Sunday 10 February 2013


My Favourate Links and Literatures

 
 
1) Russell's Teacher Training Videos Com:


 
 
 
2)Stephen D Krashen: Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition -
    Original Version  published in 1982
 
 
    
3) Personal Website of Robert C. Gardner:

 

4) Personal Website of Z.Dörnyei:





Saturday 9 February 2013

 




WordShift is one of a free on line multimodal tool and very similar functions as Wordle. However, it was created to help teachers capture and display the vocabulary structure of texts, and to help create an opportunity to talk and explore the richness and wonders of language. This arranges words in more original ways than a plain text, which can be also used on gift cards, and for highlightening texts and embedding blogs.
The procedure is very simple.
 
First, prepare/copy/paste any text, and just press 'Sift' to visualize. (65k characters max) Then, the programme shows beautifully designed words in a minute.
 
If you click a specific tag in ‘Sort’, you can change the arrangement such as alphabetical or frequently used order.  Then, if you click any tag in ‘Mark’, you can highlight the words according to your purpose.  In particular, Wordshift offers us a visualization of word thesaurus relationships and Google® searches of images and videos related to the target words.
 


 
 



 
Why is it adopted for language learning?
 
Vocabulary development is a crucial part in language learning. This multimodal tool help learners increase their vocabulary, and reinforce their cognitive process by speaking in a pair or group work in order to understand the meaning of the text. The variety of selections in creation and changeable patterns arouse learners’ interests, and also, discoveries of the most frequent words enhance their motivation. Moreover, it has flexibility in the usage for language teaching due to more added functions than Wordle, and therefore, nowadays it is used for an educational purpose.  After completion of your WordShift, Jing might be convenient for capturing the graphics.
 
 
How can teachers foster this tool as a classroom activity?
-   For warming up; introduction of new vocabulary, review of words, or oral practice
-   Speaking activity; discussion about frequently/less used words, or talk about the meaning of words/images/videos
-   Writing activity; re-construction of the text
-   Reinforcement of vocabulary/grammar; classified the words by nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
-   Collaboration; art work such as poster creation
-   For handout/PowerPoint
 
Advantages:
-       Simple and interesting; it can be also used for illustrating our own blogs.
-       A variety of options for customize a text.
-   Speedy manufacturing process.
-   WordShift makes words more attractive.
-       WordShift can develop classroom activities more widely by using a word thesaurus, images and videos from Google® searches.
-        These images and videos are draggable.
-   You do not need to find a text when you demonstrate the procedure because there are sample texts shown under the box.
 
Limitations:
-    The created graphics keep on changing, and there is no device for saving.
 
-  There is no code for embedding.  Therefore, after completing your WordShift, you must copy or print it by yourself.
 
-       The stop words such as the/and/of  are not displayed in this Tag Cloud even though these are high frequency function words.
 
 
 

Friday 8 February 2013

Padlet

New Version of Wallwisher
 
 
Cosidering the future of computing, Wallwisher build a new virtual surface that has all the benefits of being digital and the simplicity of a notepad.  Here is a newsletter from Wallwisher as of 08/02/2013.
 
 Over the next of couple of days, all Wallwisher.com addresses will change to Padlet.com addresses and you will be redirected to Padlet.com if you visit Wallwisher.com. However, rest assured that your walls, accounts, and all the wonderful content will continue to function as is. Even your embedded Walls. So, you don't have to do anything.  

Better privacy settings

  • Set a master password for your wall.
  • Add people by email addresses.
  • Define roles (e.g. Read, Write, Moderate, Admin).

 
 

Creation @ speed of thought



 

  • Single click Wall creation.
  • Drag and drop file uploads.
  • Rich text support, Math and Code highlighting
 

Real-time collaboration

  • No need to refresh to see what others are posting.
  • No "Ok" buttons. Posts save as you type.
 

Touchable

  • iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and phones.
  • Pinch and zoom, and all that jazz.  
 
 

Thursday 7 February 2013

Wordle









Wordle is a free on line application created by Jonathan Feinberg, an IBM programmer, solely as an amusement. It can generate ‘word clouds’ from any texts whatever anyone selects, and then, can highlight the words in a wider or bigger size according to the frequent usage ratios. You can see the beautiful and stylish looking words to the text you supply, which will be randomly produced within a few moments. I personally love this symmetry or asymmetry beauty.

The procedure is outstandingly simple. 

