Vocaroo

Vocaroo is a great web2.0 tool for recording and sending voice messages. Users will be provided with a link when they finish recording, which they can share via e-mail, facebook, twitter, and so on.

How to use Vocaroo

How can we use it for Language Learning?

Using this tool as a part of a task can be very beneficial to students. For example, lets assume the students have received a homework to do a voice recording of them describing their favourite restaurant, and the recordings are to be sent to the teacher via e-mail. Not only does the students get the initial speaking practice, but after their first recording they may feel unsatisfied with it. What often happens is that students retry multiple times before sending their work to the teacher. 

Another benefit to this is that shy students normally dislike doing presentations in front of the class, and this gives them an opportunity to practise their speaking just like everyone else, whereas inside the classroom they tend to be quite reluctant.

Also, when this tool is used autonomously, I think it can boost a learner's confidence in speaking and listening. The learner could say a sentence, and listen to it for corrections on intonation, pronunciation and so on, improving his/her speaking and listening. This hopefully will result in positive participation in the classroom for the learner.

Benefits and Limitations

• Bypasses the conventional recording procedures(voice recorders, extracting data from the recorders then putting them onto a CD, etc)
• Extremely simple to use
• Great for speaking tasks and practice
• Easy to share with whoever the user wants 
• Students are able to listen to their recordings multiple times and improve it until they are satisfied

• Without a microphone, this tool is completely useless
• Vocaroo currently is only accessible through internet - it is unavailable offline
• Technical problems can arise - if the Vocaroo server unexpectedly shuts down in the middle of a recording there is no way to recover it
• The sound quality is not ideal

Language Guide

A great site for learning vocabulary for beginner learners

The video pretty much shows how the site is used. It is a great website considering how many categories it provides(the sound and video becomes unsynchronised in the video, but it is the only one I could find). 

As you can see from the video, when hovering over any of the pictures, the spelling of the word appears where the mouse cursor is and a recorded voice tells the user what it is. This is great for students struggling with pronunciation. On top of that, some parts of the objects/animals are also provided for students("Scorpion"'s "Stinger" and "Finger"'s "Fingernail", for example)

For me, the best part of this website is that it is multilingual. 

 On the top of the page, students can decide which language to view the categories of vocabulary. The voice and spelling is still in English, of course.

Benefits and Limitations

• Offers a wide variety of vocabulary
• Good for beginners wanting to improve their vocabulary and pronunciation
• Simple to understand how to use
• Multilingual options
• Much better suited for self-studying rather than classroom teaching(will depend on the task)

• Although there is a good selection of vocabulary, students are limited to the provided words
• Quite impractical for efficient use in the classroom(will depend on the task)
• No specific activities on the site

Todays Meet

What is Todaysmeet?

Todaysmeet is a great web application useful for mainly brainstorming and discussing ideas. One can create a room which others can join and everyone in this room can post their ideas - it pretty much is an internet bulletin board. 

How do you use it?

When you open the site, you are able to name and create your room straight away.

You can also set the time in which the room will be kept open. Once you have decided on the name and how long you want this room for, you can click on the "Create your Room." button and you will be sent directly to your room.

Above is what the chat room will look like. You will now have to choose your 'name' which will be displayed to other people inside, by typing on the blue text-bar. Once you have done this and click on join, you will be able to type your message for your room.

For other people to join your room, they will need the name of the room you chose when creating it. For example, if you chose your room name as "Classroom", then the URL address(website address) for the room will be "www.todaysmeet.com/Classroom". So now you are all set for your class to discuss and share ideas. 

The most recent messages will be displayed on top of the message box, and this causes the older ones to disappear below the border of the box. However, you can click on either the "transcript" or "projector" button, and it will display all the memos written by everyone in the room. You can then proceed to save this as a webpage - unlike the room, once saved as a webpage this file is in your computer permanently(unless you decide to delete it, of course).

Benefits in the classroom

• Very easy to use
• Great tool for brainstorming activities 
• All students(even the shy ones) can participate in sharing and expressing their ideas and opinions
• Teachers can collect and save everyone's ideas
• Many students like using computers in a classroom - especially in classrooms of East Asia, where the idea of using computers in a language classroom is still new in most schools
• Students can also use the room to practice writing skills while participating - for example if you instruct them to write in full sentences only, they will need to think about the linguistic aspects(such as grammar) while participating in the discussion

Limitations

• There is a character limit of 140, so it is inappropriate to have long sentences or paragraphs
• There is a risk of some students trying to do something else with the computer(accessing facebook, games, etc)
• Control of students can be difficult - students could easily create an alias and spam useless messages
• There are other applications/websites that can easily do what Todaysmeet does(facebook, skype group chat) for smaller groups

Introduction

Introduction of the Blog

Many teachers are described as being technophobic. The students are often better at using computers and the internet, and this may be one of the reasons why some teachers neglect the use of ICT technologies inside a classroom, despite the fact that utilising the technologies in and out of a classroom can bring a lot of benefits in student learning, lesson planning, and many more aspects of teaching. The best part in using these technologies, or applications and software, is that they are very simple to use. This Blog will highlight some of these applications in hopes of assisting any teachers out there in overcoming their technophobia.