Podcasting Using Vocaroo

Thinking of conducting new, interactive and technology-based listening and speaking activity? How about using Vocaroo to resolve your problem. Vocaroo is an online voice recorder that allows people to record short messages, share it via email or embed it to various websites and social networks site like Facebook and Twitter. Although its usefulness in language classroom seems vague,  but if teacher knows how to manipulate it, this tool could be a convenient help for students language development.

Website URL: http://vocaroo.com/

How it operates?

There is nothing to worry. The steps are all easy.

• Make sure that you have your microphone connected to your computer or turn on your internal microphone. Once you browse the website, just click 'Click to Record' button in the green box and you can start recording your voice messages.

• When you have finished recording, you can listen to the message. If you are not satisfied with it, just click 'Retry' and you can record it all over again.

• If you are satisfied with your work, you could save your voice message and embed it onto your blog or any internet tools. The embed code will be given at the page. Not only that, you can also email your recording to anyone and share it to any social networking site like Facebook and Twitter.

How can teacher use it?

As it is a podcast-based device, it is portable and convenient. Teacher could record voice messages and share it with students through class blog, social networking site or even email. Due to that, some language activities could be conducted using Vocaroo.


Record an Ending of Story

Teacher could do 'continuing a story' activity by recording an unfinished narration using Vocaroo. This record would then be posted to class blog where students could have access on it at any time. Students then need to end the story by recording their voices to Vocaroo and posted it on the blog or email it to the teacher. Here, students could practice their listening and speaking skills at the same time.

Assess Pronunciation

Vocaroo could also be used as a medium to assess students pronunciation. Assign students to read aloud a short text into Vocaroo, post it to teacher's email and teacher then would listen to it and point out any mispronunciations or incorrect stress of words. The feedback on the correct pronunciation or at least nearly correct one, should be given afterwards and it depends on the teacher whether to give it individually or collectively. depending on students' condition.  

Writing Short Journal

By assigning students to record a short journal of their daily or weekly activity, students's fluency of language  could be improved. Students are free to express themselves in any way and I believe there would be many conversation language be used in the recording. As this tool could be regularly used, teacher can check students' progression and gather overall information on what aspects of language should be further improved.   


What do I say about this website?

Thumbs up points  :)

1) Vocaroo is portable and easy to use device; a convenient tool for language teaching.
2) It is free with no complicated step!
3) You can share and embed the recording to various mediums; emails, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogspot.

Thumbs down points :(

1) Recording is limited only up to 5 minute-sadly it is really short.

I hope you use it and ENJOY!

A wordcloud named Wordsift

Have you ever heard of word cloud? I believe many of us have seen one but not sure that it is a word cloud. So, what is a word cloud? It is an attractive arrangement of randomly positioned words, where the most frequent-used words are bigger than the others. Many websites provide free service for this word arrangement but on this entry, I will emphasis on Wordsift. This website allows people to insert a text, maximum of 65K words (which can cover a long essay!) and convert it into word cloud form. The words could also be explored through pictures, thesaurus and their uses in sentences. Isn't it interesting?  

Website URL: http://www.wordsift.com/

How it operates?

• Wordsift needs no registration and you can easily insert your text in the blank box provided in the website. Then, click 'Sift' button to start visualizing the word cloud.

• The word cloud that will be presented excludes words like article (a, the, etc), pronoun (she, he, etc), connectors (and, but, etc) and prepositions (in, on, at, etc). The most frequent words that are being used will appear bigger than the others.

• Words can be sorted according to common to rare, rare to common, A to Z and Z to A. It gives more flexibility on how we want to manage those words. The cloud could also be made to disappear or reappear by clicking 'Squish Cloud' and 'Unsquish' button respectively. Moreover, a workspace could also be created below the cloud by pressing 'Create Workspace' button. 

• As being mentioned before, words in the cloud can be more explored through several other mediums:

     

          1) First of all, we can have thoughts about a word by looking at the      

              images related with it. Through the use of Google Image Search, 

              images that will be displayed are to the utmost relevance with 
              the words.    

          2) Next, a word web thesaurus is also provided to explain more 
              about words. Synonyms and antonyms will be displayed and this 
              would help people to understand the meaning of words by 
              associating them with other words. 

          3) Sample sentences from the text input are also being given in order 

              to aid understanding of the use of words in sentence level. The  
              key word is marked with green. From this feature, people can 
              easily spot and analyse different meanings of same word and how 
              it is being used. 

How can teacher use it?

Pre-reading activity

This website could be used as a tool for pre-reading activity. It is important to expose students with the theme or context of the reading text so that they might have some expectation on what will they encounter later. Therefore, by using Wordsift, students can see which words are frequently used and they can imagine what the text is about. This consequently helps to create students' interest in reading activity. 

Guessing A Story

        Another activity that you can do is guessing-a-story activity. Gives students several familiar topics, asks them to choose one and write an essay out of it. When they had completed their essays, bring them to computer lab with internet access and ask them to insert their essays into Wordsift. With a partner, students need to predict others' stories and try to make their own story based on the word cloud. After they had done, ask students to compare and contrast their stories with the original one. Here, students are likely to communicate with each other, hence, might improve their speaking ability.

        Since having a lot of computers with internet access is difficult for some teachers, another option should be made. You could proceed with guessing-a-story activity but this time only you write the story. This activity, therefore, is a whole class activity where students only refer to teacher's Wordsift in order to make story of their own. You can vary the activity by asking students to work in groups and share their stories with other members.  

What do I say about this website?

Thumbs up points :)

1) Students can improve their vocabulary by exploring pictures of words, its thesaurus and how it is constructed in sentences.

2) One of the tools for pre-reading activity.

Thumbs down points :(

1) The design is too simple and limited.

2) Some pictures displayed are not related with the word clicked.

I hope you use it and ENJOY!