Classdigitools Week 4 - Speaking

Photo on Flickr by visual.dichotomy

By the time I post this we will be well into Week 5. However, I am very, very busy with my Webskills course. Not to mention Podcasting.

I didn't devote as much time to EVO as I usually do, but I am glad that I didn't give up completely. I learnt a lot and, even though I am late with some tasks, I am going to continue working on them after the session is over. One thing I am really sorry about is that I had to sacrifice the interaction, which is always the best part of any online course. But I did most of the tasks.

This week in Classdigitools we did tools for speaking. My main problem is my webcam, which is very old and very cheap. I need a new one and it is on my priority list. I couldn't do some of the tasks because of my camera and I had to modify others.

One of our tasks was to talk about why we became teachers, using Recordr. It is a handy tool and luckily lets you choose whether you will record video or audio only. Here is my audio:

Week 4:Task 2 recorded by lunas994

Another task was to go to Intervue.me and talk about how we spend Christmas with our family. I bravely recorded my video with my terrible little camera, but it wouldn't work. So, I modified the task. Before I show you what I did, let me tell you that I am going to use Intervue.me a lot when I buy a new camera. It is easy to use. The teacher puts a question at the top of the page, and the students answer talking into their webcams. You can listen to what other participants said here.

And this is what I did:


Photo on Flickr by Milica Sekulic

We were very busy this week. Task 3 was to draw our family using Educreations. It is a very user-friendly tool and I can recommend it warmly. Here is what I did:



Task 5 was to create a lesson plan using one of the tools offered. This is where I am going to "borrow" my Podcasting lesson plan. Though the template is different from the one provided in the Classdigitools wiki, I hope it will do the trick:

Podcast Project Plan
Title: MY FAVOURITE PLACE
Main objective: Participants describe their favourite place.
Level: Intermediate
Class type: adults
Aim: Describing a place
Activity focus: Speaking
Time: Max 3 minutes
Material: Computer with access to Internet / Headphones (which students use from home)
Procedure:
1. Teacher and students practice describing their favourite place in class. Teacher introduces relevant vocabulary.
2. Teacher posts an example to the class wiki. Teacher also posts a screencast explaining how to use Audioboo.
3. Student signs up for an account in Audioboo.
4. Student records the Boo. 
5. Teacher posts a screencast explaining how to post a link to the Boo in the class wiki.
 6. Student posts a link to their Boo in the class wiki. 
7. Teacher posts a Screencast explaining how to write/record a reply to a Boo.
8. Teacher posts the first reply to the student’s Boo. 
9. Student chooses a classmate and listens to his/her recording and writes/records comments or questions in their classmate´s Boo. 
10. In class, teacher and students discuss the experience and what they learnt from it. 
11. Students brainstorm ideas for the next Boo. 
12. Students choose the best idea for a new podcast.

As you can see from the plan, the students will do the task from home, which is why I have chosen Audioboo, since it is very user-friendly.

And here is the Boo I made for my Podcasting class. It is called My Mystery Person:



Apart from being very easy to use, Audioboo allows voice comments as well as text comments and this can be great for class discussions or interviews.

I am going to stop here for now. This post is very long as it is and it probably took ages to load, considering everything that I have embedded into it. However, there were some tools in our Classdigitools wiki that I would like to explore further and I am going to do that in one of my next posts.

Technorati Tags: #tools12, speaking, podcasting, TEFL