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‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات communication. إظهار كافة الرسائل
‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات communication. إظهار كافة الرسائل

So Ask Me a Question

Comment
I recently spotted this very interesting site called Vyou.com which exploits video to create asynchronous conversations. I find it interesting because of the simple way it creates presence. As you can see below, it looks like the person (me in this case) is waiting ready for your question.

All visitors need to do is type a question into the text line below the video and the creator will get a message with the question and post a reply. You can try it if you wish by posting a question to me. I'm not sure yet how long it will take for me to answer though.



This is very quick and easy to set up. You just go to the site and register for free, then once your registration is validated you record two short video clips. One is the one you can see above and another for unanswered questions. As questions are answered they appear below the 'waiting' video.

It's also a bit like Twitter in that you can 'follow' people and build up a group of followers. These people all receive notification of any video responses posted.

I'm trying this out because I think it's a great way of getting students to speak to each other and ask you or each other questions. All you need is a webcam and a microphone.

How to use this with students
  • You could set up your own grammar or vocabulary answers site and students could send you questions.
  • You could get students to ask each other questions about a story.
  • You could play animal, mineral or vegetable and each students has to ask question to see what you are thinking about.
  • You could just get students asking and answering questions about their likes and dislikes etc.
  • I think this would work particularly well for class exchanges with students from other classes or countries.

What I like about it
  • It's free and very quick and simple to set up.
  • There's a real feeling of presence and that someone is there waiting for your question.
  • I can generate some real spoken interaction.
  • It's a very simple idea made very effective.
  • You can embed the video chat into your blog or site.

What I'm not so sure about
  • Of course something like this is very much open to abuse, especially as it allows anonymous questions to be posted.
  • The widget which I've embedded into my post is a bit big and it would be nice to have smaller sizes.
  • A lot of the example conversations that have been created on the site are a bit adult in nature and certainly inappropriate for younger learners, so if you use it, be sure to use it with adults and embed it into a blog or site so that your students don't wander round the site.
  • WebCams aren't generally very flattering, especially in a bad light, but you can always wear a big hat or dark glasses.
If you do give this a try, please do follow me and I'll reciprocate, as I'd like to find out a bit more about how this will work in practice. You can visit my profile on the site at: http://vyou.com/nikpeachey . There you will be able to see a better view of the full size widget.

I hope you find this interesting.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey

20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students

Comment
Back in November 2008 I published Part 1 of a series of articles intended to explore the use of WebCams in education. I have now finally got round to writing Part 2 which is a collection of 20 activities EFL ESL teachers can do with their students.


Here are some links to useful free video communication tools that you could use for these activities.

MailVu is a simple to use app which runs in the browser and enables students to record a short message which can be sent by email.
EyeJot is another simple video email app which also has a mobile version.
Skype is of course the mainstream choice for synchronous communication.
Oovoo is a Skype competitor which also enables the recording of video interviews by capturing both interviewer and interviewee.

20 WebCam Activities

1. Chinese - video dictation - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it themselves and send it to the next student. Each student should rerecord and send the message on to another, until the last student sends it back to you. You will then see how accurately the message matches to your original text.


2. Interactive video learning diary - You could get students to create an interactive learning diary, they could email you their video summary of what they feel they have learned each day and you could then respond. The videos would form a good learning record and students will be able to look back at them later and see how they have improved - quite literally - and also hear the improvements in their speaking ability. This is also a great way to give your students one-to-one-time which can often be a problem in class.



3. Class survey - Action research - You could send a video message to your students with a class survey question that they could respond to. This would be a good way to carry out classroom research, decide on learning goals and make sure that all students had a means to feedback to you in private and on an individual basis.

 They could also create their own questions and send them to each other, then feedback in class.

4. The witness - Show half of your students a video clip or picture, that includes a number of people (scenes from films with bank robberies, where a number of people are involved are quite useful for this). Then ask the students to imagine that they are one of the people in the film or picture and they need to describe what happened. Ask them to record a video statement giving their account of what happened in the first person. You can then ask the other students to imagine they are detectives and watch the clips your students have created and make notes to piece together what happened. Afterwards they can watch the original film clip together in class and you can see how well they did and what they missed.

 Here's an example bank robbery scene
5. Favourite poems or haiku - Students could record themselves reading their favourite poem or haiku, you could then embed the videos into a web page or blog as a class poetry collection.


