Week 6

This week I learned about very cool digital tools for teaching English.  

1. Digital storytelling.  There is an application for smartphones called 'storywheel' (can be found easily using storywheel as your keyword).  This is a very cute way for kids to tell stories.  It improves student's skill of speaking, while engaging them and interesting them.  It is basically a little roulette wheel on the screen with various images.  When the image comes up, the student presses the screen and then records himself telling a part of the story inspired by the image.  

2.Voice Chat.  Whatsapp and other voice chat applications like skype, msn messenger etc.. can be used as a tool for communication and a channel for students to communicate with each other.  For example, Whatsapp has a very easy to use voice chat feature whereby students could communicate with a student not in the room, even a student in another country.  This can be a fun way for studetns to practice speaking.

3. Spelling. ww. Learner.org/interactive/spelling/  is a site where students have an automatically produced story appear and the screen.  The story is also read be an automated voice.  So students hear the story and see the story.  A number of the words in the story do not appear on the screen.  There there are boxes for students to fill in the space with the word. The program tests their spelling.  They get immediate feedback.

4. Wisemapping.com is a program that enables users to create mind maps.  It has a nice features for creating a custom mind map.  This can help students with remembering vocabulary or grammar.

5.  Storybird.com is a very nice website with a capactiy to create beautiful stories easily.  The website has a lot of artwork available to users.  The user simply chooses the art he wishes to use in his story and then enters the text of the story.  A beautiful tool for students.