My Brainshark

Bring your presentation to a new level using myBrainShark 

An outlook of mybrainshark site

MyBrainShark is now a leading tool to create, share and track online video presentations. It transforms static content into voice-enriched video presentations that can be accessed anytime and anywhere. 

To create myBrainShark online video presentation is quick and easy. You just need to upload a content, be it a powerpoint, document, video clip or photo, and then enrich it with voice narrations, transforming the-otherwise-boring presentation of information into an engaging, interactive one. The video presentation can then be shared via e-mails, posted to social network sites (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or Linkedln) or embedded in blogs or websites. Furthermore, you can track the viewing details, following up with who view, what they view, when they view or even where they view your presentation effectively. 

To get a better grip on how to use myBrainShark? Here is a free online tutorial with Russell Stannard. 

How can we use mybrainshark in the language classroom?

1. virtual learning

• MyBrainShark is a useful tool for long-distance learning. Teacher can easily create a video presentation using myBrainShark and share it to students in a website, class blog or via e-mail. Students can then watch the online lesson at their convenience. This method is very useful when teacher wants to provide students with more knowledge about the syllabus or when teacher is not able to finish the syllabus within the classroom hours. 

2. oral exercise

• Apart from assigning students with writing and reading exercises, teacher can design speaking tasks using myBrainShark for students to do at home. For instance, teacher may assign students a speaking homework after teaching the topic 'Global Warming'. Teacher may ask students to create a powerpoint presentation and enrich it with voice narrations on the concept of global warming, its impacts and the solutions for this environmental problem. The task can be done individually or as a group work, depending on the level of difficulty of the task itself. In this way, students are encouraged to use English both in the class and out of the class. Thus, the tool maximises the opportunity for students to speak in a second language.

3. give feedback to students' work

• Teacher can use myBrainShark as a mean to provide oral feedback to students' works. For example, teacher can upload students' works into the video presentation, give comments and email to the students. 

What is good about myBrainShark?

1. The video presentations can be kept as e-portfolio. 

• As an example, video presentations can be embedded in teacher's blog or class blog in order for students to keep track of what they have learnt.  

2. It promotes an autonomous learning. 

• With myBrainShark, students can independently access to a range of e-learning contents available so as to gain extra knowledge about the topic learnt in the class. Also, students can self-direct their own learning by accessing to the online-lessons created by their teacher using this tool. 

3. It exhibits an interactive way of learning. 

• Even though the speaker and the listeners of the presentation are both separated in space, the presentation can still be made interactive as myBrainShark allows presenter to add polls, surveys or questions to the video presentation. 

4. It motivates speaking. 

• Students' effective filter for speaking is low because they can discard or retry their voice recording before saving it to their video presentation. In other words, students' anxiety to speak is lower than that of doing a presentation in front of the class.

5. It develops the sense of ownership. 

• Students can personalise their own video presentation and share it to the public in myBrainshark site.  

6. It is very quick and easy to use. 

• MyBrainShark comes as an Application for mobile devices. Therefore, it allows users to access to web-based information anytime and anywhere at their convenience.   

What is its limitation?

1. The facial expression or the gesture of the presenter cannot be seen.

2. Both the presenter and the listeners are not interacting in real time. Response or feedback given is not immediate.   

3. The tool needs internet to access. 

Bubbl...R

What is Bubblr? 

Bubblr is a tool use to create comic strips using photos from flickr.com. It is a program produced by a company called pimpampun. We can use Bubblr to produce a presentation of loads of photos or to create a story. 

To create digital comic strips, we need to type in the key words to search the images we need. Drag them to a dynamic timeline structure. Bubbles for speech, ideas, thoughts and text can then be included to the images. What we get is a linear style scrolling comic book after publishing. The strips can be saved to online archive, printed, or shared to others through email or blog. 

Let me present to you the things I love about korea through Bubblr. Here you go.

How to use Bubblr in a language classroom?