6. Video twitter - Using the feed feature you could create a kind of video Twitter, with your students video micro-blogging about learning English, their day at school, or any topic they find interesting.


7. Text and video error correction - Using the video email feature, you could record a video of yourself reading a text, then add the text within the email message. You could include some errors in the text and get them to watch the video and correct the errors.


8. Create a collaborative story - Email students a video with the first line of a story and ask them to record your line of the story and add their own, then pass it back, or pass it on to another student. This way you could build up a story between the group over a period of time.


9. Tip of the day - Send you students a learning tip each day by video email. These could be exam tips, study tips, recommended website etc.(The URL for the website would appear in the text part of the message below the video.)

10. Video dictation - Send a video email of yourself dictating a text and ask your students to watch and write the text in the email and send it back to you for correction.


11. Vocabulary record / word of the day - You could ask your students to create a video to record the words and example sentences. You could also do something like this yourself as a kind of 'Word of the Day' channel.


12. News Reports - Ask students to read the news ( in English or their own first language) and then produce a video news report on one of the main stories that they are interested in.
 They could also create their own local or school video news channel for other students to subscribe to.

13. Present continuous (sound on or off) - You can record video clips to demonstrate present continuous sentences. You can do this with sound on or with sound off and the students can guess the sentence
.

14. Questions for response - You could set up clips with questions and ask your students to respond online. They could also set up a sequence of their own questions for other students to respond to.


15. Guess the object - You or students could record a description of and object and viewers have to listen and guess what the object is. Getting students to create these clips will help them to be concise and really identify the key concepts behind describing objects.


16. Sales pitch - A variation on the idea above is to ask students to produce a video trying to convince users to buy a particular object. Again this helps them to identify key concepts, gives them practice with using language of persuasion and it may well help them to push for faster speaking speeds and better fluency.


17. Moods - You can create video clips of yourself or your students expressing different moods. This can help them to learn the vocabulary of the moods, but you could also use it to get students to predict the cause of the mood ( and practice present perfect; "He's angry because he has just been made redundant." etc.)

18. Live tutoring support - Video conferencing is an ideal tool for supporting distance learners and doing 'face to face' tutorials.


19. Video interviews - You could get in touch with someone for your class to interview. Just have one computer plus camera set up in class, and a visiting expert, friend or colleague on the other end for your students to interview. They could also interview an expert in groups from home with a conference call.
 The interview doesn't have to be done 'live' it could also be done through a series of email video messages sent to the interviewee.You can try it here by watching this video and then clicking reply.

20. Video lesson with conferencing - You could use the conference call to videocast your lesson or presentation to a group of distance learners.


I hope you find these suggestions useful and manage to use some of them with your students. Do drop me a line if you have other recommendations for useful video conferencing tools or activities. You can find more video related activities for EFL ESL here.

Related links:
External links:

Best

Nik Peachey

Online Video: What does it have to offer teachers and learners?

Comment
This series of postings are the result of a training presentation I was asked to deliver for Moroccan teachers of English in Kinitra on 15th December 08.

To prepare the session I looked back at many of the postings from my blogs over the last 18 months and thought about some of the changes that have been taking place in the way online video sharing has developed.

I've split the materials from the session into four sections.
These are by no means conclusive. With the spread of broadband access the potential for education and for language teaching and development and autonomous teacher development is huge, but still as yet largely under exploited as the discussion that followed my session highlighted.

Some of the potential problems we highlighted were:
  • Inappropriate content
  • Dead links
  • Teacher preparation time
  • Blocked sites
  • Lack of connectivity
Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this series of postings, which are in main part a summary of my work in this area over the last 18 months, and that they give some insight into some of the potential and a few of the ways we can overcome the problems. If you have experienced other problems, by all means leave a comment.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey

Online Video: As Communication

Comment
Over the past couple of years online video communication has been transformed, not only price and quality, but in ease of use and accessibility. This tool has great potential for extending the reaches of our classroom and opening access to much better support for distance learners.

Video conferencing
Video conferencing was once a very difficult and expensive activity that required specific software, hardware and in many cases an expensive account with a service provider. You can now do video conferencing for free using software like Skype or free web-based services like Tokbox

Tokbox doesn’t require any downloads. You just create a free account and then star connecting with other users. You can do this by sending them a link to a conference.
Using Tokbox you can:
  • Make live (synchronous) video calls from your computer either to one person or a small group.
  • Record video messages (asynchronous) and send the by email
  • Create a series of public broadcasts that anyone can access.
Here is a video which shows you How to use Tokbox
Here you can find some Teaching suggestions for using Tokbox with students:


Sending Video Greetings
Bubble Joy is a website that enables you to create short video greetings and then email them to people. All you need is a webcam with a microphone. The service is free and very quick and easy to use.

