Mobile Assisted Language Learning

NEARPOD ACTIVITY

          Hi, guys! This is the second post after the mid-term test. I do not know why this post should be done in pair. However, I still should do the assignment as well. Then, for this blog post, I would like to explain a bit about the lesson that my pair made.

          The type of setting is for school learning. Specifically, it is for 8^th graders in Junior High School. The learning objective is for the students to learn about grammar which is present perfect simple tense. Later on, the students are able to use the present perfect tense correctly in their daily conversation. Then, for the steps to do my nearpod lesson are:

1.   Open the internet application in the mobile phone (opera mini / browser / chrome, etc).

2.  Open www.google.com

3.  Or simply type https://nearpod.com

4.  Enter the code of the lesson (ask the teacher for the code).

5.  Join the lesson.

6.  Work on it once a week.

The advantage of using this application is that we can just upload our PowerPoint slides there. So, we are not obliged to create the slides on the application directly. Especially, for those who are not yet familiar with technology. For the difficulties I personally found when making the lesson were when I would like to attach the exercise to be an answerable exercise, and when I would like to attach the outside classroom activity because it should be clickable. However, I could find out how to solve them well.

          I got 1 useful feedback from my lecturer about the lesson I made. The feedback was I can make and teach the lesson through inductive way of teaching. My lecturer said that we can make it that way; we are not supposed to start the lesson from the explanation. We also can start it from the exercise to trigger the students and to make the students think first about what is going to be learnt by the students. The aspect I can and will improve on is the way of my teaching. I think if I teach inductively, it will be more interesting. Besides, the students can train their brains to think a bit harder than when they are taught deductively.

          Yeah, I think that‘s all what I can share about NearPod. Hopefully, it can be useful for you, especially for those who are a teacher or will become a teacher. Thank you, and Jesus bless you.

EDpuzzle for Editing Video

EDPUZZLE for Listening Comprehension

          Hi, guys! I appear again, hahaha. So, this is my first post after the mid-term test, and just for your information that this post has been counted for my UAS score later. The UAS date of this subject is on 21^st of December 2017 (if I am not mistaken). Okay, here, I would like to write about edpuzzle which is an application to make an online listening comprehension. Let’s check it out together!

          To be honest, in my life, maybe I experienced flipped classroom just about 3 times. Yeah, my elementary and junior high school was in Madiun. As you know that Madiun is a small city where there were incomplete tools for doing flipped classroom. The internet connection was also very bad (not as good as Surabaya). Finally, I just experienced the direct method of teaching (using book, not gadget).

          In my opinion, flipped classroom cannot be applied in Indonesia. If you ask “why”, it is because there are still a lot of people and students in Indonesia who do not know about technology such as gadget, internet, etc. The internet connection is still very slow. So, besides the people, the internet connection also takes a role in doing flipped classroom, and both of them still do not fit to Indonesia as well.

          For the technique, as I mentioned before that there are still many people in Indonesia who do not know about technology. So, the technique can be very easy and simple for the teacher to carry out if the teacher knows about technology, especially internet, and (s)he can operate it well. Meanwhile, for those who do not know how to operate and use internet, the technique might be very difficult to carry out.

          The affecting factors in the success of flipped classroom, in my opinion, is the internet connection, and the knowledge the teacher has about the tool(s) (s)he is using. For this trial, I used edpuzzle for making my listening comprehension. Why I chose to use edpuzzle is because I think edpuzzle is easier than TedEd in making listening comprehension. The advantages in using edpuzzle are that we can choose the video from lots of sources (not limited by the edpuzzle itself). The way to make the question is also very easy to follow. In each step, there is a tutorial video for us to know how to do the steps. The video is very simple, so we will not get bored and confused on it. We can also edit, or even delete our question based on our thought or materials. For the weakness, I do not find any weakness of this application so far. So, I can say that this application is very good and simple application to make an online listening comprehension. For those who have never done this kind of thing, they can use this application and feel that making an online listening comprehension is not as hard as they think before.

