Breaking News English - News in English

What is Breaking News English 

Breaking News English (http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/), operated by Sean Banville, is a gorgeous website providing current news and free, ready-to-print EFL/ESL lessons plans with new lessons every 2 days, including 26-page printable handout, more than 40 online activities and MP3 in American and British English.  

How to Use  Breaking News English in Teaching and Learning

• When preparing a lesson, teachers can tailor their lessons with the help of BreakingNewsEnglish.com. They can apply handouts, MP3, exercises and activities provided by the website to facilitate language teaching. 


• With conditions permitted, teacher can ask students to finish some exercises in the classroom. Some exercises, e.g. Hangman, No Letters, Sentence Jumble can be completed in pairs or in group, which increase collaborative discussion, engagement and practice of using target language.


• Students can arrange their autonomous learning via BreakingNewsEnglish.com by listening the MP3 and finish exercises provided here. After finishing the exercises, correct answers are provided in the website and students can correct their answers by themselves. With questions on the exercises, students can ask their teacher or classmates for help. 

Benefits of  Breaking News English  in Language Classroom

• Fabulous exercises: 20 online quizzes and activities are provided for language teachers and learners

• Exercises are interactive

• Different skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) can be practiced via Breaking News English

• Frequent update on current English news and lesson plans

• Build confidence in dealting with news and reports

• MP3 of the news is provided in US & UK English

• Handouts are printable and MP3 are downloadable

Limitations

• Design of the website: the layout is a bit messy and complicated and the color is not attractive 

• Finishing all the exercises might take quite a long time 

• Too many advertisements in the website 

• Not all the exercises are helpful

 Further Reading

• Sean Banville's Blog        

          http://seanbanville.com/

• Facebook of BreakingNewsEnglish

          http://www.facebook.com/pages/BreakingNewsEnglish/155625444452176

• Websites Similar to BreakingNewsEnglish.com                             

          http://www.similarsitesearch.com/alternatives-to/breakingnewsenglish.com

Voki - Creating Speaking Avatars!

What is Voki 

Voki (http://www.voki.com/) is a website which allows you to create your customized speaking avatars to express yourself and interact with your friends. It is an excellent tool which could be utilized in language classroom to motivate learners and make the class fun.

Making Your Own Voki

This video is taken from YouTube presenting how to make your own Voki.

How to Apply Voki in Language Class

• Students can recorded themselves via Voki and analyse their language. They can practice for many time before saving their satisfactory recording. In this process, speaking anxiety could be reduced and they would like to have more speaking practice via this tool than speaking in front of others. They can also send their own Voki URL to their teacher or friends for feedback and comments. 

• Teacher can utilize Voki to make the text more vivid and stimulating when preparing for lessons. Teacher could record their own voice or text to speech. In the text to speech function, voice from different languages could be chosen. For example, teacher could show the differences between British English and American English by choosing different voices for the character. Students listen to the voices and find the differences.

• Students can learn from the pronunciation  of the character in the Voki by typing the text to add the voice. They can learn different languages and the voice is fairly authentic. 

Benefits of Voki in Language Classroom

• Simple steps to customize your own speaking characters 
• Motivate students to participate in the classroom and encourage autonomous learning 
• Different languages can be selected, e.g. English, French, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, etc.  
• More opportunities are provided for students to practice speaking, listening and writing skills
• Voice can be added via phone call, microphone, text to speech or upload a file
• Voice added via text to speech is fairly authentic
• Helpful to reduce anxiety produced when speaking in front of teacher or students 
• Your own speaking characters can be shared via blogger, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Limitations

• Sign-up process is needed and only 15 days free trial of Voki Classroom
• Customizing characters may need quite a long time
• When adding voice via text to speech, words of your text might be missing when trying different voices and modification is required.
• Conversation activity could not be practiced via Voki since only one avatar can be produced for each time.
• Time limitation of voice added to the avatars is quite short (around 60s)
• Too many advertisements are embedded in the website

Further Reading 

• TechWeb2 introducing Voki                                                              http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/Voki 

• Make your own Voki                                        http://jenniferbarnett.wikispaces.com/file/view/Voki+Tutorial.pdf

Dvolver - Online MovieMaker

What is Dvolver?
Dvolver MovieMaker (http://www.dvolver.com/) is website where you can customize your own animation of your choice. You can design your own scene by choosing provided background, plots, characters, background music and adding dialogues.

7 Steps to Make Your Own Movie
 1. Go to the website www.dvolver.com
  2.   Select background and sky for your scene.
  3.   Select a plot, e.g. Rendez-vous, pick-up, chase and soliloquy.
  4.   Select characters from 30 different animation for your scene.
  5.   Edit your own dialogue.
  6.   Select music for your scene.
  7.   Select a style for your title and add your name and the title for the animation.

How to use Dvolver in Language Teaching and Learning
  1. In the language classroom, teacher can make the class more vivid and stimulating by presenting the animation produced by Dvolver to tailor the textbook.
   
   2. Teacher deliver a task to students and ask them to make their own animation via Dvolver by using key sentences and vocabulary. This task can be done individually or in pairs. In this process, students can learn practice making conversation and using new vocabulary.

