Screencast O Matic: Capture Everything!

Screencast-O-Matic is a free video recording tool that allows you to record your screen and share them. It is a great tool for making tutorials and giving feedback to your students. It can be downloaded and install for free to your laptop or PC. Screencast-O-Matic is currently one of the top free fast recording app that is easy to use, share and upload.

How do we start?

Download Screencast-O-Matic to your device.
 


What does it do?

Adjust the screen size that you would like to record.  

Click the black frame to set up your recording preferences. You can adjust whether to share your screen only, webcam or both. Size and time of the recording can also be set as you wish. The narration with the microphone icon has a green bar that shows recording levels.

What are the benefits to your teaching?

Feedback: Teachers can give oral feedback to students' work. This way, teachers can give detailed comments and students can easily refer back/access the feedback anytime they want. This kind of feedback can develop more personal closeness since students will feel the presence of their teachers through the video. The way this tool allows to record video and voice can help learners to save more time and understand teachers' message instead of reading it in paper.  

Tutorial: Teachers can make video to give tutorial or brief information and have students watch before going to the lesson. Teachers with distance learning students can use this tool as main source of creating lectures or talk.

Reflection: Teachers can assign students to do some reflection by recording themselves using this tool. From this activity students can benefit in developing their speaking skill. 

What are the limitations?

Pricing: Although this tool offers the free version. It still has limted access such as the duration of the recording. Overall if you want to make use of this tool, upgrading them to premium version is still considerably affordable.

Timing: For teachers, integrating this tool to your classroom by making videos can be a bit frustrating. It will definitely take time to get use of this tool, how to manage yourself in the process of making a video as well as the time you spend.

Triptico: Creating Engaging Interactive Learning

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Triptico is a tool that provides bunch number of options to create an engaging interactive activities. It can be access through tripticoplus.com.  Teachers will benefit abundantly from this tool since it provides several activities which are free and help bringing creativity to  classroom as well as engaging students.

 

What does it do?




There are several interactive tabs that you can choose to bring new experiences of learning to your classroom. As you can see there are five different categories of selection:

quizzes, selectors, timers, tools and legacy resources. Each section of quizzes, selectors, timers, and tools has interactive apps that you can use and adapt to your class. Take a look at this video below for instruction on how to create triptico account and how one of its feature Find Ten works.

 

What are the benefits for your classroom?

Simple: Triptico is easy to use, it requires no specific training for teachers to use. The features of this tool can be adapted according to classroom needs. It has sharing options so teachers can reuse materials thus enables advance preparation.




Engaging: Resources available in Triptico are interactive therefore it can promote collaborative group work in your classroom. This tool can facilitate visual and kinesthetic learners, especially when using whiteboard interactive.




Motivating: Triptico enables students to learn in a fun way since it provides game-like activities. Its competitiveness can give fresh air to classroom.










What are the limitations?

 

Online connection: This tool needs online connection to run therefore it may restrict teachers' use in internet limited area.

Upgrade: You need the upgraded version to access all of its feature. If you use the free version, you still have limited access to its features.

 
 

Voki: Personalised Speaking Avatar

If you like the idea of using technology in classroom to boost students' motivation, using a tool called Voki might be a good idea. Voki is a fun and engaging web application that allows users to create their own talking avatar and customized them by adding voices and other features. Take a look at this video below to know more about Voki.

 

How do we start?

To start using Voki, you can directly to voki.com and create your own character along with its voice. To edit and save your avatar you need to login or make an account using your email address.

 

What does it do?

When you go to Voki.com without logging in, you can make your avatar. However, you will need to logged in once you want to save your project. So, it is better for you to sign up for Voki before making your avatar.

 

Customize your character:  You can easily change your head and features of your face as well as clothing, and accessories. 

Give it a voice: You can record yourself, type a text and let the tool convert it into speech or upload your own recording files.

You can easily customized the color of your avatar.

 

What are the benefits for your classroom?

Authenticity: Voki enhances students' speaking ability while promoting communication between learners with real audiences. 

Engaging: Engage your students in creative expressions by using technology in a fun way. 

Motivating: It is also makes classroom activity interesting but it does not replace teacher and student communication.  

Autonomy:  Voki allows students to explore on their own using their creativity to make avatars and then collaborate and share the creation with their friends.

Shy students: This tool provides opportunity for shy learners to perform oral task in a less pressured way without feeling intimidated.

Drilling: Students can repeat and practice pronunciation with their avatar at their own time and space 

Sharing: Incorporate your avatar into a variety of topics, activities in the classroom, web page or blog.

What are the limitations?

Text limitations : Text limitations restrict from giving in-depth response.  

Accents : The accents provided by the tools are not always native-like accents.

Variety : The experience that Voki provide does not change much, teachers might need to provide additional tasks.

Padlet: Bringing Online Bulletin Board to Your Classroom

Imagine having a classroom wall that can be access anytime and anywhere. If you like the idea of it, try padlet. Padlet is simply describe as an online wall where people can write anything and then let others see it on this "virtual wall". This simple idea can be very useful for teachers to share digital contents and have students to read or response to it.

 

How do we start? 

You can start by signing up using your email address or linking your facebook or google account. When you successfully logged in you can start creating your own padlet. To know how to create your first padlet post take a look at this instructional video below.

 

What does it do? 

Creates virtual wall: This is what padlet looks like when you have managed to post something. You can add pictures, videos and text. Surely you can also choose any background you like.

Now, let's get into details.

Click this button to start making a padlet.

Next, you can start customizing your padlet's title, description, background, template and icon.

 

Once the padlet is set, you can add a new post and attach digital content as you wish.

 

 
Collaborates: Padlet allows you to share your project to other people simply by sharing the link or use the embedded link and you can also share instantly to your social media account. Once you share your padlet, people can easily add comments or more contents. Remember that you can easily set the security and control of your padlet.

Exports to different files: In padlet, you can have your virtual wall save as different kind of files, so you are able to use it for different purposes such as having it to be printed out.

 

 

What are the benefits for your teaching?

• Class Participation: In student-centered classroom, class participation holds an important role however according to Vandrick (2000:3) many ESL and non_ESL students have the tendency of unwillingness to participate in class because they feel powerless thus class participation is not something they feel to be likely entitled to. Therefore it is impossible for teachers to remove all barriers that prevent students from participating in class, but it is certainly possible for teacher to create a class environment that encourages and support participant from all. Since Padlet is a flexible tool which can be access anytime and anywhere, it provides a non-threatening room for clasroom collaboration.Students can  participate in classroom topic discussion or asking questions  simply by posting their opinions in Padlet. Students can also be anonymous thus shy learners can benefit from this.

• Bainstorming tool: Teachers can use padlet for classroom wall where every one can put and share ideas about certain topic. Students can add different types of contents on Padlet thus it provides a rich variety of media for classroom discussion. Since Padlet can also be easily shared, it is a great tool for a group work activity where students are encouraged to discuss and exchange ideas cooperatively.

What are the limitations? 

• Anonymous option: While this option can facilitate students who are not confident, it is important to bear in mind that this kind of opportunity in the internet can create a space for irrelevant ideas shared by the students. 

• Privacy: It is worth double checking your Padlet wall privacy setting before sharing especially when it contains students' information. Extra step might needed to ensure total privacy for students.      

Vandrick, S. (2000, March). Language, culture, class, gender, and class participation. Paper presented at the Annual Meet- ing of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Lan- guages, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.