          The topic of the lesson that I have made is about music. On that video, you can learn about the part of a song. The objective is to make students know and understand more about the parts of the song, so when they are listening to a song, they do not only listen and enjoy the song and the music, but they also know which lyrics belong to which part. The target students are for those who are joining CALL class, especially those who like listening to music (if in a school, the target students are for 11 graders).

          Okay, I think that’s all I can share about edpuzzle. Here is the link of my lesson (you have to sign up first or directly sign in if you have had an account):

https://edpuzzle.com/assignments/59f4060fa7a0a940f14045d8/watch

You can also do by the box below:

Digital Story Telling

Adobe Spark for Digital Story Telling

          Hi, guys! To be honest, I am very happy since this post will be my last post on this first half of the semester. On this last post, I would like to share about Adobe Spark which is usually used for making a digital story telling.

          Before go straight to Adobe Spark, do you know what digital story telling is? So, digital story telling is a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share aspects of their story. The media used may include the digital equivalent of film techniques (full-motion video with sound), stills, audio only, or any of the other forms of non-physical media (material that exists only as electronic files as opposed to actual paintings or photographs on paper, sounds stored on tape or disc, movies stored on film) which individuals can use to tell a story or present an idea.

          Then, what is Adobe Spark? Adobe Spark is an integrated suite of storytelling applications for the iPad, iPhone, and web developed by Adobe Systems. It comprises three separate design apps: Spark Page, Spark Post, and Spark Video. Its apps became the company's first to be named by Apple as an App Store Best App of the Year and have been downloaded over 3.5 million times.

          Maybe some of you wonder how to make an account on Adobe Spark, so that finally, you can make your own digital story telling. Here are the steps to make an account on Adobe Spark:

1.   Open your internet application (Mozilla, Chrome, Flock, etc.).

2.  Open www.google.com.

3.  Or simply open https://spark.adobe.com/

4.  Choose “login”.

5.  Choose “continue using google”.

6.  Choose 1 google account you will use for your Adobe Spark account.

7.  Enter your password.

8.  Input your day, month, and year of birth.

9.  Tick “I have read and agreed with the term …”

10. Choose “OK”.

11.  Choose “video”.

12. Type your title for the video.

13. Choose one purpose of making the video (promoting an idea, tell what happened, etc).

14. Or simply choose “start from scratch”.

15. Choose to play the tutorial video.

16. Create your own video.

17. After you have done making, preview or even share it.

For the benefit I found when making my digital story telling using Adobe Sparks is that the tutorial video is very easy to understand. The tools are so many. You can include your own photos, videos, icons, and you also can choose your own music track as the back sound. Since the tutorial video can be easily understood, all people can make their own without any guidance.

For the weakness from using Adobe Spark is that Adobe Spark is a quite big application. Sometimes, it works slowly and we “must” be patient when it is happening. The next weakness is each slide can just load 30 seconds length of a video. So, if you have a video with 2 minutes length, you need 4 slides for loading all of them. The last weakness I found is that each slide can also just records 30 seconds audio (our own narrative). Thus, you have to be a bit “smart” in putting which recorder on which slide.

To be honest, I am not really sure I will use this application for teaching my future students. If you ask “why”, the answer is because this application cannot be used in all grades. In my opinion, this application can just be applied to minimally junior high school students. Last thing to say is that it depends on what grade of students I will teach later.

Okay, I think that’s all about Adobe Spark. Here, I have made 1 story of my own. Try to listen to it!

*. Using earphone will be better.

If you have any suggestion and/or comment, just leave your suggestion and/or comment on the box provided below.

Thank you, and see you on the second half of the semester. God bless you abundantly!

Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes

          Hi, guys, back with me again since I have disappeared for around 2 weeks. Now, in this chance, I am going to write a blog post about hot potatoes. Do you guys ever hear that name? Let’s check this out!

Yeah, if we translate it into Indonesia, it will become “kentang - kentang panas”. Unfortunately, it is not about “kentang - kentang panas”. Hot potatoes is a software suite that includes five applications that can create exercises for the World Wide Web. The applications are JCloze, JCross, JMatch, JMix and JQuiz. There is also a sixth application called The Masher that will compile all the Hot Potatoes exercises into one unit. Hot Potatoes was created by the Research and Development team at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre. Commercial aspects of the software are handled by Half-Baked Software Inc. Hot Potatoes has been freeware since October 2009. Hot Potatoes was first released in version 2.0 in September 1998, at the EuroCALL conference in Leuven, Belgium. The steps to make exercise using hot potatoes are very easy.

