LEE Seungyoun_#6 Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling

1. Brief Reviews

1) Storybird

Writing needs a lot of efforts.  Without any specfic motivation provided few  people decided to write something.   Then how about trying "Storybird" ?  Once you look around all about "Storybird", writing will become really something to you. Varieties quality artworks are really eyecathing from the first sight and user-friendly method in creating stories will have you more focus on inventing and writing stories.  How does it work ?  Very simple !  Only thing you need is just to select a set of artwork and drag the images of your choice into the storyboard and fill the text box with whatever contents you want.  The artwork inventory is abundant enough for writers not to have limitations in selection.  Depending on the tone of artwork the genres of your writing can be varied i.e. comedy, romance, drama, fantasy, etc..


2) Comic Master 

Most children in the world are being brought up with comic books.  They love comics.  The Comic Master will provide chances to be a real comic writer with you but in rather action-involving and dynamic style.  Girls may not be the fan. Just by simply clikcing and dragging characters, background, thoght or speech box, properties, etc., you can make a real cartoon.  Everything is in your choice and thus you are literally the master of comics in "Comic Master".  Additionally the sound effects of menu button or MP3 functions can increase user pleasure.  The choices on the menu, however, are limited only a few and if for writers aiming for variety graphics might be disappointed.

2. How could thses tools be used by teachers and students ?  How could thy be incorporated into a class ?

1) Storybird
    
Writing is not an easy task to every language learner.  They are pushed to produce something in writing but mostly the ways of pushing  are not effective to stimulate learner motivation.  For teachers who need a unique tool to motivate learners to write, Storybird could be a big help but only requires minimal on teacher preparations since most web structures for creating stories are provided with default.  For students this will be a good source for increasing writing ability and boosting their creativeness.  They can experience joy of writing in Storybird. 

The teahcer could give writing tasks covering all different proficiency levels of learners which means tailored way of teaching is available.  For example lower level students will be given simple sentence writings with placig the artworks in logical sequence.  For higher level students, however, more complex type assignment could be given such as stories having a formal literature flow, beginning - development - crisis - climax - ending.  Also collaboration works will be recommendable since a teacher can manage max. 30 accounts.  Under the same theme each team can create different stories or each team can select the theme freely.  Or retelling of existing well-known stories is recommendable.  For example, traditional fairy tale like "Snow White" can be retold with totally different characters and story line, which could raise students' imagination and creativeness. 

2) Comic Master

It is really fun to use this.  Very easy to use and thus it is great for young learners.  As this is a cartoon builder,  only a few words or simple sentences can create a work.  Therefore  learners with lower writing proficiency could be more confident while experiencing creating a cartoon filling in speech bubbles with just one or two  words.  This will act as a wonderful writing starter for students. 

Teachers, however, need to be careful in keeping this tool as a medium for using languages.  If not well-instructed, students might focus on cartoon creation while neglecting story writing and using only simple exclamations or echoic words such as Oh~, boom, bang, etc..  To avoid this, how about giving a specific theme first ?  For example,  students could be asked to create a scene having conversation on dinner menu.  Or they can be guided to include at least three full sentences or target vocabularies of the class.

In common the above tools may be used as complementary to main classroom activities or as sources  for self-study.

LEE Seungyoun_#5 CLT Corpus Wordle

Check out the following sites and report back on how they could be used to inform materials development and classroom instruction:

Sites Review

1. Compleat Lexical Tutor: http://www.lextutor.ca/

You can do anything for enhancing your vocabulary and grammar in this site.  Simply you can look up the meaing of a word but you can go further to check actual word usages in a variety of contexts or frequncy-based usage or vocabulary anayses in any texts of learners' choice, grammar tests through concordance, etc..  Most texts are from academic sources and thus this will be useful for English learners for academic purpose.  

Benefits for teachers will be taken by applying activities such as "cloze" or "I-D word".  The contexts, however, should be cautiously chosen considering students' level.

