Vocaroo: A free voice recorder

What is Vocaroo?

Vocaroo is a free online audio recorder. It is a great tool for students to practice the English speaking skill and assess it. It is easy to use because it does not require to download a special software to use it. Once the recordings are ready, they can be shared, embedded and e mailed easily.


You can find Vocaroo in the following link:

vocaroo.com

How to use Vocaroo?

You can watch this video to learn how to use Vocaroo:

Why is Vocaroo relevant to language learning?

• It gives the oportunity to practice and assess speaking, specifically aspects such as, pronunciation, fluency, intonation, stress, grammar and vocabulary use, as well.

• Students can record their voices and in order to access them teachers can have access to the recordings more than once, because it gives you the opportunity to save them.

• Speaking is recognised as the most difficult skill to develop in the English Language because it requires more complex cognitive processes. Therefore, Vocaroo can give the chance to students to practice it by their own in a familiar context, at home, and get more confidence while trying it. In this way, it also lows the affective filter in students who are more anxious than others.

• It is a solution for shy students who are reluctant to talk in class.

• Teachers have the opportunity to listen to every student and provide him/her some feedback of their speaking performances.

• It is also a tool that promotes the idea of the 'connected classroom' because students can be asked to practice the language in and then outside the classroom.

• It is a perfect way to practice speaking because students can record themselves as many times as they want to, before the final version of the recording.

• It also promotes learner's autonomy, and learner - learner interaction.

• It is useful to assess students in the speaking skill individually, it gives you a better view of their levels and progresses.

 How might you use Vocaroo in class/outside the class?

1. Within the classroom

• Students can use this tool in different ways, for instance, to create an audio recording describing their favorite summer vacation.

• It encourages independent students, however, teachers have to guide them so they can be able to build up their autonomy. First, teachers have to prepare the class by recording themselves describing their own favorite summer vacation, students listen to it,  take notes of what they listen to, discuss about it in pairs or groups, and share ideas. Then, teachers have to teach them how to use Vocaroo and they also have to establish the different aspects the students have to talk about in their recordings. Then, students can start thinking about their description, they can decide about the different aspects, make an outline and describe it. During the lesson, teachers can check their progresses,  assess them formatively and give them feedback.

2.  Outside the classroom

• To continue with the idea of a connected classroom, in the first activity teachers ask their students to use this tool at home and create their own descriptions, try it several times until they are pleased with their performances, record the final version and send it to the teacher. Then the teacher can use this task to give the students feedback about their perfromances and also use it as summative assessment of the speaking skill.

• Teachers can also ask students to record their opinions about a piece of news, topic or article they saw during the class.

What limitations can you see with the use of Vocaroo? 

• It gives you  the possibility to record only five minutes.

• You need a microphone.

• It is not practical for teachers who have more than 36 students in a class, it would be time consuming to assess every student's activity. 

This is an example on how your students can describe their last summer holidays using this fabulous and easy tool.

Record audio or upload mp3 >>

Dvolver: The greatest moviemaker

What is Dvolver?

Dvolver is a great tool to make free movies online. You can create your own movie by choosing the background and sky images, selecting the plot, character(s), adding speech bubbles to create your own dialogues for every character in every scene, and selecting the background music. It is an easy online tool  to use for language learning and teaching. 

You can find Dvolver in the following link:

dvolver.com

How to use Dvolver?

You can watch this video to learn how to use Dvolver:

Why is Dvolver relevant to language learning?

• It is a motivating and interesting website for students because they can create their own animated movies and feel more engage with the lesson.

• It gives teachers a new way to present contents. Therefore, students would also feel more motivated.

• Teachers can create suitable dialogues according to students' proficiency in the language, the content they are learning, grammar and vocabulary aspects as well.

• Students are free to create any scene using the different elements available for them. In this way they are developing their creativity.

• It is suitable for all ages because it has a range of different characters.

• It encourages both individual and collaborative work.

