Voki

Vki is a really cute tool that will make your learners smile!  It's a website on which you can make your own 'voki' avatar and record messages for it to say, taking messages via e-mail or you can embed them on your website (like this!). In all honesty, the fun is in making the avatar, and the messaging is a bit secondary, so it's not all that applicable for language learning, but it's a bit of fun!

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iTunes and Using Podcasts.

People are often put off looking into iTunes because they don't have an iPod, iPhone, etc, I know I was, but in the oft-quoted words of Mr Stannard:

'You don't have to have an iPod to use iTunes'! 

This is a phenomenal resource which can open up a world of listening resources, most of them free, and you can listen on any computer.  All that you need to do is to download the iTunes software onto your desktop, and it's all yours!  Probably the most useful part of all this is the podcasts that are available for authentic listening practice and for specific lessons in English (or in a wealth of other languages...).  If you're still thinking, 'What's she on about?!', a podcast is like a short (usually) radio programme that is produced on a regular basis and the majority are made non-commercially by people like you and me. Ther are also video-podcasts (or vodcasts) on the site, but we'll stick to the audio for now!

Here is a small selection of the podcasts for learning English that were on the first page I looked at -but there are literally hundreds of others. 



As you can see, there is a 'subscribe' button next to each - teh best idea is to listen to a couple of episodes and you'll soon decide whether or not this person's approach accords with your own!  If they do, you can click 'subscribe' and every time a new episode is published, your computer will pick it up and download it automatically for you - what could be easier?   They'll show up on your iTunes page (see below) and are then accessible to listen to on yor computer, or download to your iPod etc and listen to on the move.

Here's a link to Russell Stannard's step-by step video on how to get the best out of iTunes, not just podcasts, but also apps for language learning. This will tell you everything you need to know!

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/iTunesNew/index.html



Podcasts are great for langauge learning for all sorts of reasons.  They are, of course, a great source of authentic material, both for teachers to use in class and for learners to use outside class.  There is such a huge variety of material on every subject, it would be impossible not to find something that would interest any individual.  You could challenge your learners as homework to find a podcast that they really like (maybe by telling them that they have to listen to a minimum of 4 or 5) and then post the links on a class blog, or a Wallwisher (see other posts about these) so that they can all try out each others.  Hopefully, if they find something useful/ interesting, they'll stick with it and this is an ideal way of motivating learners to continue to learn, week after week, on the long haul that is learning a language.  The only difficulty is the sheer amount of material that is available, some of which is brilliant, and some of which (of course) isn't so great.  If you search for a certain type of podcast, eg put TEFL or ESL into the search box, you'll get a list that will also show you how popular each one is, and this can help to be some kind of guide as to the quality.  At least once you've found something that you like, it's not a one off - it'll keep on coming!

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VYou

This is another real winner from Nik Peachy - I think the man should have a knighthood, personally. Where does he find all this brilliant stuff??!!
One of the most motivating things when you are learning a language is to get involved on a personal level with native speakers of that language in my experience, but this can be a tall order.  If you are in your home country, there won't be many English speakers around probably, and even those people who are living in an English speaking country (ironically) sometimes find that making friends and interacting outside of their own language community can be difficult.  This site is a great way to practice your listening, but in a very personal way.  If you click on the site, there are hundreds of people there with a brief description of who they are, categorised under 'hobbies, entertainment, professional sports etc etc. You can ask any of them a question and they will send you a video reply (presumably within a couple of days).  You can also watch video responses to questions that other people have asked.  Predictably, some of the responses are a bit lame, but some people are just great.  One guy will write you a song about any idea that you send him!
If you'd like to be a participator as well as a listener, the sign up process is very easy and quick.  And, of course, if you'd like to talk to me or ask me a question, here I am - go right ahead!!



The only potential problem with this is the obvious one that it's not filtered, so you might get some unsavoury content, but having had a quick surf through it, it seems OK.
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Using Video

Using video in class is a great idea for all sorts of reasons - it brings novelty and interest to the class, learners get visual paralinguistic clues to help them with listening comprehension, and if they are learning in their own country, it may even help them to assimilate culturally to English speaking environments.

