Brainshark: The Power of Voice

Have you ever experienced: 1) limited time to finish all the lessons? 2) difficulty to give feedback to each and every students' works? 3) lacking of activity that could assess students' speaking skills? If you have these problems, or at least one of it, let's come with me and I will share with you a website that could solve your worries.

Brainshark, a new innovation of slides presentations, is a website that allows people to insert their voices into a static content slideshow of PowerPoint Presentation, video clips, documents files and collection of photos. Create, share and track online and mobile video presentation are the important elements that serve as the basis for Brainshark's formation. It is a free website but a registration is required to get you started.         

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

How it operates?

• Since Brainshark has various functions, it is thus better to hear an aural and visual presentation on how to use it rather than reading all lengthy instruction. So, here is Brainshark tutorial with Russel Stannard. 

Have an idea on how it operates? Just in case you want to see an example of it, below is my own version of Brainshark presentation. Enjoy!

How can teacher use it?

Presenting the lesson

It is sometimes difficult to finish all the lesson due to time factor. So, by using Brainshark, you could cover any extra items and make a presentation that includes slides, pictures as well as audio explanation to students. Moreover, some aspects of lessons that have been taught in class would be very important for students' future challenges like examination and interview for higher education. You could then present these language aspects through Brainshark and this could give students opportunity to refer back to the lesson and learn it more intensively. 

Practicing and assessing speaking skill through presentation 

Students' speaking skills could also be fostered through Brainshark. Assign your students to create a presentation of any topic of interest by using this website. Plus, you should encourage students to imagine that they are presenting their works in front of the audience and insert any conversation items that portray a possibility of two ways communication. For example, ask students to post questions or use some word chunks like "are you with me?" and "do you guys feel excited?". Although this depends on students' imagination ability, but still by making them use the language, the familiarity towards the language structure would be enhanced and indirectly helps them improving their speaking skills.

At the same time, this presentation could also be a record to assess students' speaking skills. You could check students pronunciation, sentence making, creativity in relating slides with audio record and so on. Note down any mistakes that students made and try to improve it in the next lesson.   

A medium for giving feedback

Feedback on students' works is important to enhance learning. You might be so used to written feedback, so, how about changing it a little bit and give an oral feedback instead. Therefore, through Brainshark, this type of feedback could be presented. Similar like the written one, you should highlight good qualities as well as errors that students have made in their works. Suggested solutions and explanations on how the works could be improved should be given too. Students, hence, would take note on which aspects that should be improved and which one should be retained.

What do I say about this website?

Thumbs up points :)

1) A new way of presenting information that could be useful for many language activities. 

2) Enhance students' speaking skill.
3) Allows room for assessing students' speaking ability. 

4) Develop confidence on using language to speak.

Thumbs down points :(

1) Practice speaking with no real audience might affect the real feeling of talking in front of people.

I hope you use it and ENJOY!

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!

Intervue and Respond!

When carrying out speaking activity in class, do you get the opportunity to listen to and observe each of your students? I believe it is quite difficult to do so. Therefore, how can you observe their speaking ability? Come and let’s go to Intervue and you will see how this website can help you solve your worry. Intervue.me is a website that allows people to post any questions on the server and gather short video responses from anyone with a webcam. It is free and you can use this website to interact with your students. 

Website URL: http://intervue.me/

How it operates?

• In order to post questions and respond with a webcam, you need to sign up and be a member first. Only by giving your email, display name and password, you can already create an account.

• Click on ‘Create new’ button to start posting questions. Once you click on it, some options are being given regarding the privacy of your questions (whether video responses can be seen by anyone or only me, whether people can comment on it, etc). Once you have decided, you can easily post questions by filling in the title and questions related.

• If you intend to specify your respondents, you can share and invite specific people to respond on your questions via email. Also, you can simply add more questions in the future.

    

How can teacher use it?

Gathering students' respond

As a teacher, you can ask students to respond questions that you post in intervue. The topic would be more reliable and engaging if students are familiar with and have interest in it. It is better if students themselves choose several topics and vote for the best one. Topics like holiday, the most embarrassing moment, dreams and role models could be some that students might be thinking of. By giving students power to choose, it is possible that they might have a lot more to say rather than topics that are too language focus and not related with their life. 

What do I say about this website?

Thumbs up point :)

1) Students can do oral practices.

2) Real language for communication is used especially when engaging topics are given- responds are like telling a story to someone.

3) It helps introvert students since it is more private (not one-to-one communication).

Thumbs down points :(

1) Students are not communicating like in real life situation where there should be interaction at least between two people.

2) Respond is limited only for one minute-not much can be talked about.

I hope you use it and ENJOY!