Benefits of Dvolver in Language Class

• Increase the motivation and creativity of students, especially young learners.
• Encourage autonomous learning.
• Animation is vivid and stimulating.
• Simple steps allow you to customize your own animation.
• No need to sign up for the website.
• The finished animation can be sent to e-mail, Facebook, blog, etc.

Limitations

• The choice of background, sky, characters and music is fairly limited and may not enough to meet the needs of users.
• The maximum number of characters is only two, which is not enough for making a conversation including more than three characters.
• Voice cannot be added to the animation. It would be better with characters pronouncing the language in the animation.
• The background music is sometimes annoying with repeating playing.

Further Reading

• Teachertrainingvideos                                                       http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/volver/index.html
• 10 Popular Sites like Dvolver                                                                           http://www.moreofit.com/similar-to/www.dvolver.com/Top_10_Sites_Like_Dvolver/
• Dvolver Online Animation
  http://desktopvideo.about.com/od/Video-Creation-Websites/p/Dvolver-Online-Animation.htm

Vocaroo - Online Recording

What is Vocaroo

Vocaroo (http://vocaroo.com) is an audio tool designed for recording. The voice message can be sent via e-mail, downloaded as a file or sent to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc.  

How to Use Vocaroo

                                                       This video is taken from YouTube.

Using Vocaroo in Language Teaching and Learning

• Teacher gives students a specific topic for practicing speaking skill, i.e. describing your favorite sport. Students are able to record themselves via Vocaroo and send the voice file to teachers by e-mail or post it on their blog. After receiving the voice message, teacher provides comments or feedback for students.

• When teaching pronunciation, i.e. weak forms and contractions, with Vocaroo, teacher can record themselves reading sentences or passages and demonstrate how to cope with weak forms and contractions when speaking. After recording, teacher sends the recording to students for listening and practicing  their speaking skills.

• When preparing speaking test, students can practice and record themselves via Vacaroo and listen to the recording in order to analyse their own language. Meanwhile, they can send it to their classmates or teachers for comments. 

Benefits of Vocaroo in Language Class

• Easy to operate

• Encourage autonomous learning (esp. developing speaking skills)

• Reduce the anxiety from face-to-face interaction

• Easy to share recording with others

• Create voice recording without sophisticated installation of software 

Limitations

• Device requirement: high-quality microphone is needed for clear recording.

• Technical problems: voice is often unsuccessfully recorded for some reasons (i.e. problems of microphone, computers, noise) 

Further Reading

• Teachertrainingvideos                                                         http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/vocaroo1/index.html

• Other websites like Vocaroo                                                 http://www.moreofit.com/similar-to/www.vocaroo.com/Top_10_Sites_Like_Vocaroo/

TodaysMeet - Creating Your Chatroom

What is TodaysMeet?

TodaysMeet (http://todaysmeet.com/) is a free, real-time text chat program, which can be applied in the language classroom for discussion, making comments, sharing ideas, providing feedback and brainstorming. 

Several Steps to Nail TodaysMeet

1. Navigate to http://todaysmeet.com/

2. Create a room 

-select a name for your room and create a unique URL.

-choose how long will the room date be saved.

-send the unique URL for other audience to enter the room.

3. Type your name and join the chat

4. Type the message in the chat area

TodaysMeet in Language Teaching and Learning

• Teachers can provide a question or a topic for students to discuss and then type their answers and results in the chat area. During this process, teachers can check the language and provide feedback for students. In the same time, students can read others' answers and ideas from the chat area.

• Students can discuss together via TodaysMeet to complete a task or prepare a presentation.

• Outside the classroom, students can post their questions in the chat area via TodaysMeet and teachers  can provide answers or comments to students. 

• Teachers can save the content of the chat and send it to students for reviewing. 

Benefits of TodaysMeet in Language Teaching and Learning. 

•  In some context of language class, the phenomenon of reticence may not be rare and  some students are reluctant to answer teacher's questions  in front of the class. With the use of TodaysMeet, students  are more willing to express their opinions and ideas actively.

• TodaysMeet is a specific-purpose tool with simply and user-friendly layout. Teachers and students can easily access this tool for instant text chat. No complicated log-in process or difficult installation are required.

• Students' reading and writing skills can be improved during the process of using TodaysMeet. 

• The application of TodaysMeet for eliciting students' ideas would be more stimulating than asking students answering the questions in front of the class.

• Students can read and share their peers' ideas and opinions.

• The interaction between teachers and students, students and students would increase in and outside the class. 

Limitations

• Only typed text chat is available in TodaysMeet. Users can not communicate via audio or voice.

• Audio or video files can not be sent to each other via TodaysMeet. In the collaborative task, e.g. preparing PowerPoint for presentation, students would like to send their PowerPoint to their peer or teacher for comments. Unfortunately, this function is not available in TodaysMeet.

• There is a 140-word limitation in the chat area for each time. Complete long sentences or passages may have to be separate into two or more sections in the chat area. 

•  The chatting might become chaotic  and important points might be easily ignored when too many students are involved in the chat room or too many responses are displaying.

• Little training on listening and speaking skills. 

• Privacy of the chat could not be protected since no password is needed to enter the chat room. 

Further Reading

• Todaysmeet - realtime text chat for lectures and events         http://www.knowledgenetworklearning.net/tools/10moregreat/todaysmeet/

• How to Teach English with Technology (Chapter 6 How to use chat)