Teachertube, at www.teachertube.com, is a video-sharing website, much like Youtube, and
it was suggested by Gordon King. Instead
of songs, music videos, films, and so on, Teacher tube is dedicated to
providing educational videos. While
videos with educational content can be found on sites like Youtube, Teachertube
focuses more on videos that resemble what we might experience in a classroom
environment. In fact, some of the videos
were taken during a particular classroom presentation. Search for any topic that comes to mind, and
you will get loads of videos that range from classroom lectures to PowerPoint
presentations, and from animations to documentary excerpts. As a language instructor, I searched for
grammatical subjects and found many videos that my students would benefit from
watching. Sometimes, it is good to hear
the same concept explained by different people, maybe something I explained in
class is explained more clearly by a more experienced teacher in one of the
videos on Teachertube. Also, videos on
this site can be referred to by students who missed a class or several
classes. I have weekly tutorial hours,
of course, but in the event where I cannot fulfill such obligations,
Teachertube is there to help.
Teachertube is not all about
catching up on missed lectures, however.
Videos can be uploaded, and I can imagine assigning a project where my
students have to create a video of themselves in a group, explaining a grammar
point, and, ultimately uploading this video onto Teachertube. This is concurrent with the emerging trends
in education as outlined in the 2014 NMC Horizon Report (Johnson,
Adams Becker, Estrada, & Freeman), which state that the future of education
will be characterized by students creating and producing more than they
consume.
Another website which was brought to my attention by our
friend Gordon King is Flickr at www.flickr.com.
Again, this website is all about
sharing. Richardson (2010) writing about
major shifts to come in the future of education, asks us to “Think of how much
of student work today simply ends up in the recycling bin at the end of the
year” (151). Forget about end of the
year, yesterday I photocopied homework assignments for my class and one student
didn’t even bother to take hers home.
But maybe it’s not her fault. Now
that I think about it, the assignment was kind of dull and boring. Maybe it’s not that students are lazy or anything
like that, maybe there’s something wrong with the assignment. Either way, sites like Flickr offer us many
alternatives to get students more motivated to create work that “can have real purpose
and real meaning for the audience that consumes” (Richardson, 2010, p. 151). If
there’s anything today’s audience loves to consume, it is pictures. Selfies or food shots, people are clicking
away and talking pictures of, well, their lives basically. So how can I use this educationally in a
language learning context?
Obviously, the most basic of classroom presentations can
be much more fun to do when students know that they can include photos instead
of just standing up there in front of the class mouthing away about something
that we covered in class. Basically,
what I am trying to do here is add substance to an assignment. I want to use pictures alongside language
activities in order to give students something to talk or write about in
class. For example, think about a
writing assignment where students are given a piece of paper with a question on
it and they have to answer that question in 250 words in 50 minutes. Sounds boring right? It might be difficult to brainstorm
ideas. However, a nice montage of
pictures, done by me or the students beforehand, can be very helpful in helping
our students with their writer’s block.
Finally, for basic language practice, talking about what is in or what
is happening in the pictures is classroom classic: it can help with practicing
all sorts of tenses and vocabulary.
Karen Kendall introduced me to Gameshow Pro, which can be
found at http://www.learningware.com/gameshowpro/. This website allows you to design game show
content for whatever purpose you have in mind.
The games already exist and they are based on well-known TV game shows,
teachers just have to make the questions.
Games in language learning contexts are especially helpful to boost
energy levels when students get tired. They
are also helpful for vocabulary. For
example, the questions in the game can be definitions of words and students
have to figure out what words are being referred to. A game can also be designed where students
are asked very easy general knowledge questions but can only get full points if
they answer the questions in correct grammar and pronunciation.
References
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs,
wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd
ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
The New Media Consortium (n.d.). NMC
Horizon Reports. Retrieved May 30, 2012, from http://www.nmc.org/publications
Kemal,
ReplyDeleteI have enjoyed your posts throughout this course and maybe it is because of the similarities in our professions... Anyways, I also wrote about Teachertube for many of the reasons that you mentioned as it is focused more on learning and education.
I have never thought about using Flickr in a class, but I can see how it would be useful for learners to make a dry presentation or activity more engaging. It is so true though how often people take pictures of literally everything! This can even be used as a warm up activity. "Talk about a recent photo you took on your phone" Why? What's the significance? etc.