Suggest ONE learning activity you can think of for your classroom using 1 of the tools we have explored.
I used to give homework for my class, which is to write a cooking blog and share the recipe of how to cook a dish. They are required to search the example using Google and write on their own words using the verbs and adjectives that have been taught in the class. All the students submitted it on time; however, some lazy students just copy and paste everything from Google.
If I have a chance to modify the activity, I will ask them to work in group, go to Google, find a recipe to cook a real dish (for example: Spaghetti, Fried Chicken, etc.) and then use the website lumen5 to convert the article to video and have a presentation in front of the class. This will fix the issue of copying and pasting and the application of the video creator into learning process will activate their imagination and hopefully they will create something even more exciting besides the given homework.
I WOULD USE THE LUMEN 5 TO MAKE MY STUDENTS CREATE A STORY OF THEIR OWN, IT WOULD BE EXCITING FOR THEM. MOREOVER, TO IMPROVE MY STUDENTS' PRONUNCIATION AS WELL AS TO RELAX AFTER CLASS, I'D USE LYRICS TRAINING. THIS WAY WILL HELP ME FIGURE OUT SOME TALENTS IN MY CLASS AND MAKE STUDENTS INTERESTED IN LEARNING ENGLISH.
If I have a chance to apply these tool in teaching, I would definitely choose the Phonertizer (www.phonetizer.com/ui). In my English course, there’s a subject called Phonetic. Instead of having student to learn by heart all the….and do exercises in the book, which is kind of boring, I would have them to make the best of this tool. They will choose one of their favorite context such as a poem, a lyric, a story… and put it into this tool to transfer it to Phonetic form. Later their classmate will have to read it into correct word, and trust me, it will be so much fun when they try to read them.
Could you try to read this? :D
/ˈevrɪ naɪt ɪn maɪ driːmz aɪ siː jʊ aɪ fiːl jʊ ðæt ɪz haʊ aɪ nəʊ jʊ gəʊ ɒn fɑː əˈkrɒs ðə ˈdɪstəns ənd ˈspeɪsɪz bɪˈtwiːn ʌs jʊ həv kʌm tə ʃəʊ jʊ gəʊ ɒn nɪə fɑː weərˈevə jʊ ə aɪ bɪˈliːv ðæt ðə hɑːt dʌz gəʊ ɒn wʌns mɔː jʊ ˈəʊpən ðə dɔː ənd jə hɪə ɪn maɪ hɑːt ənd maɪ hɑːt wɪl gəʊ ɒn ənd ɒn lʌv kæn tʌʧ ʌs wʌn taɪm ənd lɑːst fər ə ˈlaɪftaɪm ənd ˈnevə let gəʊ ('til) wɪə gɒn lʌv wəz wen aɪ lʌvd jʊ wʌn truː taɪm aɪd həʊld tʊ ɪn maɪ laɪf wiːl ˈɔːlwəz gəʊ ɒn jə hɪə ðeəz ˈnʌθɪŋ aɪ fɪə ənd aɪ nəʊ ðæt maɪ hɑːt wɪl gəʊ ɒn wiːl steɪ fəˈrevə ðɪs weɪ jʊ ə seɪf ɪn maɪ hɑːt ənd maɪ hɑːt wɪl gəʊ ɒn ənd ɒn/
I am interested in Hemingway App as my EAL students usually have difficulties in writing. The most common mistakes they have are fragment and run-on sentences. Hemingway App can identify their mistakes, and suggest how to make a change. However, as this app is not free, I believe it is not easy for all of my kids to get access.
In my class, I encourage my students use Grammarly. There are many version, the free one and the premium one. Students are able to use to simple version which is free. It can identify spelling mistakes, and suggest some common grammatical mistakes. School also paid for the premium version which is applied for all teachers. By this way, writing is a lot easier for both students and teachers.
Among the ICT tools very essential to language learning and teaching that we have explored before, the most impressive ones are Rewordify and Text Summarization. The first one Rewordify is naturally a user-friendly website allows you to adjust the reading level of a text. All you need to do is copy the webpage URL of the text you want to adjust and paste it into the yellow box at the top of the site, then click “Rewordify text.” Rewordify will simplify the text to the reading level you selected in the settings. If you don’t want the whole page to be Rewordified, you can copy, paste, and Rewordify text excerpts as well. You also can change how the text is displayed. My favorite part of the tool is to have simpler words displayed next to the challenging words that were in the original text. Finally, if you click on the “Print/Learning Activities” page, Rewordify will create vocabulary lists with definitions from the text, generate vocabulary quizzes for the text, and create close activities for the text. With this website, you can make more challenging texts accessible to all students. The second one is Text Summarization, which is a handy website that summarizes any text or webpage to the exact number of sentences you want. Like Rewordify, all you need to do is copy the text you want to summarize and paste it into the box on the page, set the number of sentences you want, then hit the summarize button. You can also paste in URLs to summarize an entire webpage or upload files to summarize. What makes this tool even more user-friendly is you can drag the bookmark widget to your toolbar so that when you are on a website you want summarized, all you have to do his hit the Text Summarization widget and it will summarize the page without even going to their website. And the final ICT tool I like best is Youtube. One way to collate the videos created by a screencast tool is to start a YouTube channel and upload them all there. This is simply your own YouTube home page – you can style the background, upload profile information and follow other channels of interest. You can also create playlists within your channel to organize videos into topics and allow students to find them easily. If creating your own videos is not for you then you can create playlists of videos that are already out there that relate to the topics you are studying.
As a conclusion, we can say that these tools are highly significant in the fields of education because they are very essential in helping students acquire the skills they need, deepening and enhancing the learning process, offering countless resources in the online world, changing the way teachers teach, helping teachers make their teaching and learning more meaningful and fun.