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/