1. To tell story
   Teacher can ask students to use bubblr to tell stories, like holidays, hobbies, childhood,  favourite food, festivals etc using a sequence of photos and text bubbles. 
2. To illustrate a historical timeline
   Students can use bubblr to present a series of past events. They can summerise a complicated and wordy historical text into a comic strip so as to visualise the historical events. This helps in the memorisation of the history. 
3. To do class presentation
   Bubblr is an alternative for doing presentation using Powerpoint presentation.

It is also an activity that teacher can assign the students as a homework. It is very easy to acquire and apply. Teacher may introduce to the students step-by step on the ways of uploading photos from flickr to bubblr in class. Once the students get a hang on the tool, they can perform their task back in the comfort zone of their home.

Why would you use Bubblr?

1. The program is free and easy to use. 
2. It gives rise to variety in classroom presentation. This facilitates the learning of students of different learning preferences.
3. It is interesting and engaging. Students have a wide selection of photos and they can create their own stories. 
4. It gives the sense of ownership. As students are given a lot of freedom when creating the comic strips, each comic strip is very different from one another. Comic strips become special when students personalise their work.
5. Images included into the timeline helps to visualise what students learn. This helps to attend to students who learn best through visual arts. 

What are the limitations?

1. Flickr.com may not provide enough photos for students to present their ideas and thoughts. 
2. Only photos can be added to the presentation. Videos and recordings are not applicable. 
3. The text bubbles included into the photos cannot be re-sized. It is can sometimes block the photos.
4. Students cannot put comments to the comic strips created by peers. 
5. When comic strip is embedded into blog, it become too small for visibility. 

Dvolver

What is Dvolver?

Dvolver is a movie maker which allows us to make our own animated movies online. More than 8 million movies have been made here! Dvolver is a very handy tool. It is easy to use and free of charge! We do not even have to sign up, too!

Using this tool, we can put forwards our message through a series of conversations between two characters. 'People have a lot to say, and they like to say it with animated characters' said the Dvolver moviemaker site. In fact, Dvolver provides more than 30 animated characters, over 10 styles (backgrounds and skies) and four scenarios/ plots for us to choose while setting up an animation. Each character comes with a fun written profile. Characters include normal looking people, celebrities lookalikes, animals, aliens and etc. Likewise, each style has fun descriptions of the climate and culture.

After choosing them, we can type in our own short dialogue texts and choose preferred soundtrack to put into the short clip, too. The animation that we produce can be a short single scene animated movie or a longer one by adding more scenes. Once we finish customising it, we may share it with people through email or copy link/ code and embed it into a blog post or a website.

The youtube video below provides a clear explanation on how to use Dvolver for movie making: 

Here is an example of animation that I have made:

How can we use Dvolver in the classroom?

We can use this for a number of things:

1. To present new language points
   eg. Teacher can demonstrate how past tense can be used to show past event through a conversation between two characters. Students, on the other hands, can create movie, which incorporates the use of past tense,  as a practice. 
2. To teach new vocabulary
   eg. Teacher can present a dialogue, which contextualises a list of new vocabulary, as a pre-reading activity. Teacher may then elicit and pre-teach the set of vocabulary before getting the students into a reading text. 
3. To learn about certain topics
   e.g. Teacher may ask students to talk about topics, like holiday, pet, family, hobby, festival, food, dream etc through a discussion between two characters.  
4. To create story
   eg. Teacher may allow students to explore on their creativity by making up stories with themes, like 'A lesson to be learnt', 'An unforgettable experience', etc. 
5. To give example of social English/ To demonstrate social expressions, i.e to teach students how certain language forms, phrases or expressions are being used in a real social context.
   eg. Teacher may ask students to create movies that display situations like 'making polite request', 'rejecting someone's invitation', 'giving instruction', 'making introduction', etc. 
6. To tell jokes
   eg. Teacher and students may create jokes through the conversation between two characters in order to make English language learning more fun and interesting. 
7. To exhibit an interview session
   eg. Teacher may ask students to work in pair, whereby one acts as an interviewer while another as an interviewee. Students need to role play as a doctor, reporter, sportsman, president, minister, teacher, etc. 
8. To provide feedback/ To give a review eg. Teacher may ask students to give their opinion of a book, play, film, etc through a dialogue between two characters.