Here you can find some suggestions for teaching ideas and some instructions for how to make this work on your computer: Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students


Annotating the web
The bubble comment site enables you to create and share a brief 90 second commentary of a website. You can use this to get students talking about and sharing their favourite sites.

To find out more about using this tool go to: Great Video Commenting Tool


Video Microblogging
Video microblogging is a way of creating your own short video broadcasts. The first such site to enable this was 12 Seconds TV. The idea behind the site is that you create a short 12 second long video clip using your webcam. Other people can then subscribe to your channel and watch your video clips. It’s often used among friends to keep each other up to date on what they are doing, but it does have a range of uses for the EFL classroom.

 Here you can read about ways to use ‘microblogging’ with your students to create digital narrative, create vocabulary records and even practice verb forms: 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL

I hope this gives you a few ideas and hints for how to use online video communication tools and by all means leave comments below if your own favourites haven't been mentioned here.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey

Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students

Comment
It's amazing how you can spend ages looking for something you want and then when you find it a whole bunch of other things come along with it. That seems to be the way things have happened for me with video conferencing. I found and posted about tokbox last week and then came Bubble Comment this week which I wrote about on my Quick Shout blog, and now Bubble Joy!

Bubble Joy is a way of sending short (60 seconds) fun video messages to people.


Click here to see the live video message (only good for the first 50 visitors)

They have a selection of message cards and you just record your video message to go in the middle using a webcam and microphone. The whole thing is very quick and easy to do.

So why use this with EFL / ESL students?

  • It's good listening and speaking practice
  • It's good fun and easy to do
  • It's communicative
  • It's creative
  • It's free, easy to use, doesn't require registration
  • Nice selection of cards

So how do we use this with our ESL / EFL students?

  • Well a lot of the suggestions that I mentioned in my posting Video conferencing for EFL will also work with Bubble Joy, but be sure to remember that with Bubble Joy you only have 60 seconds, and the video card expires after it has been viewed 50 times.
  • You could also try using it for specific occasions (there are cards specifically for Christmas, Easter, Valentines etc.)
  • You could also get students to create messages that match the other themes (What would you say from inside a lion's mouth, inside a shark, on safari) and then build a story to go with the cards explaining why this happened.
  • Students could also plan an imaginary holiday and then send a card to tell other as about it (on safari, riding in a hot air balloon etc.)
  • Students could use one of the TV or stage designs to give a brief news report. They could each report on their day in class or what they did on holiday, at the weekend or on a class visit.
  • They could use the stage or TV designs to record a joke each and then send them round and vote on the best one.
  • The cocktail glass card could be used to create warnings against the dangers of alcohol.
See the full range of Bubble Joy designs here:

What I'm not so sure about
  • Students need to email the cards, so to avoid them having to share their email addresses it might be better to have the students send the cards to you and then you grab the links and share them in class or on a web page etc.
  • It would be nice to be able to upload your own frame to put the video in.
  • 60 seconds can be a bit limiting
  • Shame the cards expire after they have been viewed 50 times
Well I hope you enjoy Bubble Joy and that it helps you to spread some joy among your students.

Here are some related links:
Great Video Commenting Tool
Video conferencing for EFL
Send Free Video Messages

Best

Nik Peachey

Video conferencing for EFL

Comment
It's not often that you look at a product and think 'Ah! That's exactly what I've been looking for! And it's free!' But tokbox does seem to be that kind of product for me.

For some time now I've been looking round for a suitable video conferencing type application and while there have been a few that look okay, like SnapYap which I reviewed a week or two back, when I saw tokbox this morning I realised that here was a video conferencing tool that had exactly what I wanted and a bit more.

Here's a quick video demo of what it can do.




So what do I like about it?

  • It's free and doesn't require any downloads.
  • I was registered and signed in without disclosing any personal information (apart from email address) within less than 3 mins of finding the site!
  • It has a range of ways to communicate including group video conferencing, person to person live video calls, video email messages, and a video feed.
  • You can embed videos or your call messages into blogs websites and a whole range of social media sites including Facebook and Blogger.
  • You can report inappropriate use and users who are doing 'unsuitable' things with their accounts get deleted.
  • Students can use it privately, with groups of friends or publicly.
  • I like the inbox idea so you can check your video mail and get alerts sent to your own email inbox when someone wants to call you or has left you a message.
  • It has a really nice clean easy intuitive interface.
Here's a quick message that I created to show you the kind of quality you can get.

