Breaking News English

What is "Breaking News English" ?

This website supplies loads of news articles which are accompanied by their mp3 files and PDF files as handouts.

Why is this particular tool relevant to language learning? What research underpin the use of this technology?

Updated news could be designed as authentic reading materials for students, at the same time, the accompanied mp3 files might become an ideal practice for listening skills. The well organized PDF handouts greatly free teachers from generating items for class-room based formative assessment. With them, teachers could assess their students in class, and give them instant feedback,which could raise standards of achievement (Black and Garces 1998). Interactive activities could make peer assessment possible.

What limitations can you see with the use of this technology?

We could reagard this website as an item bank in class-room based context. Suppose teachers choose to leave these exercises to students as homework, it would be better to give them clear instructions on how and to what extent, some of the exercises could be used. Too much homework or "over-test" could lower their motivation and lead to negative washback.

QuestGarden,where great WebQuests grow

What is a WebQuest?

http://webquest.org/

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. (Bernie Dodge 1995)

What is QuestGarden?

http://questgarden.com/

As its slogan shouts: it is "where great WebQuests grow"!

The following link provided was a group work undertaken by Daphne and me.

http://questgarden.com/author/create/preview.php?u=138096&l=138090-120127050804&a=&p=introduction&pt=student

 Why is this particular tool or technology relevant to language learning?

In large sized class, implementing learner autonomy by using QuestGarden could greatly motivate every student to participate into a task allocated by teachers.

      The identification and tailoring of activities, tasks, and materials

    toward a student’s preferred learning style in order to promote

self-discovery, self-appropriation, and, thus, satisfaction is

     possible through the adoption of the Learning Style Inventory(Kolb 1999).

At the same time, this website makes the production of a WebQuest more easily and technically practical.

Limitations:

Teachers are supposed to be aware that students are working under the guidance of task requirement. After all, some students could be distracted by the overload information from the Internet.

myBrainshark

http://my.brainshark.com/Home.aspx

What does myBrainshark do?

This tool allows you to upload PowerPoints, documents, videos and pictures. It could even make podcasts for you.The most striking feature of this technology is that users could add their voice recording to the PowerPoints.

Why is this particular tool relevant to language learning? What research to language learning  underpin the use of this technology?

Teachers could not only post their lecture notes' PPTs to their students, but also they could add their voice recording to some specific PPTs which could be problematic to their students. This will be obviously facilitate students to review the lecture content.

Of course, language learners could use this tool to practise their speaking skills. By comparing their previous recording, students could easily know if they have made progress or not. This definitely foster learner autonomy.

“Autonomy is a situation in which the learner is totally responsible for all the decisions concerned with his [or her] learning and the implementation of those decisions” (Dickinson 1987:11).

What limitations can you see with the use of this technology?




Even the free version myBrainshark is powerful enough to let people who are not so keen on technology might feel a little bit complicated. Obviously, you cannot say it's limitation anyway. 

The Beauty of Words

Pale Blue Dot

http://www.wordle.net/

What does wordle do?

Wordle is a tool for producing  “word clouds” from text (articles, sonnets, or even documentary evidence,etc.) that you input. The more frequent the word appears, the larger the font size could be. You could tailor your own word clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color choices at will. 

How might you use it to foster language learning in class?

In class,  it could be used  in two ways.
First, we could teach intensive reading by displaying this wordle image to students. As shown above, which I generated by inputting one of my favourite articles (Pale Blue Dot, written by  Carl Sagan ), key words or to be specific, theme words come out.We could design tasks, for example, let students predict according to a Wordle picture , suppose they were this article's writer and how  they might produce their articles. Obviously, this method could greatly motivate students to understand this article.

On the other hand , we could employ Wordle in anlysing an essay, for instance,a letter, or an academic writing. We could input a model essay in specific genre into Wordle, common words like the, a(an), to,numbers excluded by default, some words and expressions which used frequently in this genre might appear prominently. This way could be more striking and stimulating to your students in teaching them writing an article.

What limitations can you see with the use of this technology?


First, suppose you just store it in public gallery like I did, theoretically, everyone who found it can use it.

Second, Wordle does not support to input ideographic fonts, for example, Chinese!