Why would we use Dvolver in the classroom?

1. It is simple, quick and easy to use. 
2. It gives a professional looking outcome. We can give the digital movie we create a title, some 'credits' and a background design for the cover page.  
3. It is useful for the contextualisation of new grammar and new vocabulary. It displays the functions of the language forms or how language forms are used in discourse level.
4. It acts as a medium for an international cultural exchange. Students can include cultural aspects into their movies and share to a wider audience. 
5. It is interesting and engaging. Students may enjoy incorporating animations into their language learning. 
6. It is an alternative to a speaking activity. Instead of putting students into a face-to-face conversational situation, students can practise the meaningful use of the language forms through a conversation between two animated characters. 
7. It is motivating for second language learners of English to learn the language. The tool helps to reduce students' anxiety and affective filter of doing a face-to-face conversations with peers. 
8. It allows students to build up their creativity and imaginative ability. The wide selection of characters, backgrounds and plots allow students to have the freedom of creating whatever possible stories they like.
9. It gives students the sense of ownership for the movies created. Students can give themselves a credit after creating the animation. 

What are the limitations of Dvolver?

1. The animation characters cannot speak aloud and do not display any facial expressions and body gestures. 
2. Some characters may inappropriate for younger learners. 
3. Movies cannot be be edited once completed. Students will need to redo the movie if there is any mistake.
4. Not every language can be applied to the dialogue. 
5. It needs internet access to operate. 
6. There is no censoring; therefore, students can write anything in the dialogue. 

Lyric Training

Improve your foreign language skills through musics

Lyrics Training is a fun approach for language learning. It aims to sharpen learners' language skills through music and song lyrics. 


In this language game, students need to read and listen to the lyrics, and then fill in the gaps of the song's lyrics appear underneath a Youtube video. 

Features:

1. free. 
2. songs are offered in 7 different languages (Dutch, English, France, German, Italy, Portuguese and Spanish)
3. Score reading is displayed after the you finish playing the songs.

To use Lyrics Training: 

1. Choose your preferred YouTube-hosted music video
2. Select one of three mastery levels: Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert.
   *The level of difficulty decides how many words that go missing 
3. Fill in the missing words as the video begins to play.
   *The video will stops playing if you get stumped. It will resume after you come up with the right word. Click "withdraw" or "restart" button if the words elude you. 

Now you can have a try at http://www.lyricstraining.com/

How to use Lyrics Training in language classroom?

1. To introduce new vocabulary and grammar

• Song is a form of creative writing text. Undeniably, it is enriched with vocabulary and grammar which is useful for language learning. Teacher may elicit the language patterns in a song and teach students 

2. To practise listening skills

• In this language game, students need to pay attention to the song in order to identify the right words to fill in the gaps. At the same time, students may also learn the correct pronunciation of the words.  

3. To held a spelling game

• Teacher can select a suitable song, which is not so often heard by the learners, as the song for competition. Student, who scores the highest point and complete the gaps in the shortest time, win the game. 

The advantages of Lyrics Training

1. It get students to be engrossed in language learning

• Lyrics Training is a fun and easy tool for learning language. Students can listen to the songs they fancy while doing the filling the gap game. This triggers students' interest; therefore, they can be seen more engaging and  motivated in language learning. 

2. It promotes autonomous learning

• Lyrics Training is a tool whereby students can apply on their own. Teacher does not have to supervise or intervene. Independent learning is, therefore, fostered as students may use the tool to practise their language skills anytime and anywhere they like according to their own learning pace. 

3. A more interacting way of doing fill in the gaps exercise

• Unlike the conventional form of paper-based fill in the gap exercise, Lyrics Training offers students to do the same exercise electronically. Additionally, the tool can tell students if the answers they provide are right or wrong.  

The limitations

1. Certain songs may contain inappropriate or negative content for targeted students.

2.  Some songs use colloquial language, like 'wanna', 'gonna', 'gotta', etc which might be an inappropriate language forms for language learners.

3. Proper earphones or headphones are needed for classroom learning so as to give learners a clearer audio listening.