2. Corpus of Contemporary American English: http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/

As a huge container of colloctions of words sourced from various up-to-date materials i.e. speech, magazines, newspapers, academic writings, etc, this will be an effective tool for getting vocabulary knowledge of actual usage and frequency.  In terms of opinions that vocabulary learning needs more lexical approach rather than just memorising word by word, this site will offer chances for learners to be exposed to various contextual usage of words, concordance and collocation.   For example, when I searched "tired",  it showed high freqency usage with, "muscle" (magazine section) as a collocation, "tired muscle".  On the other hand, in a spoken section, "I'm tired." ranked at the top.  Here we can say that learners' understanding of vocabulary could be expanded greatly,  depending on section setting or search condition.  Additionally it will be interesting to see how the word frequency changes historically. 

3. Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/

Differing from those other two sites, this is really eyecatching from the first sight.  Visual attractiveness could be an effective motivator to every learner esp. young ones who may feel as if wandering through the maze if in the above sites.  Creating the word "cloud" from the texts of your choice, you could get visual understanding of word frequency.  The higher the frequncy is the bigger the font gets.   One thing I feel sorry for is that only JAVA supports the site, which requires additional works to get everything done in order.

How they could be used for material development and classroom instruction :

First of all I think students should be well informed of the importance of vocabulary learning in the contexts especially in writing and speaking.  L2 learners wanting chances to be in real communicative situations need to be exposed to various sources of contextual materials to avoid producing weird expressions or selecting words out of use.   In this regards, Lextutor and corpus, which look somewhat complex to use at first sight though, will be strongly recommendable tools for supplementing class activities or self-study.   Considering the complexity of sample sentenses or the overwhelming number of lists, more explicit user guide and cautious consideration of learner level should be provided. 

For instruction ideas :

- Advanced learners :  "Building up My Dictionary"  could be suggested.  The students will create their own dictionary based on given reading materials during class, for which 'lextuor' or 'corpus' can be used.   It would be better if teachers set up the dictionary format and let students just fill in what are required.  The meaning of the word, concordance or collocation samples (3 ~ 5) and my own sentences will be good to be included.  If a certain target is given such as 10 words per week, the number of new words will be increased, which will remain as a good liguistic assets of learners.   

- Young learners :  "Guess what is the busiest word ?" game could be created.  The texts prepared by the teacher are given to the leaners.  And the leaners just guess which word might have the highest frequency.  Then check if who guesses the best after creating word clouds with the texts and getting the actual result. 

LEE Seung youn -#4 Podcast Reveiw

PodCast Review

1) Provide a link to the podcast on your blog. Give general information about the content and quality.

This American Life :  http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

This podcast deals with various theme based epiosodes related with issues or events which  Americans are closely involved in.  The theme varies from everday life stories of Americans  to historic or topical issues but mostly it touches people's curiosity and interests.  The name of podcast seems to literally describe its contents.  Each episode, which is contributed by group of writers, is composed like a real documentary or interview show containing the authentic speech of various American speakers.  Raw and vivid listening materials for ESL speakers of highly advanced level.

 Under the same theme several independant episodes are often put together and  divided by acts (Act 1, Act 2...), for which even an hour-taking shows would not bore the listeners or shake their attention. 

The fastest way to pick the episode is using "favorites" menu providing a selected episode list.  Or you can use "ways to explore" which allows your search by tag (theme), by date and by contributor.  The one of the most useful function for ESL speakers would be a transcript availabilty.  Of course you can share the contents either by a whole episode or by acts just through embeding the code wherever you want.     

A new update comes up every week and free for download.


2) What do you think about the podcast?  Which type of learners could benefit from the podcast?