The steps are:

1.   Open your internet application (Mozilla, Chrome, Flock, etc).

2.  Open www.google.com

3.  Type “hot potatoes” as your keyword.

4.  Choose the first order. (or simply open https://hotpot.uvic.ca/)

5.  Find the download table.

6.  Click 1 which is suitable with your operation system (windows / linux / mac OS).

7.  Wait until the download process is done.

8.  Open the downloaded file (application file).

9.  Follow the step to download hot potatoes in your laptop.

10. Launch hot potatoes.

11.  Type the username.

12. Choose one that you want to use for making exercises (JCloze, JCross, JMatch, JMix or JQuiz).

13. Create the questions, and the answers based on the technique you chose before.

14. If it is done, save it by choosing the type of the file (.jmt or .htm).

15. .jmt is for the file that still can be edited.

16. .htm is for the file that can be shown in web or internet to be played or to be done by the students.

These are the steps to save the file in .jmt, and .htm:

·         Example.jmt

1.     Choose the “save” picture which is the same with the one in Microsoft word, excel, and even power point.

2.    Type the name of the file.

3.    Choose the location where you want to save it to.

4.    Click “save”.

·         Example.htm

1.     Choose the logo below.

2.    Type the name of the file.

3.    Choose the location where you want to save it to.

4.    Click “save”.

After you save the file in .htm, you can have a look the preview of your exercise by opening it in your internet application.

For the benefit of using this application is that this application has had complete technique of exercises (multiple choice, crossword, fill the blanks, and also jumbled sentence). In my opinion, this application is also a bit easier than the one that I posted before this post (kahoot, socrative, and quizziz). Why it is easier is because in using hot potatoes, we just need the internet connection for a while. It is not like kahoot / socrative / quizziz where we use internet connection in all the process. Meanwhile, in hot potatoes, we just need internet connection for downloading the application file, and then we can download and finally use it without any internet connection. Yeah, as we know, sometimes, using internet connection is annoying because sometimes the connection can be getting low. Besides, this application can also be used for all grades.

For the weakness of using this application is that the tools are not clear enough. For example when we want to save our file in .htm, the tool is different with the one when we want to save in .jmt. However, for the other things, I do not find any weaknesses on them. It is such a good application for teachers when they want to give their students other way of exercises.

Of course, in the future, I will this application to teach and to give my students various types of exercises. I think, this application will be very useful in teaching vocabulary to students, starting from very easy vocabularies, up to the most difficult one.

Here are the examples of hot potatoes exercises:

Okay, I think it is enough about hot potatoes. Try those screenshots for real! Below are the links:

a)  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7lmCPcWN4uTODRIaFAtc0FRaXc

b) https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7lmCPcWN4uTMzZnZlhfWGx5ajA

c)  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7lmCPcWN4uTOFUyUHNoQ2s3NG8

For b and c, you can copy the content first, then paste it to notepad / Adobe Dreamweaver / whatever website application. And then, save it, and finally play it!

Thank you, and Jesus bless you abundantly!

ONLINE QUIZ

Bible Quiz

Hello, readers. I would like to write my 5^th post about online quiz. In this chance, I chose kahoot as the online quiz-generating site. Okay, let’s start!