I remember the days (and it's not that I'm old - although I am!- it's not that long ago!) when using video in class meant booking out the TV and video, lugging it through to the class, and then finding that someone had gone off with the remote and you couldn't use it anyway!  Mostly I didn't bother.   The IWB has revolutionised this and now it is a matter of a few clicks to a wealth of resources on the net.

You Tube is, of course, a brilliant site, with such a wide range of material that most of us don't ever look any further, but this website has a list of other video material that is also good for a change.

One example is the How Stuff Works website. This has lots of great text as well as video clips, on a wide range of factual stuff.    This example is about bullfighting in France (who knew?!).  The French version doesn't kill the bulls and they are the star of the show, which is quite nice.  It's a nice little video - only 2.5 minutes and with lots of opportunity for discussion of animal rights, risky sports, etc.  There are loads of other videos about different countries and cultures - you're bound to find something that will appeal.

Another good video site is CNN Student News. It sells itself as:
'CNN Student News is a ten-minute, commercial-free, daily news program for middle and high school students produced by the journalists and educators at CNN. '
and it really is good.  Although it is aimed at teenagers, it's also very good for adult language learners.  Each show has a transcript, which is great, and a daily discussion and newsquiz, so all of your materials are there for you. What more could you want??!!  As with any topics that might be upsetting, controversial or sensitive, you will, of course, have to make your own judgement about what will work with your class.

Finally,of course, don't forget the TED site (see other blog entry on this) - if that doesn't make you think, nothing will!
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Jing

This is Russell Stannard's favourite, and it really is a fantastic tool. Like some of the other great ideas on the net, it's very simple, but has loads of useful applications.  It's a screen capture tool, so you can use it to very easily take pictures and make videos of what is on your computer screen.  Whilst you are showing the screen, you can also tape your voice explaining what's going on, or (if you have the Pro version) also use a webcam to make a video of yourself.  The basic version is free, or you can download the Pro version very cheaply ($15 a year - about £10), and this gives you a few more options. When you have made a video, you can save it on your computer, or upload it to the server and have a url or an embed code to retrieve it by. There's a little yellow sun that sits on the top of your screen, so it's always there, easily accessible and it's a very simple application to learn to use.

This is a set of training videos from the Teacher Training Videos website that will show you how to use Jing.

There are loads of ways to use this tool.  For me, it's an excellent way to get a 'connected classroom' going.  You can really easily and quickly make videos that you can e-mail to your learners and motivate them to continue to study throughout the week.  Some ideas -mainly from  Russell - thanks :)

 - Send them a short video of yourself talking, explaining what the homework is this week
 - Put their homework on your screen and then talk them through the mistakes rather than using a correction code
 - Put the vocabulary from the lesson on a word document, and show it, talking them through the meanings.
 - Rather then just sending the url for a website that's useful, send a captured picture of it, with notes attached.
 - Get learners to download the free version and ask them to make their own videos - you could ask them to find an image they like on the internet (perhaps one from the Google Art Project) and describe it.  These videos can be embedded on their blogs or they can share the urls with you and with each other
 - I think that with more and more distance and blended learning teacher training, this kind of feedback will really help to bridge the distance between tutor and trainee and reduce the feeling of isolation often experienced.

Here are some more ideas from Russell.

I recently sent out my first Jing feedback on some homework that a learner had sent to me, and she was really surprised and pleased.  She wrote back:

Hey..

Wow this is kool

I didnt expect you talking to me

I did this in my email program, really quick  I am sorry... I promise the next it´ll be better

cheers

Hopefully it'll be motivating!

I really like the idea of using this tool for giving feedback to learners.  This is a link to an excellent article about this, and here's an example of a video I made on Jing showing how you can give feedback on written work.




Not many limitations with this - it takes a little while to upload a video after you've made it, and the maximum time you have is 5 minutes, but you can always make a series of more than one video if thats' a limitation. All in all, a real winner!
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English Central

This site is an amazing one for listening skills, learning vocabulary and practising pronunciation.  It has a really wide range of video material at different levels, (indicated easy, medium and hard) that you can listen to and transcripts below them so that you can read along as you listen.  That in itself would be helpful, but this site goes a whole lot further!  As you watch each video, you can go back a line at a time and listen again (helpful), you can slow down the speed of the speaker (very helpful - I particularly love this feature) and you can click on the more difficult vocabulary in the transcript and it will give you a definition and a pronunciation guide (how much help do you need?!!).  Fabulous! There is such a wide range of material it should appeal to adults with a wide range of interests and to young learners.  You can register on the site and it will keep a track of your scores, but you can also use it without registering, and in either case it's free.