- Language learning is not limited to learn about the language itself.  Rather it should be a process of broadening our cognitive span  and enriching cultural contexts.  In this regards, this podcast could give you abundant Amerian cultural input on top of linguistic benefits.  In the authentic and colorful speech of different speakers we can listen to vivid audio show about what Americans are interested in now or current issues they are caring for or even several hundreds year old history.  Yes, it seems to be true that it requires high degree of listening competency and culture contextual understanding to absorb the contents fairly well, for which many of standard learners might feel frustrated.  I, however, think it is worthwhile to linger on this podcast to step up both liguisitic and cultural cognitive proficiency.  The transcripts will be a great support to most ESL learners. 

Along with the ubiquitous feature of the podcast, as a mobile/IT based tool, the English learning gets available at any time and any place. 

- Audio and interpersonal type of highly advanced learners could benefit from the podcast since it provides vast amounts of listening data rather than inducing both-way interactions or engaging with visual effects.  Especially well-motivated and self-driven learners targeting for increasing listening competency would welcome the podcast.  Speaking compentency, however, could be promoted if combining speaking activities such as "shadowing what you listened" or "re-telling the story", etc.., which could get along with verbal type learners as well.  With provided transcripts learners can easily self-check their task success level.   Depending on how the podcast is put in learning methods, I think the benefits could emerge to various types of learners.

LEE Seung Youn_#3 Synchronous CMC Tools AND Asynchronous CMC Tools

 

Synchronous CMC Tools AND Asynchronous CMC Tools

1) Brief descriptions of the tools and links to their websites
Synchronous CMC Tool :  Scribblar  www.scribblar.com

As a real-time multi-user whiteboard, 'Scribblar' provides a virtual classroom environment with teachers and students.  On the on-line whiteboard teachers can do any teaching actvities with no limits in writing texts, drawing pictures or uploading images and so on.  Out of all the functions text chats with participants' list will be an efficient tool in real-time management of the class.  Brainstorming, free discussions or getting instant feedbacks from the learners are possible by text chatting.  No limits in user access, time and space.  Easy to set up the on-line classroom.

Asynchronous CMC Tool :  Voicethread  http://voicethread.com

A cloud based application which allows any uploading of media, documents, images or presentations. Working as slide show, teaching materials can be easily accessed by various users from anywhere.  The users can leave comments, through which this tool can facilitate topic discussions or project collaborations.

2) Your thoughts about how the Synchronous CMC tool and the Asynchronous CMC tool could support learning and the development of language skills.  Are there any similarities and differences in how they could support language learning?

 - Increase learner exposures to English speakers with various language backgrounds.

 

- Strengthen learner motivation to speak English since there is no chance to talk  

  unless they speak in English. 

 

- Enhance communicative fluency through either real-time open talk and text chatting

  or leaving comments.

 

- Provide learners with dynamic ways of learning and self-driven language learning

  attitudes.  Learners get more actvily engaged in learning activities.

 

- Learner type based tool application could be a more efficient support.  Synchronous tools with real-time interaction basis could better go with interpersonal type learners who are likely to be active and willing to risk-taking in English speaking.  For shy and interpersonal type learners, however, Asynchronous tools could be more effective since they can lower the affecitive filter of the learners. 

3) Some of your ideas of possible activities and ways that the tools could be used in a language class to supplement in-class content and instruction.

 

In regular classroom settings, CMC tools will have some limits such as difficulties in PC availabilty for every student.  Thus the tools could be supplementary to main class activities especially as a way of preparations for lessons or additional assignments after class.  In this context chances to use asynchronous tools rather than synchronous ones are more probable.

 

- Preview activities : New words and key expressions of the lesson presented in advance.  For young learners word games/puzzles could be used in the tool.  For advanced learners, short sentence compositions with the new words and expressions (or voice recording) could be used.  

 

- After class activities :  "Collaborated projects" under specific subjects could be considered.  In addition to writing or voice recording activities, expressions with musics or pictures could be suggested.  For example if the teacher suggest a theme, "my dream",  learners are required to generate a group material with writing, recording their conversations or uploading any picture images or songs related with the subject. 

 

"Topic discussions or debates" such as Pro and con debates could be a suitable activity for advanced learners.