So how could we use this with ELT or EFL students?

  • Chinese - video - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it themselves and send it to the next student. Each student should rerecord and send the message on to another, until the last student sends it back to you. You will then see how accurately the message matches to your original text.
  • Interactive video learning diary - You could get students to create an interactive learning diary, they could email you their video summary of what they feel they have learnt that day and you could then respond. Your videos would form a good learning record and students would be able to look back at them later and see how they had improved -quite literally - and also hear the improvements in their speaking ability. This is also a great way to give your students one-to-one-time which can often be a problem in class.
  • Class survey - You could send a video message to your students with a class survey question that they could respond to. This would be a good way to carry out classroom research, decide on learning goals and make sure that all students had a means to feedback to you in private and on an individual basis.
  • Different perspectives - Show some of your students a video clip or picture, that includes a number of people (scenes from films with bank robberies, where a number of people are involved are quite useful for this). Then ask the students to imagine that they are one of the people in the film or picture and they need to describe what happened. Ask them to a video giving their account of what happened. You can then ask the other students to imagine they are detectives and watch the clips your students have created and make notes to piece together what happened. The 'detective' students should then try to recreate the scene using the student videos to guide them. Afterwards they can watch the original film clip or picture together and see how well they did and what they missed.
  • Favourite poems or haiku - Students could record themselves reading their favourite poem or haiku, you could then embed the videos into a webpage or blog as a class poetry collection.
  • Live tutoring support - This looks like an ideal tool for supporting distance learners and doing 'face to face' tutorials.
  • Video interviews - You could get in touch with someone for your class to interview. Just have one computer plus camera set up in class, and a visiting expert, friend or colleague on the other end for your students to interview. They could also interview an expert in groups from home with a conference call.
  • Video lesson with conferencing - You could use the conference call to video cast your lessons to a group of distance learners.
  • Video twitter - using the feed feature you could create a kind of video Twitter, with your students video micro-blogging about learning English, their day at school, or any topic they find interesting.
  • Text and video message - Using the video email feature, you could record a video of yourself reading a text, then add the text within the email message. You could include some errors in the text and get them to watch the video and correct the errors.
  • Create a collaborative story - Email students a video with the first line of a story and ask them to record your line of the story and add their own, then pass it back, or pass it on to another student. This way you could build up a story between the group over a period of time.
  • Tip of the day, word of the day - Send you students a tip or word of the day by video email. These could be exam tips, study tips, recommended websites, or words and definitions.
  • Video dictation - Send a video email of yourself dictating a text and ask your students to watch and write the text in the email and send it back to you for correction.
So why use video conferencing with your EFL / ELT students?
  • It' a great real life IT skill as these kinds of tools are going to become a normal part of our day to day work and pleasure daily routine.
  • IT adds an element of personalisation to your lessons and materials and can make it easier to build up rapport, especially with distance students.
  • It can help you get some one-to-one time with your students.
  • You can use it to create some really nice personalised materials.
  • Students can use it (with caution) to find people with similar interests to talk to or to do learning / language exchanges.

Possible problems

  • As ever be sure your students are aware of how to protect their privacy and that they don't share any personal information or contact details with people they don't know.
  • Try to keep any video messages you make quite short or they will become slow / bandwidth heavy to watch. This is almost certainly a tool that will be more useful to broadband users.
  • Students are going to need a webcam and a microphone of course.
  • Even though inappropriate use can be reported, someone has to see it to report it, so if that is going to be one of your students, make sure they know how to report anything that disturbs them.
  • You have to be careful with any tool that enables mass communication, even if it's only email, but despite that I think that tokbox is a fantastic product and one which can really enhance your teaching and your students learning. I think they have come up with a fantastic product that could become a market leader in the field of web based video communications.
  • Appearance is important, so watch out for bad hair days, hangovers ad make sure you wear something nice and try to find a room with some good natural light.

Fantastic! Hope you and your students enjoy it. Happy EFL video conferencing

Nik Peachey

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‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات communication. إظهار كافة الرسائل
‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات communication. إظهار كافة الرسائل

الأربعاء، 24 نوفمبر 2010

So Ask Me a Question

I recently spotted this very interesting site called Vyou.com which exploits video to create asynchronous conversations. I find it interesting because of the simple way it creates presence. As you can see below, it looks like the person (me in this case) is waiting ready for your question.