As I mentioned before, I chose to use kahoot as my quiz-generating site. Kahoot is a collection of questions on specific topics. Created by teachers, students, business-people and social users, they are asked in real-time, to an unlimited number of “players”, creating a social, fun and game-like learning environment. How to make kahoot will be mentioned below:

1.   Open your internet application (Mozilla, Chrome, Flock, etc).

2.  Type www.kahoot.com

3.  Click “enter”, and it will enter to kahoot homepage.

4.  Choose “Sign Up” if you do not have an account, and “Sign in” if you have already had an account.

5.  Choose “As a Teacher”.

6.  Choose “Sign Up with Google”.

7.  Choose the email that will be used for Kahoot, and it will enter to kahoot account home screen.

8.  Choose “My Kahoot”.

9.  Choose one technique you want to use (Quiz, Jumble, Discussion, or Survey). Here, I chose Quiz.

10. Fill the title, description, language, audience, credit resources, and intro video (if there is any).

11.  Then, choose “Ok, Go”.

12. Choose “add question”, then type the question, and the multiple choices.

13. You can add a video or a picture if you have by uploading it.

14. If you have done with the questions, choose “Save”.

15. Thus, the quiz has been made. You can edit, preview, play, or even share it.

The benefits of using free online quiz maker is that we will not make our students feel bored in doing the test because by using online quiz, the students do not need to write more. Moreover, they can know the result directly after finishing the quiz. It is also very good for the teacher since the teacher does not need to correct or check the students’ works one by one. It is very tiring and boring, isn’t it? Hahaha.

The weakness of using online quiz is that we might make the students become lazy because they do not write anymore. From the physic thing is that online quiz needs internet as the “fuel”. However, as we know that we cannot keep it well. Connection becomes the first problem when we are using online quiz. So, make sure that our connection to the “beloved” internet is good enough for doing the quiz and/or test. For kahoot itself, I think the weakness is that kahoot does not have a complete quiz technique.

Other ideas how I will use online quiz in language classroom is that I will give my students the explanations of certain materials by online quiz. I also can use online quiz to do a pre test for the students in the beginning of the semester to measure their skill (in grammar / vocabulary / reading / listening / speaking / writing). I can also use online quiz for giving the students post test after they learnt something.

Yeah, I think that’s all what I can share about using online quiz, especially kahoot because I used kahoot for my example.

Here is my online quiz example from www.kahoot.com:

https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/1ffcad57-c1f7-46db-8d21-78578e8987f2

The website of the story:

http://www.storynory.com/2006/05/27/creation-and-adam-and-eve/

          Thank you, happy trying, and Jesus bless you all!

Jamie Keddie’s Videotelling for Video Analysis Activities

Jamie Keddie’s Videotelling for Video Analysis Activities

          Hi, guys, back with me again in my 4^th post in this blog. In this post, I am going to write about 1 website which is useful for video analysis activities for students (especially for my future students). Okay, check this out!

          Here, from the websites choice given to me, I decided to choose 1 which is Jamie Keddie’s Videotelling. The website is http://lessonstream.org/topic/animals-pets/. This website is very useful for teaching especially when we want to use video as our media in teaching. The steps to use this website are:

1.   Open your internet application (can be Mozilla / Chrome / Flock, etc).

2.  Type the website above.

3.  Click “enter”.

4.  Choose which video do you want to use based on your teaching topic or theme, and also based on your students’ level.

5.  Click the chosen video.

6.  There will be a video to be shown, and there will be the activities to be done.

The reason why I choose this website is that the website is very easy to use, but still useful. There are lots of videos, and each video has its own level of the students (beginner, intermediate, teens, and adults). The benefits of using the website is that we do not need to think for the exercise anymore because there have been the exercise that can be used for the students. However, we as the teacher are still allowed to make or create our own exercise related to the video, topic, and theme.

Honestly, I do not find any weakness of this website. Why? Because I think, this website has been very good for teaching. The website has also been completed by many things related to teaching English, such as grammar, vocabulary, and so on. The website also has a lot of topics that we usually use for teaching English. So, we can easily choose the topic, and then we will get the video(s) and the exercise(s).

Of course, I will use this website for teaching my future students (either school students or private students). I will use this website for teaching when I teach something new, and when I do not want to make my students bored because of the flat teaching method (just looking at the whiteboard, writing what the work is, doing the work as well, then done). Maybe, I will use this website most in teaching grammar, because I very like grammarJ. Besides, grammar has so many categories like tenses, conditional sentences, passive voices, causative have, and etc.

Okay, I think that’s all about my website choice to teach my future students.

If you have different suggestion(s) or opinions, just comment on the box below.

Thank you and happy reading and trying!