-      Prepare a text.
     (Wikipedia is a convenient site to find a text; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki )

-      Go to http://www.wordle.net , and click.

-      Paste in a bunch of text/enter the URL of the link, and go/submit.

 
All graphics you create with this tool belong to you.  You can edit the created words, and change the fonts, layouts, color et cetera as you like. In addition, you can save/print/ embed/share them as you wish. If you click ‘Randomize’, the graphic changes automatically and repeatedly.


Why is it adopted for language learning?
 
Word clouds are multimodal tools for arranging words in more original ways than a plain text, which are used on gift cards, highlightening texts, and embedding blogs. 

The variety of selections in creation and changeable patterns arouse learners’ interests, and also, discoveries of the most frequently used words enhance their motivation. Moreover, it has flexibility in the usage, and therefore, nowadays it is used for an educational purpose.  After saving your Wordle, you can print/convert it to PDF/embed it into a web page.  You can also use Jing to capture the graphics.

 

How can teachers foster this tool as a classroom activity?

-      For warming up; introduction of new vocabulary,  review of words, or oral practice

-      Speaking activity; discussion about frequently/less used words, or talk about the meaning of words

-      Writing activity; re-construction of the text

-      Reinforcement of grammar; classified the words by nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

-      Collaboration; art work such as poster creation

 

Advantages:

-      Simple and interesting; it can be also used for illustrating our own blogs.

-      No words limit

-      A variety of options for customize a Wordle; it even includes a language/word choice in Edit device.

-      Speedy manufacturing process

-      Wordle makes words more attractive

 

Limitations:

-      The created graphics disappears unless you save it. In other words, you cannot find the same graphic when you move to another.  Remember to save it as soon as you create a favourate one.

-    Wordle does not show up some particular words such as 'the','and' or 'but', and also numbers since it may think these words are 'stop' words. If you wish to include these articles or conjunctions, please refer to 'Language' menu in order to change the setting.
 -    There is no sound.


 


Wednesday 6 February 2013

Wallwisher

Wallwisher

What is Wallwisher?
 
Wallwisher is a 2.0 free online tool where anybody can create an electronic co-wall. Although it was originally designed for a wide range of gift cards such as birthday or anniversary, it can be now used for educational purposes as well. The procedures for creating a wall are very simple and clear.
 


1)    Create an account, or you can log in with you Gmail account.
     (Other people do not need any accounts for posting comments on your wall.)

2)    Enter your name and e-mail, and type your preferred wall URL.

3)    Set viewing and posting to Everyone, and choose your favourate theme.

4)    Upload a picture, type a title and subtitle for your wall. Click Done.

5)    Share your wall URL with students, and then, they will be able to join the same web page and can stick images, videos, links with texts (up to 160 characters), and PDFs electronically.

6)    Double click anywhere on the wall so that post a message window can open. Fill in name or nickname, and write a comment in the provided space.

7)    On line visitors can add a comment as well to the wall if it is set to public.

8)    Students can move or delete comments in edit mode by clicking the top right hand X.

9)    The owner/original creator of the wall can monitor/move/delete comments and edits the wall anytime.






Why is this adopted for language teaching?

I think that this application provide learners and teachers with a great opportunity to combine knowledge with enthusiasm.  Here is an actual classroom activity we have experienced in our ICT lecture.

Classroom settings;
Divide the class by groups of 4 or 5 people. Provide one or two computers for each group.
 
Tasks;

Think about the interesting spots to recommend around the world. To give it a more realistic context, our teacher, Russell suggested three cities including Moscow, where he is scheduled to visit on his business trip next month.   After this activity, he sent us a feedback email, and provided us another tasks. Please refer to the PowerPoint video embedded below.


 
 
As you listen to in this PowerPoint video, we did produce a great deal of collaboration conversation in English by the medium of discussion, question, negotiation, and doing our tasks. These are a wide range of benefits in that wall creating activity as the following.
 
Advantages:
 
-  Easy operation.
-  Wallwisher can build a lot of collaborating conversation.
-  Web-quest is great for exposing students to different media.
-  Posting different tasks/roles on individual group activate the class.
-  Authentic tasks/materials make inputs participatory rather than passive.
-  Students can promote brainstorming each other.
-  Students can be cognitive by editing, organizing or designing procedures.
-  Assigning different groups different tasks encourages each group to look at the data that relates to them.




However, there are still limitations.