All visitors need to do is type a question into the text line below the video and the creator will get a message with the question and post a reply. You can try it if you wish by posting a question to me. I'm not sure yet how long it will take for me to answer though.



This is very quick and easy to set up. You just go to the site and register for free, then once your registration is validated you record two short video clips. One is the one you can see above and another for unanswered questions. As questions are answered they appear below the 'waiting' video.

It's also a bit like Twitter in that you can 'follow' people and build up a group of followers. These people all receive notification of any video responses posted.

I'm trying this out because I think it's a great way of getting students to speak to each other and ask you or each other questions. All you need is a webcam and a microphone.

How to use this with students
  • You could set up your own grammar or vocabulary answers site and students could send you questions.
  • You could get students to ask each other questions about a story.
  • You could play animal, mineral or vegetable and each students has to ask question to see what you are thinking about.
  • You could just get students asking and answering questions about their likes and dislikes etc.
  • I think this would work particularly well for class exchanges with students from other classes or countries.

What I like about it
  • It's free and very quick and simple to set up.
  • There's a real feeling of presence and that someone is there waiting for your question.
  • I can generate some real spoken interaction.
  • It's a very simple idea made very effective.
  • You can embed the video chat into your blog or site.

What I'm not so sure about
  • Of course something like this is very much open to abuse, especially as it allows anonymous questions to be posted.
  • The widget which I've embedded into my post is a bit big and it would be nice to have smaller sizes.
  • A lot of the example conversations that have been created on the site are a bit adult in nature and certainly inappropriate for younger learners, so if you use it, be sure to use it with adults and embed it into a blog or site so that your students don't wander round the site.
  • WebCams aren't generally very flattering, especially in a bad light, but you can always wear a big hat or dark glasses.
If you do give this a try, please do follow me and I'll reciprocate, as I'd like to find out a bit more about how this will work in practice. You can visit my profile on the site at: http://vyou.com/nikpeachey . There you will be able to see a better view of the full size widget.

I hope you find this interesting.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey
مرسلة بواسطة في ليست هناك تعليقات:
التسميات: , , , , ,

الجمعة، 17 يوليو 2009

20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students

Back in November 2008 I published Part 1 of a series of articles intended to explore the use of WebCams in education. I have now finally got round to writing Part 2 which is a collection of 20 activities EFL ESL teachers can do with their students.


Here are some links to useful free video communication tools that you could use for these activities.

MailVu is a simple to use app which runs in the browser and enables students to record a short message which can be sent by email.
EyeJot is another simple video email app which also has a mobile version.
Skype is of course the mainstream choice for synchronous communication.
Oovoo is a Skype competitor which also enables the recording of video interviews by capturing both interviewer and interviewee.

20 WebCam Activities

1. Chinese - video dictation - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it themselves and send it to the next student. Each student should rerecord and send the message on to another, until the last student sends it back to you. You will then see how accurately the message matches to your original text.


2. Interactive video learning diary - You could get students to create an interactive learning diary, they could email you their video summary of what they feel they have learned each day and you could then respond. The videos would form a good learning record and students will be able to look back at them later and see how they have improved - quite literally - and also hear the improvements in their speaking ability. This is also a great way to give your students one-to-one-time which can often be a problem in class.



3. Class survey - Action research - You could send a video message to your students with a class survey question that they could respond to. This would be a good way to carry out classroom research, decide on learning goals and make sure that all students had a means to feedback to you in private and on an individual basis.

 They could also create their own questions and send them to each other, then feedback in class.

4. The witness - Show half of your students a video clip or picture, that includes a number of people (scenes from films with bank robberies, where a number of people are involved are quite useful for this). Then ask the students to imagine that they are one of the people in the film or picture and they need to describe what happened. Ask them to record a video statement giving their account of what happened in the first person. You can then ask the other students to imagine they are detectives and watch the clips your students have created and make notes to piece together what happened. Afterwards they can watch the original film clip together in class and you can see how well they did and what they missed.

 Here's an example bank robbery scene
5. Favourite poems or haiku - Students could record themselves reading their favourite poem or haiku, you could then embed the videos into a web page or blog as a class poetry collection.


6. Video twitter - Using the feed feature you could create a kind of video Twitter, with your students video micro-blogging about learning English, their day at school, or any topic they find interesting.


