https://tripticoplus.com

 

Triptico is an amazing resource for teachers to create their own various class activities and learning materials using interactive whiteboards.

 

 

Introducing Triptico from YouTube

A simple desktop app, packed full of innovative resources to enable

 teachers and students to quickly create engaging interactive learning

 

 

It contains 32 different resources available in 4 different categories ranging from simple timers and selectors to very interesting teaching tools and quizzes such as Word Magnets, Student Group, Order Sorter, Bingo, Find Ten, and What's The Question etc.

 

All of them can be simply used without complex install process and created according to your lesson. Also, all activities you have made through Triptico can be saved for the later use. Once you sign up for a free trial, you can access to these excellent tools if you have a computer and the internet. I absolutely believe that this will make your better use of technology in the classroom to motivate students-teacher interaction and promote classroom participation and involvement.

 

    

 Word Magnets



Every tool acceccible in this website is based on virtual whiteboards as seen above. Word Magnet is one of my favorite tools and I found it very useful for vocabulary and short sentence activity such as labelling, grouping, word scramble and so on. Students will enjoy learning via this modern technology and we teachers also do not have to make all vocabulary cards in paper anymore.

 

 What's the Question?

The quiz maker, What's the Question, is highly recommended for a post-reading activity. As an example above, the teacher prepares and presents answers(mostly key contents of the novel) instead of making questions after reading Romeo and Juliet(or vice versa as normal). Then, each team chooses one of the items they feel confident about to explain and makes the acceptable question for it. If other teams agree that the question presented makes sense to the given answer, the team gains points. I found this is a really fun and motivating activity not only as a reading activity but as speaking practice. Also it will encourage students to cooperate helping one another, where scaffodling can naturally occur.

 

 

Ths site also offers tutorials and Q&A so you might be hard to get lost when you first start to use it. David, the creator this site, always communicates with us through the web.Moreover, one new feature we should notice is "Blog", where you can publish your activity you have created and share it with everyone, too.  

This website is like a treasure island. The more you look into it, the more unexpected your will find. Then, why not try? :)

Regards


Yuna