Limitation:
 
-       Need a computer facility. One computer per a pair or a group.
-       Required a personal valid email address for creating an account.
Ethical issues are to be considered.
-       A potential difficulty of organizing the overcrowded wall when whole class students have left comments there.
-       A potential possibility of Cyber-attack/bullying. 
l   As for the word limit of a text (up to 160 characters) should not be included in its limitation since it will be effective for students to focus on writing a concise text.
 





How can we use it for language teaching?
- for warming up
- for introducing a target words/grammatical structure
- for speaking activity;
  1) Put strange pictures on a wall, and ask students to talk about
  2) Put images of people/things, and let students do role plays and create original stories
- for brainstorming; provide students a task, and ask them to comment each other.
- for sentence/paragraph reconstruction
- for learners’ presentational or writing skills
- for enabling students to summarise their understanding within a limited words
- for collaboration work
- for teacher’s/students’ feedback

Reference: (Texts of PowerPoint slides)
 

Wallwisher activity:

We were 5 people, and had two laptops to use. Our group’s task this time was to introduce some interesting spots to visit in Moscow, - especially for our teacher, Russell, -during his long lecturing journey. In the beginning, we just engaged in searching attractive places on the website separately because nobody has been there. Quickly, I could imagine some nice places to visit, such as the Moscow Kremlin, Red Square, or St. Basil Cathedral, because personally, I am interested in the history of the Russia and the Russian Revolution. 

The Kremlin is at the heart of Moscow, and one of the sites is still used as the official residence of the Russian President.  I am sure you may have seen Kremlin on the films of 007 or Mission impossible.  Then, I found another nice place.  That was a space centre near Moscow! There, you can do a simulation of astronauts.  However, my unusual idea was quickly rejected by the other members due to the time limit of the task.  Then, my dear Catharine proposed us a smart idea!  She said, “We should just search the top ten tourists’ attractions in Moscow on the Google site because our time is limited”.  All of us agreed to her smart suggestion. Then, we suddenly united in tackling our task.
 

Question No.1:

The answer is; we did produce collaboration conversation in English by the medium of discussion, question, negotiation, and doing our tasks. We read the descriptions of the spots, but to be honest, we could just skim and embed the data.

In the beginning, I talked a lot about Moscow, but from the middle, I tried not to disturb them but just watched the procedures as a digital immigrant.   However, I felt how amazing their cooperation and collaboration works were!


Question No.2 :

In the beginning there was just a blank space.  First of all, we naturally divided our roles as a director, web-searchers, wall designers and an observer, - it’s me.  We selected the top five spots by two laptops, and accordingly embedded the images and videos one after another quickly on a wall of Wallwisher.  Since it was our first experience, at first we had some difficulties to embed the pictures and videos. Therefore, we needed to cooperate and exchange our opinions frequently - how and where to embed these images, which location and size is appropriate, or what descriptions to put on the wall – in order to make a wall fabulous with links to video, pictures, music, websites, blogs, etc. Furthermore, to give this activity a more realistic context, we were requested to produce information according to our teacher, Russell’s actual itinerary. Using authentic tasks and materials help us to be communicative. It was a goal-oriented brainstorming session.


Question No. 3:

-       It can build a lot of Collaborating conversation.

-       Web-quest is great for exposing students to different media.

-       Posting different tasks/roles on individual group activate the class.

-       Authentic tasks/materials make inputs participatory rather than passive.

-       Students can promote brainstorming each other.

-       Students can be cognitive by editing, organizing or designing procedures.

-       Assigning different groups different tasks encourages each group to look at the data that relates to them.


Question No.4:

I think this can be good because there are always extrovert and introvert students in a classroom. For extroverts students, providing a presentation does not matter, but in contrast, it may invite a lot of anxiety to introvert students. First of all, teachers need to divide a pair or group with the former and the latter as possible as they can.  Some might say that they cannot assess the speaking quality of quieter students, but nowadays, teachers can do it by providing a presentation task using a web-tool as homework.

 
Question No.5:

I think that Wallwisher is a useful multimedia application with a simple operation.

I understand that providing a time limit is always necessary for teachers to organize a lesson time. However, this time I could not scan the text well due to such time pressure, and in addition, I felt that if I had done the task alone, I would have created my wall in different way as I wished. Therefore, I think we may ask students to create their own wallwisher for their homework, which will be also useful for reviewing this tool, or reading and writing practices.