Padlet

Padlet is a useful online tool. It's free and those who have an account can work collaboratively.

You can also leave comments, add photos, videos or a new post on the wall and have interaction with people.

As this is a written form of technology, learners can take as much time as they need and work in their pace. Learners could feel comfortable even when communicating with people with different English proficiency levels.

As for teaching English, the teacher can create a wall and invite his/her learners to join the wall.

Here is an example. This should be accompanied with video clips and the texts from the book if the activities intended to encourage learners to work outside of classroom either individually or in pair/group.

Created with Padlet

The teacher should be able to teach his/her learners how to use Padlet. It is not terribly difficult because someone like me, who is not good at technologies at all, could manage to create a wall. However, I struggled for a while to understand how it works when it comes to adding and editing a new post. Also, it must have been impossible for me to start working on it without instructions provided in the ICT class. As for interaction, the materials should be interesting and maybe fun enough to draw learner's attention.

It was also difficult to find copy right free images in the Internet. The use of almost all of images about the works of Roald Dahl including book cover images is not allowed.


Here is the link to Padlet:

https://padlet.com/

Quizlet

Quizlet is an online learning tool. It's basically free of charge and you can create various quizzes.


You can embed what you have made on your blogger by looking at "More".

This is what I made to learn French from English.




The images are already there. You can add your own voice but you have to pay for the service.

You can also print it out for those who don't have access to the Internet.

This is another set to learn some British Expressions... pronounced in American English...




The learners can choose study modes. They can try some tests as well as games.


This can be used not only to entertain learners but also to provide them with serious questions. Thus, it can suit a wide range of age groups, levels, and needs of the learners.


Although this is a useful, quick, and fun tool, the teacher should be aware of the objective of learning and provide them with relevant questions. As it is hard to know who has tried and who has not, the set should be worth trying!


Here is the link to Quizlet.

http://quizlet.com/

Duolingo

Duolingo is a free language learning tool. It also helps with the translation.

You can log in and start learning languages you would like to learn. Language choice depends on your mother tongue. If you are a native speaker of English, you have nine choices. However, if you are a native speaker of Korean, Chinese, Japanese, or Italian, etc., only English learning is provided. You can still choose English as your site language and learn languages in the list below.

Duolingo invites you to start learning. You can learn in your pace.

You can learn anywhere anytime as it is available on smartphones.

It can record the result of your learning and you can carry on your learning.

Duolingo is interactive. You can add your friends to compete with.

One of the problems is that it sometimes provides wired sentences or questions seem difficult because of the lack of context.

For example, when learning French, I encountered a question;

"Select the mission word.

________ sont des garçons."

I should choose a word from "Ce, Ils, Vous".

I got it wrong by selecting "Ils". The correct answer was "Ce".

However, when asked "select all correct answers",

the correct answer was "Ils sont des garçons."


This is a interesting learning tool. You will be provided with various types of questions. However, getting wrong answers because of the lack of context or relevant explanations could be sometimes frustrating.


Having said so, overall, I think this can help learners to study autonomously unless they don't get frustrated by some types of questions.


Here is the link to Duolingo.

https://en.duolingo.com/

Embedding Youtube videos on Blogger

There are a lot of interesting and motivating videos on Youtube. You can embed videos on Blogger. This allows you to invite your learners to your blog page and provide them with an equal opportunity to look at what you would like to show them.

Of course you can create your own videos or lecture sites with different tools, however, sometimes it is simple and helpful to introduce already made videos.

Embedding Youtube videos is very easy.

On Compose page, click "Insert a video"and choose "From Youtube" and type key words. That will bring you the video you are looking for. Just click on the video you would like to upload and press "Select".

I tried with a trailer of Les Miserables-The Musical, as this is my favourite musical. The novel is also great by the way...

Here is the video from Youtube.

It is always problematic that learners, especially the young or teenagers, will be exposed to inappropriate videos or contents on Youtube. It would be better if students as well as parents could have opportunities to know about the dangers/traps of the Internet.