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/

My brainshark

My brainshark allows you to upload Powerpoint slides or Word documents or even make podcasts. It's free for signing up and basically it's free of charge. You can add your voice instruction to help your learners to follow your lectures/presentations. The students can also record their voice and listen to their recordings. It can serve to listening, speaking, and would be useful for writing and reading as well.

It allows you to make comments on each slides. It's easy to edit once you understand how it works.

The audience can leave comments, which encourages interaction between the producer and the audience.

Although this is a great tool, as is often the case with other tools, the teacher should spend quite long time preparing the materials and giving feedback to the students.


Here is a powerpoint document I made just to see how my brainshark works. The content is rubbish and my English is rubbish, very embarrassing, but I could somehow manage to make slides with audio guidance. Please be nice and kind if you listen to it!!!


 



Here is the link to my brainshark.

http://www.brainshark.com/mybrainshark


This is the instruction given by Russell Stannard. He can tell you how to use this step by step.

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/video-youtube/mybrainshark-part-1.html

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/video-youtube/mybrainshark-part-2.html