Wednesday 10 June 2015

Socrative an online game site for mobiles

Socrative is an enjoyable learning tool with which both teachers and students can have fun while implementing in the classroom. It is not as easy as Kahoot, which has fewer options for instructors to use while creating activities, yet it provides a range of activities that teachers can take advantage of for practice purposes. Rather than preparing multiple choice questions, with Socrative we can prepare true/false and short answer questions. I usually use this tool in order to test students after supplementary reading lessons. Especially for preparing word formation exercises it is an amazing tool. Besides, students are struggling to overtake each other as quickly as they can, thus it creates an enjoyable and highly competitive atmosphere. Depending on the class dynamics, it can be advised to divide the students into groups and complete the tasks as a group, which naturally gives them a sense of belonging to a team the courage to beat the others. At the end of the quiz, the students can be shown their results as the program allows users to send overall reports about the progress of the students. You can see a report sample below. Here is a vocabulary revision game that I prepared for my students in intermediate level.

mobile application for reading instant articles Zite

Zite can be a great way to help students improve their reading skills either during the lessons or outside the class. It is an application for android and IOS mobiles which can be used easily with one single touch. All you have to do is choose the areas which you are interested in when you download this application. Here, I basically direct my students with my instructions so that they can choose lesson related topics along with their own interests. It is a great tool as students can reach assortment of articles whenever they need. Besides during a lesson it is easy to make it a part of it. I usually use his tool before teaching a new topic. Students are asked to open and read the related article about the topic and then it gives them some ideas to comprehend what we are going to learn. It is also a great way to open up discussions in the class as a post lesson activity. In my case, for upper students I choose the articles first and before they are given a discussion task I simply ask them to read the specific articles on that topic. While they are doing silent research, they are able to take notes, which helps them to improve note-taking skills and learn some new vocabulary, and then they can mention these articles or what they have read so far during the discussion practice. As I have mentioned, Zite can be a useful tool for any sort practice; besides, students are able to find out about European and American culture. Also, the biggest strength of this Product is the ability to collaborate and to see in real time how the student is reading and taking notes on specific areas and getting ready for the discussions. Moreover, since they are so attached to their mobiles, everyone can take advantage of this application. Even though they sometimes forget to bring their books to class, they always have a mobile in their pockets Link: http://zite.com/

Monday 16 June 2014

Tricider

https://tricider.com/en/admin/1Q4fR/3NnHpJ

Voki- speaking avatar

Here is how I tried to use Voki as a post lesson activity. It is a fun way to incorporate technology into teaching English and shy students can take part in the activities by using Voki because it speaks on behalf of them. http://seldagumus.pbworks.com/w/page/79492343/Giving%20excuses%20for%20not%20accepting%20your%20friend's%20invitation

Wednesday 4 June 2014

WORDLE

I use it as an assessment activity at the end of a topic, alongside concept maps from all groups in a class.It's COOL! Good visual representation of themes, versatile Focus on key words, ideas, themes. Fun to play around with font, color, layout. Can use to check own work for repetition. Visual representation. Cognitive and Concept mapping. Makes the "difficult" manageable. Shows strength of words. I use Wordle to summarize texts and as an interesting way to present my class with keywords. As a starter for students to try and guess where we're going with our lesson and create their own learning outcomes. I use Wordle as warm up. I hate the question, "What are we doing today." I give word clues about what we are doing in class. Then I use it for discussions. Sometime it can be used for mind-mapping before introducing a new topic. Here are some examples:
This one was done while we were working on the topic "Education". Students tried to come up with a range of words related to education and then we created this wall together.

Padlet- A Wallwisher

Padlet which used to be called "Wallwisher" is a great application to create an online bulletin board that you can display information for any topic. you can choose from different colourful background options and then create a name for your topic. Students can get the relevant URL code and then as soon as they open the page, they can start writing comments and add photos. It can be used for different teaching purposes but I normally prefer using it as a revision tool after teaching one topic. It can be a vocabulary revision or a grammar production wall. You can even play games using it. Here are some examples:
As a post lesson activity, I asked my students to describe the best job and here is what I received from them. Sometimes they can add their own photos, which is humorous, but you can control what to include on your Padlet wall.
Here we did a kind of revision activity after working on Non-defining relative clauses. Students were given some time to think about a famous figure and then they started typing their sentences about these people. They also added some photos to make the wall more colourful.
Sometimes students think that they can control what they write and you may end up with unpleasant posts on your wall. For instance, here I asked them to write down why they learn English and we ended up like this.