• This tool also enhances the development of critical thinking through evaluating information, reasoning, thinking and assessing information in a more comprehensible way. For instance, when students have to create dialogues they have to decide the content, vocabulary, grammar, etc. in order to link the conversation, and connect the series of scenes together in a well organised way, in other words, follow the flow of it. 

  

How might you use Dvolver in class/outside the class?

1. Within the classroom

Teachers can present any new teaching point more interestingly to the students by using Dvolver. For example, teachers would like to present through the communicative approach the function of 'introducing themselves', therefore, teachers can create a  dialogue including the specific function, vocabulary and grammar required to present it. This example would be embedded as a real dialogue to show you how you can use it and the content that you can add in the animated movie. Then, teachers can ask them to work in pairs and create a dialogue in which they would introduce themselves.

     2.  Outside the classroom

• By following the example from above, teachers can ask the students to send the movie they made during the class and they can assess them formatively to check the progress of their work and also to give them some feedback in the next class.

What limitations can you see with the use of Dvolver? 

• There are limited number of words for the sentences you intend to incorporate, limited scenes, characters which are pre-determined and limited in number, too. 

• Students and teachers are not able to listen to the conversation. Therefore, they can only read it. However, if a student is proficiently better in the listening and not in the reading skill, they would face some difficulties because the tool would favor one skill over the other.

The next movie would show you a simple example on how you can use Dvolver in the classroom:

TodaysMeet: A simple tool to share ideas in realtime!

          

What is TodaysMeet?

TodaysMeet is a backchannel tool through which people can exchange ideas about any topic in immediate time. As a backchannel tool, it enables to engage everything that may happen in any room or classroom but that it is not provided from a 'presenter' or a teacher. It is a simple tool to be used by teachers and students in the classroom, and it allows them to ask and answer questions, share ideas or notes and give feedback in 'realtime'. 

You can find TodaysMeet in the following link:  

 TodaysMeet

How to use TodaysMeet?

         You can watch this video to learn how to use TodaysMeet:

Why is TodaysMeet relevant to language learning?

• It is a useful tool for language learning because students can use it to work collaboratively by leaving some comments about a certain topic.

• It is motivating and interesting for students, because it breaks with the traditional method based on the behaivourist view of teaching-learning.

• Students can work in groups, share ideas and get to agreements.

• Students can practice and develop the writing skill of the English language.

• It favors some other higher cognitive skills such as critical thinking because they are required to reason, argue, question and give their opinions immediately about some topics they are discussing during the class. 

• There are also some approaches to language learning that support the use of TodaysMeet such as the Socio-Cognitive view of the language which establishes that students learn better through social interaction with their peers.

• It is also based on the constructivism view of the language which states that students have their own knowledge about language, and from there, they can construct some new ones in collaboration with others classmates.

• The chats or conversations can be saved, therefore any students in the classroom can revise them whenever they want to.

  How might you use TodaysMeet in class/outside the class?

1. Within the classroom

• Teachers can propose a subject of relevance to the class, for instance, current and controversial issues such as, the abortion, racism, the use of drugs, etc., ask them to discuss with their group of classmates, be able to support their answers and then share with the class as a whole in the TodaysMeet chat room. This also allow other students to add some comments on it, and get everyone involved in the subject, as well as in the classroom, and the discussion flow will be fast.

• Teachers can see and listen what the students are expressing by writing and speaking about different subjects. Therefore, they have the chance to praise them by using the correct vocabulary and grammar, help them when they might have a problem on how to express themselves or correct their mistakes immediately.

2.  Outside the classroom

• Students would have the opportunity to revise the different discussions after the class because the conversations can be saved, they are organised as the form of a transcript, very clearly, so students can have access to them in the future.

• Teachers can also choose for how long the room will exist, therefore, it  is not only limited to class time.

What limitations can you see with the use of TodaysMeet? 

• The users can not send or receive files while chatting. This can be a barrier when students are working together online because they can not share documents, pictures, power points, links of webpages, etc. Whilst other softwares such as Skype allows them to do it. Therefore, the efficiency of the online communication can be disrupted and students can end up using another virtual tool.