After you've watched the video, you can also use a microphone to record yourself reading each of the lines and the site gives you a score.  Most of the videos have American accents, so you won't get 100% scores if you don't mirror that, but it's quite forgiving of other accents and even when I put on my most RP voice (ie quite different to an AmEng accent, but perfectly acceptable) it gave me a high score. 

I think that this is something that you could set as a homework task, allow learners time to listen, understand the vocabulary, practice some of the pronunciation, and then come to class prepared to discuss a video that they have watched.  It may be that you want to give them all the same one or they could each choose one and describe theirs to a small group as a jigsaw activity.

This is a really inspirational video. Check it out!

Limitations - I'm stuck to think of any! 

Vocaroo and AudioBoo

These two sites are both great for recording yourself or for your learners to record themselves.  They're both great and both have their places. Vocaroo is really easy, straightforward to use and is a great tool for learners to use and e-mail their recordings to you, their teacher.  AudioBoo is a bit more complicated although the layout is very nice, but you can do a lot more with the recordings you make.

With Vocaroo, the website interface couldn't be more simple.

Press where it says 'Click to Record', speak, and then click to finish.  You then have the option to listen to what you've recorded, record again if you want to and then send it as an e-mail or post it on the net.  I really like the idea of getting learners to record themselves speaking for homework and for them to send this to me.
Here's a bit of 'The Jabberwocky' by Lewis Carroll that I recorded:

The second audio site I tried was AudioBoo.  This is much more sophisticated, and Russell can tell you better than I can how to use it:  Here's a Boo that I made earlier, one of the downsides of it is that when you've made your boo it seems to take an extraordinarily long time to load to the computer, but once you've done it, it's saved and you can then tweet it, embed it, send it to facebook etc. You can also follow other people, so there is a lot of potential for authentic listening practice here.....

Which of these sites is more sutable for your learners will depend a lot on your learners.  If you have young, digital natives who are comfortable with Twitter, etc, they'll probably get a lot out of AudioBoo, but if you have less tech-savvie learners, or want to do some recording very simply, then, I'd say Vocaroo is better.

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TED - Videos of really interesting talks.

TED bills itself as 'Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world' and it is just that.  This is one example of the kind of thing that's available, but there are talks on all kinds of things -it would be difficult to find something not to be interested in! This is one of my favourites:  (thanks to Nik Peachy for drawing my attention to this one)

In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.

"Education-as-usual assumes that kids are empty vessels who need to be sat down in a room and filled with curricular content. Dr. Mitra's experiments prove that wrong."

The talks are aimed at educated native speakers, and as such are high level, but the content is so nice, and they'd be perfect for listening practice for learners aiming at Higher Education in English speaking countries and wanting to do IELTS or similar exams.
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Lyrics Training

This is a really great site.  It has songs in a range of European languages - English, Itaian, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portugese and German, and you can choose from easy, medium or hard songs and also make the task easier or harder for yourself by choosing how much of the song you want blanked out.  You then play the video, listen to the song and fill in the gaps. What is particularly nice about this site is that it's very easy to take at your own pace.  If you miss a gap the song stops and you just press the backspace button to listen to that line again, or if you can't get it, press the tab key to get the answer.  You can register for free with the site and then it will record all of your scores, but you can use the site without registering, too.

I think it's a great site for all ages and all abilities, really, as there is a wide range of songs and this kind of material is often very motivating for people, especially if they know and like the songs anyway.  Probably more for homework, rather than in class.
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Breaking News English

What is this?
click here for the site

This site is a teacher's dream.  It has an enormous amount of topical material on it, prepared in a manner that means it is very easy to 'download and teach'.  The site consists of an archive of news items, to which a new story is added every three days.  These are all current affairs stories, but are on a wide variety of topics such as politics, sport,  news, health, celebrity.  It would be hard not to find something that would be relevant to your learners.  Each article is also available as a podcast for listening practice.