7. Text and video error correction - Using the video email feature, you could record a video of yourself reading a text, then add the text within the email message. You could include some errors in the text and get them to watch the video and correct the errors.


8. Create a collaborative story - Email students a video with the first line of a story and ask them to record your line of the story and add their own, then pass it back, or pass it on to another student. This way you could build up a story between the group over a period of time.


9. Tip of the day - Send you students a learning tip each day by video email. These could be exam tips, study tips, recommended website etc.(The URL for the website would appear in the text part of the message below the video.)

10. Video dictation - Send a video email of yourself dictating a text and ask your students to watch and write the text in the email and send it back to you for correction.


11. Vocabulary record / word of the day - You could ask your students to create a video to record the words and example sentences. You could also do something like this yourself as a kind of 'Word of the Day' channel.


12. News Reports - Ask students to read the news ( in English or their own first language) and then produce a video news report on one of the main stories that they are interested in.
 They could also create their own local or school video news channel for other students to subscribe to.

13. Present continuous (sound on or off) - You can record video clips to demonstrate present continuous sentences. You can do this with sound on or with sound off and the students can guess the sentence
.

14. Questions for response - You could set up clips with questions and ask your students to respond online. They could also set up a sequence of their own questions for other students to respond to.


15. Guess the object - You or students could record a description of and object and viewers have to listen and guess what the object is. Getting students to create these clips will help them to be concise and really identify the key concepts behind describing objects.


16. Sales pitch - A variation on the idea above is to ask students to produce a video trying to convince users to buy a particular object. Again this helps them to identify key concepts, gives them practice with using language of persuasion and it may well help them to push for faster speaking speeds and better fluency.


17. Moods - You can create video clips of yourself or your students expressing different moods. This can help them to learn the vocabulary of the moods, but you could also use it to get students to predict the cause of the mood ( and practice present perfect; "He's angry because he has just been made redundant." etc.)

18. Live tutoring support - Video conferencing is an ideal tool for supporting distance learners and doing 'face to face' tutorials.


19. Video interviews - You could get in touch with someone for your class to interview. Just have one computer plus camera set up in class, and a visiting expert, friend or colleague on the other end for your students to interview. They could also interview an expert in groups from home with a conference call.
 The interview doesn't have to be done 'live' it could also be done through a series of email video messages sent to the interviewee.You can try it here by watching this video and then clicking reply.

20. Video lesson with conferencing - You could use the conference call to videocast your lesson or presentation to a group of distance learners.


I hope you find these suggestions useful and manage to use some of them with your students. Do drop me a line if you have other recommendations for useful video conferencing tools or activities. You can find more video related activities for EFL ESL here.

Related links:
External links:

Best

Nik Peachey
مرسلة بواسطة في ليست هناك تعليقات:
التسميات: , , , ,

الثلاثاء، 16 ديسمبر 2008

Online Video: What does it have to offer teachers and learners?

This series of postings are the result of a training presentation I was asked to deliver for Moroccan teachers of English in Kinitra on 15th December 08.

To prepare the session I looked back at many of the postings from my blogs over the last 18 months and thought about some of the changes that have been taking place in the way online video sharing has developed.

I've split the materials from the session into four sections.
These are by no means conclusive. With the spread of broadband access the potential for education and for language teaching and development and autonomous teacher development is huge, but still as yet largely under exploited as the discussion that followed my session highlighted.

Some of the potential problems we highlighted were:
  • Inappropriate content
  • Dead links
  • Teacher preparation time
  • Blocked sites
  • Lack of connectivity
Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this series of postings, which are in main part a summary of my work in this area over the last 18 months, and that they give some insight into some of the potential and a few of the ways we can overcome the problems. If you have experienced other problems, by all means leave a comment.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey
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الاثنين، 15 ديسمبر 2008

Online Video: As Communication

Over the past couple of years online video communication has been transformed, not only price and quality, but in ease of use and accessibility. This tool has great potential for extending the reaches of our classroom and opening access to much better support for distance learners.

Video conferencing
Video conferencing was once a very difficult and expensive activity that required specific software, hardware and in many cases an expensive account with a service provider. You can now do video conferencing for free using software like Skype or free web-based services like Tokbox

Tokbox doesn’t require any downloads. You just create a free account and then star connecting with other users. You can do this by sending them a link to a conference.
Using Tokbox you can:
  • Make live (synchronous) video calls from your computer either to one person or a small group.
  • Record video messages (asynchronous) and send the by email
  • Create a series of public broadcasts that anyone can access.
Here is a video which shows you How to use Tokbox
Here you can find some Teaching suggestions for using Tokbox with students:


Sending Video Greetings
Bubble Joy is a website that enables you to create short video greetings and then email them to people. All you need is a webcam with a microphone. The service is free and very quick and easy to use.

