MyBrainshark

MyBrainshark is an online presentation tool, where users can upload their powerpoint presentations and/or pictures and record their voice or add music. They can also share these presentations to others via embedding, e-mail, facebook, twitter and so on.

How do we use it?

It can also be used to present:

• Narrated Documents
• Videos
• Voiced Photo Albums
• Podcasts

If you want to know how to create podcasts using MyBrainshark then click on the image below:

Teachertrainingvideos.com is owned by Russell Stannard and has a lot more tutorial videos and information on a lot more web tools helpful to ELT. It is a great site for teachers so go check it out!

How can we use MyBrainshark for Language Learning?

Teachers can set presentation tasks to students either for homework or as individual projects. This not only means that the students can practice their reading and writing skills, but also listening and speaking. When they gather and analyse their information there is a lot of reading going on, and creating their powerpoint presentations will help them practice writing. 

 What MyBrainshark enables is the listening and speaking practice. Since they have to record their voice to work well with their presentation, they will listen to their recordings and change them until they are satisfied. Once they are done they can send their presentations to the teacher via e-mail or other communication tools.

A more obvious use for MyBrainshark is to provide an online lesson. This is mostly beneficial for distance learning courses, but it also can be to actual classrooms. If a class is cancelled due to an emergency, teachers can still provide lessons to students, for them to view it at their own leisure.  Also if there were some students who missed an important lesson, using this will help them catch up on anything that they have missed.

Example Presentation

Benefits and Limitations

• Free to use
• Boosts students' confidence doing presentations
• Flexible in terms of skills
• Teachers can easily send important lesson materials to students
• Can be shared to anyone easily
• Easy to edit and improve previous presentations
• Free version limited to 15 minutes per presentation
• Takes a lot of time to produce one presentation
• Cannot work without internet
• Formatting issues when converting powerpoint files