This side of the site is its main focus, and you could be forgiven for using only that, but in fact, there is a wealth of other material here, too - interactive quizzes, dictogloss activities, matching, hangman, flashcards.  The are also links to Sean Banville's blog which has some great ideas for classroom activities and methodologies, and to his other websites which include News English. com (a site with easier news items) and Listen a minute.com, which has easier listening activities. And all for free - the man deserves a knighthood!

Why is the content good for language learning?

The content is generally of quite a high level.  However, the texts are generally quite short (some are marked 'easier') and so, with preparation it isn't unreasonable to think that this could be used with intermediate level students or above.  As has been noted - the content is authentic newspaper text and as such, with repeated use, will help learners to develop the vocabulary they will need for reading text of a more formal genre.  This might be particularly applicable to learners who are aiming to use their English in a context of academic study or business.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

How you use this will depend on the facilities available to you.  Even in a class with no computers, the text and some of the activities can be printed off and photocopied for use in class.  If you have access to computers, the possibilities are more numerous.  Possibilities include predicting content and checking against the text, written or aural and using the games and quiz software to increase learner's awareness of vocabulary, collocation and structure.  It would also be easy, given the amount of material on the site,  to set up a jigsaw reading/ listening exercise where each pair int he class have the autonomy to choose a text that interests them, read/ listen to it and subsequently report back to other learners what they have found out.  Tasks could usefully be set for homework, and there is sufficient variety of material and activities to help to maintain learners' interest and motivation.

Limitations

As the text is all newspaper based, the themes are largely of interest to older teenagers and adults, so the site is not so useful for teachwers of yound learners.  Also, as has been noted, the level makes it less suitable for learners under intermediate level.  Apart form that, the only difficulty in using this excellent site is in being selective abot the material you use - there is simply too much and it can be a little overwhelming!  It is perhaps a little churlish, though to be ungrateful when confronted with such riches!
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LoudLit.org

;

What is this?

 

This site (you can access it here) has a range of classic literature, that is available in audio form.  Either the site can be used to simply download the stories onto an mp3, or you can listen to them on the computer, whist simltaneously reading the text.  There is a range of material here - classic novels such as Huckleberry Finn, poetry, children's stories such as The Little Matchgirl, short stories and even a couple of historical American documents such as the Declararation of Independence. 

Why is the content good for language learning?

 

In terms of the relevance to language learning, there is a wealth of material here, and it has the advantage of it being possible to use the dual coding of reading and listening at the same time to aid comprehension.  Dual Coding was originally proposed by Allan Paivio in 1971 as an explanation of memory of words and pictures, but has been subsequently developed in the sphere of multi-media teachnlogy by Richard Mayer and Roxana Moreno (2005)  A Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning: Implications for Design Principles. You can read this paper here. Put simply, it helps to processing new  information aurally and visually at the same time helps.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

You could use this in class to practise either reading or listening - it would be possible to do a small amount of the listening as a dictogloss, for example, possibly after reading and listening independently, as the level of text is very high.  I think it is most useful to promote extensive reading outside class.  Learners can read the text free of charge and can be encouraged to download the mp3 file for extensive listening practice whilst they are tavelling to school/ college etc.

Limitations
I was initially very impressed with this tool, and had planned to use some of the content with my upper intermediate learners in class. The idea was to read/ listen to the first couple of pages of a short story in class, and follow this up with them reading/ listening to more for homework.

When I looked more closely, however, I decided that this wasn't going to work.  The difficulty lies in the cannonical nature of the texts available.  They are, without doubt great literature and great stories, and were certainly chosen for this reason as well as the fact that they are old enough to avoid copyright infringements and royalty payments.  But herein lies the difficulty.  The level of language is high, much of the vocabulary used is poetic, literary and in some cases a little archaic and on reflection, I felt that, even for the upper intermediate group that I have, this would be too difficult to be motivating.

As an example, I had hoped to use the short story 'The Gift of the Magi' but looking at the first page disuaded me....(I've underlined all of the vocabulary that I felt they might not know)

'There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.'


Not to be overcome without some resistance, I looked at teh children's stories, hoping that this may be easier.  This is from 'The Little Matchgirl'.

'One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing.

At this point I decided that 'urchin, to do capitally, maiden, the whole lifelong day' and 'farthing' were just too much to expect, and gave up!