Here you can find some suggestions for teaching ideas and some instructions for how to make this work on your computer: Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students


Annotating the web
The bubble comment site enables you to create and share a brief 90 second commentary of a website. You can use this to get students talking about and sharing their favourite sites.

To find out more about using this tool go to: Great Video Commenting Tool


Video Microblogging
Video microblogging is a way of creating your own short video broadcasts. The first such site to enable this was 12 Seconds TV. The idea behind the site is that you create a short 12 second long video clip using your webcam. Other people can then subscribe to your channel and watch your video clips. It’s often used among friends to keep each other up to date on what they are doing, but it does have a range of uses for the EFL classroom.

 Here you can read about ways to use ‘microblogging’ with your students to create digital narrative, create vocabulary records and even practice verb forms: 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL

I hope this gives you a few ideas and hints for how to use online video communication tools and by all means leave comments below if your own favourites haven't been mentioned here.

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Best

Nik Peachey
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الخميس، 24 يوليو 2008

Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students

It's amazing how you can spend ages looking for something you want and then when you find it a whole bunch of other things come along with it. That seems to be the way things have happened for me with video conferencing. I found and posted about tokbox last week and then came Bubble Comment this week which I wrote about on my Quick Shout blog, and now Bubble Joy!

Bubble Joy is a way of sending short (60 seconds) fun video messages to people.


Click here to see the live video message (only good for the first 50 visitors)

They have a selection of message cards and you just record your video message to go in the middle using a webcam and microphone. The whole thing is very quick and easy to do.

So why use this with EFL / ESL students?

  • It's good listening and speaking practice
  • It's good fun and easy to do
  • It's communicative
  • It's creative
  • It's free, easy to use, doesn't require registration
  • Nice selection of cards

So how do we use this with our ESL / EFL students?

  • Well a lot of the suggestions that I mentioned in my posting Video conferencing for EFL will also work with Bubble Joy, but be sure to remember that with Bubble Joy you only have 60 seconds, and the video card expires after it has been viewed 50 times.
  • You could also try using it for specific occasions (there are cards specifically for Christmas, Easter, Valentines etc.)
  • You could also get students to create messages that match the other themes (What would you say from inside a lion's mouth, inside a shark, on safari) and then build a story to go with the cards explaining why this happened.
  • Students could also plan an imaginary holiday and then send a card to tell other as about it (on safari, riding in a hot air balloon etc.)
  • Students could use one of the TV or stage designs to give a brief news report. They could each report on their day in class or what they did on holiday, at the weekend or on a class visit.
  • They could use the stage or TV designs to record a joke each and then send them round and vote on the best one.
  • The cocktail glass card could be used to create warnings against the dangers of alcohol.
See the full range of Bubble Joy designs here:

What I'm not so sure about
  • Students need to email the cards, so to avoid them having to share their email addresses it might be better to have the students send the cards to you and then you grab the links and share them in class or on a web page etc.
  • It would be nice to be able to upload your own frame to put the video in.
  • 60 seconds can be a bit limiting
  • Shame the cards expire after they have been viewed 50 times
Well I hope you enjoy Bubble Joy and that it helps you to spread some joy among your students.

Here are some related links:
Great Video Commenting Tool
Video conferencing for EFL
Send Free Video Messages

Best

Nik Peachey
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الأربعاء، 16 يوليو 2008

Video conferencing for EFL

It's not often that you look at a product and think 'Ah! That's exactly what I've been looking for! And it's free!' But tokbox does seem to be that kind of product for me.

For some time now I've been looking round for a suitable video conferencing type application and while there have been a few that look okay, like SnapYap which I reviewed a week or two back, when I saw tokbox this morning I realised that here was a video conferencing tool that had exactly what I wanted and a bit more.

Here's a quick video demo of what it can do.




So what do I like about it?

  • It's free and doesn't require any downloads.
  • I was registered and signed in without disclosing any personal information (apart from email address) within less than 3 mins of finding the site!
  • It has a range of ways to communicate including group video conferencing, person to person live video calls, video email messages, and a video feed.
  • You can embed videos or your call messages into blogs websites and a whole range of social media sites including Facebook and Blogger.
  • You can report inappropriate use and users who are doing 'unsuitable' things with their accounts get deleted.
  • Students can use it privately, with groups of friends or publicly.
  • I like the inbox idea so you can check your video mail and get alerts sent to your own email inbox when someone wants to call you or has left you a message.
  • It has a really nice clean easy intuitive interface.
Here's a quick message that I created to show you the kind of quality you can get.

So how could we use this with ELT or EFL students?

  • Chinese - video - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it themselves and send it to the next student. Each student should rerecord and send the message on to another, until the last student sends it back to you. You will then see how accurately the message matches to your original text.
  • Interactive video learning diary - You could get students to create an interactive learning diary, they could email you their video summary of what they feel they have learnt that day and you could then respond. Your videos would form a good learning record and students would be able to look back at them later and see how they had improved -quite literally - and also hear the improvements in their speaking ability. This is also a great way to give your students one-to-one-time which can often be a problem in class.
  • Class survey - You could send a video message to your students with a class survey question that they could respond to. This would be a good way to carry out classroom research, decide on learning goals and make sure that all students had a means to feedback to you in private and on an individual basis.
  • Different perspectives - Show some of your students a video clip or picture, that includes a number of people (scenes from films with bank robberies, where a number of people are involved are quite useful for this). Then ask the students to imagine that they are one of the people in the film or picture and they need to describe what happened. Ask them to a video giving their account of what happened. You can then ask the other students to imagine they are detectives and watch the clips your students have created and make notes to piece together what happened. The 'detective' students should then try to recreate the scene using the student videos to guide them. Afterwards they can watch the original film clip or picture together and see how well they did and what they missed.
  • Favourite poems or haiku - Students could record themselves reading their favourite poem or haiku, you could then embed the videos into a webpage or blog as a class poetry collection.
  • Live tutoring support - This looks like an ideal tool for supporting distance learners and doing 'face to face' tutorials.
  • Video interviews - You could get in touch with someone for your class to interview. Just have one computer plus camera set up in class, and a visiting expert, friend or colleague on the other end for your students to interview. They could also interview an expert in groups from home with a conference call.
  • Video lesson with conferencing - You could use the conference call to video cast your lessons to a group of distance learners.
  • Video twitter - using the feed feature you could create a kind of video Twitter, with your students video micro-blogging about learning English, their day at school, or any topic they find interesting.
  • Text and video message - Using the video email feature, you could record a video of yourself reading a text, then add the text within the email message. You could include some errors in the text and get them to watch the video and correct the errors.
  • Create a collaborative story - Email students a video with the first line of a story and ask them to record your line of the story and add their own, then pass it back, or pass it on to another student. This way you could build up a story between the group over a period of time.
  • Tip of the day, word of the day - Send you students a tip or word of the day by video email. These could be exam tips, study tips, recommended websites, or words and definitions.
  • Video dictation - Send a video email of yourself dictating a text and ask your students to watch and write the text in the email and send it back to you for correction.
So why use video conferencing with your EFL / ELT students?
  • It' a great real life IT skill as these kinds of tools are going to become a normal part of our day to day work and pleasure daily routine.
  • IT adds an element of personalisation to your lessons and materials and can make it easier to build up rapport, especially with distance students.
  • It can help you get some one-to-one time with your students.
  • You can use it to create some really nice personalised materials.
  • Students can use it (with caution) to find people with similar interests to talk to or to do learning / language exchanges.

Possible problems

  • As ever be sure your students are aware of how to protect their privacy and that they don't share any personal information or contact details with people they don't know.
  • Try to keep any video messages you make quite short or they will become slow / bandwidth heavy to watch. This is almost certainly a tool that will be more useful to broadband users.
  • Students are going to need a webcam and a microphone of course.
  • Even though inappropriate use can be reported, someone has to see it to report it, so if that is going to be one of your students, make sure they know how to report anything that disturbs them.
  • You have to be careful with any tool that enables mass communication, even if it's only email, but despite that I think that tokbox is a fantastic product and one which can really enhance your teaching and your students learning. I think they have come up with a fantastic product that could become a market leader in the field of web based video communications.
  • Appearance is important, so watch out for bad hair days, hangovers ad make sure you wear something nice and try to find a room with some good natural light.

Fantastic! Hope you and your students enjoy it. Happy EFL video conferencing

Nik Peachey

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