Review on Edmodo

Edmodo is an educational website that takes the ideas of a social network and refines them and makes it appropriate for a classroom. Using Edmodo, students and teachers can reach out to one another and connect by sharing ideas, problems, and helpful tips. A teacher can assign and grade work on Edmodo; students can get help from the entire class on Edmodo. It is safe environment. There is no bullying or inappropriate content, because the teacher can see everything that is posted on Edmodo. Also parents can join the class to bring a level of transparency that is difficult to achieve without technology. Edmodo is an incredibly flexible and powerful educational tool that can be adapted and used in just about any class in a variety of ways. All in all Edmodo is a great companion to just about any class.

             Before a student can create an Edmodo account, they will need a 6-digit group code from their teacher. Once they have their group code, they can visit http://Edmodo.com and select the ‘I’m a student’ button. From here they can enter the group code provided by their teacher, complete the registration form and select ‘Sign up’. Students are not required to enter an email address to create an Edmodo account.

           With your account, you can create groups and invite students and parents to joint. In the groups, you can share resources, photos and articles, which will be seen by your students in a newsfeed format. You can also send and receive private message and create folders, where students can upload assignments. All media shared with the group is automatically stored in a section called ‘My Library’.

            Over the past year, Edmodo has also released a ‘Messaging’ function to facilitate one-to-one and small-group communication between teachers, students, and parents. Messaging consolidates all school-related communication while protecting individuals’ personal addresses and phone numbers, ideal for parent-teacher communication. To obviate cyberbullying, Edmodo integrates strict safely controls for messaging and across all other platform communications.

           Use of Edmodo in a classroom is one of the many ways to infuse technology into teaching and learning. The Edmodo network enables teachers to share content, distribute quizzes, assignment, and manage communication with students, colleagues, and parents. Edmodo is very teacher-centric in their design and philosophy: students and teachers can only join Edmodo if invited to do so by a teacher. Teachers and students spend large amounts of time on the platform, both in and out of the classroom.

   Edmodo offers several benefits, including:

§  Unlimited storage so teachers won’t have to worry about clearing out space

§  Integration with Microsoft Office and Google Apps for education, so users won’t have to remember passwords for individual sites.

§  Global teacher collaboration for support, answers and ideas for topics, lessons and issues.

§  Anywhere, anytime access via dedicated mobile apps

§  Security and privacy tools such as private groups and the ability to track members’ activity.

§  Parental access to students’ homework, tests, grades and classroom announcement

§  Collaboration features for parents

I love the fact that Edmodo is constantly updating to make the site more powerful, easier to use and just better overall.

           

         

Review on WebQuest

Webquests are probably the most talked-about and widely used Web-based activities in today’s classroom. It is a classroom-based lesson in which most or all of the information that students explore and evaluate comes from the World Wide Web. These can be created using various programs, including a simple word processing document that includes links to websites. Webquests can be teacher-made or learner-made, depending on the learning activity the teacher decides to. Webquests are designed to use learners’ time well, to focus on using information rather than on looking for it, and to support learners’ thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

Beyond that, Webquests:

·        can be short as a single class period or as long as a month-long unit;

·        usually involve group work, with division of labor among students who take on specific roles or perspectives;

·        are built around resources that are preselected by the teacher. Students spend their time using information, not looking for it.

A webquest is an inquiry-based activity where students are given a task and provided with access to on-line resources to help them complete the task. It is an ideal way to deliver a lesson over the web. Webquests are discovery learning tools; they are used to either begin or finish a unit of study. A strong webquest is designed for students to work independently, allowing the teacher to be a facilitator in students’ learning rather than the sole dispenser of knowledge.

A webquest has six essential parts: introduction, task, process, resources, evaluation and conclusion.

Introduction:

The introduction part is normally used to introduce the overall theme of the webquest. It involves giving background information on the topic and in the language learning context, often introduces key vocabulary and concepts which learners will need to understand in order to complete the tasks involved.

Task:

The task section of the webquest explains clearly and precisely what the learners will have to do as they work their way through the webquest. The task should obviously be highly motivating and interesting for the learners. This often involves the learners in a certain amount of role-play within a given scenario.  

Process:

The process part of a webquest guides the learners through a set of activities and research tasks, using a set of predefined resources. The process stage of the webquest will usually have one ‘products’ which the learners are expected to present at the end.

Resources:

Students are provided with tools, or leads to tools that can help them complete the task. In order for this to be valuable, a teacher must thoroughly review each source.

Evaluation:

The evaluation stage can involve learners in self-evaluation, comparing and contrasting what they have produced with other learners and giving feedback on what they feel they have learnt, achieved, etc. It will also involve teacher evaluation of the same, and good webquests will give guidance to the teacher for this particular part of the process.  

Conclusion:

People must be aware of what they have learned from the activity. They should have a final piece of work to present to the class or display on the wall. Space should be allowed to expand the topic and encourage pupils to use webquests for future pieces of work.

Webquests can be a versatile tool for teaching students. They can be used to introduce new knowledge, to deepen knowledge, or allow students to test hypotheses as part of a final interaction with knowledge. There are many compelling reasons for using webquests in the classroom, including:

v They can be used simply as a linguistic tool, but can also be interdisciplinary, allowing for crossover into other departments and subject areas.

v They are an easy way for teachers to begin to incorporate the internate into the language classroom, on both a short-term and long term basis.

v They are group activities and as a result tend to lend themselves to communication and the sharing of knowledge.

v They encourage critical thinking skills including: comparing, inducing, deducing, abstraction analysis perspectives etc.

v They can both motivating and authentic tasks and encourage learners to view the activities they are doing as something real or useful. This inevitable leads to more effort, greater concentration and a real interest in task achievement.  

The End

Review on TED-Ed

TED-Ed is a wonderful teaching and learning platform. This tool is completely free and fun. It provides videos on special topics that help engage and provide additional information. Both teacher and student can use TED-Ed to teach and learn through video lesson. TED-Ed is a very user friendly tool and the instruction is so organized that user can easily explore it.

TED-Ed provides ‘Series’, ‘Clubs’, ‘Patrons’, ‘Shops’ and  ‘Nominate’ sections along with ‘Lesson’ to explore. The lesson format consists of a lesson title, a written introduction (‘Let’s Begin’), a series of multiple choice or open-ended question (‘think’), a place for additional resources to encourage further exploration (‘Dig Deeper’) and an interactive class discussion (‘Discuss’). It provides practices on listening, reading and writing skills through these lessons.

In order to create lessons you must open a TED-Ed account, which requires an email address or Facebook account and password. In order for students to save their work, they need to have an account as well. Any learner who does not have a TED-Ed account can also practice learning. Once you ‘publish’ the lesson you can share the link with whomever you like TED-Ed allows you to easily browse videos by subject area or enter a url of any YouTube video you’ve found.  

After login to your account, you can see your dashboard, which will include all the lessons you’ve created or begun to create, as well as lessons and discussions you’ve participated in. You can also control settings and notifications in this area.

The video lessons take complex topics and simplify them through engaging animations for students. In addition, teachers can import a favorite educational video and create a lesson within the online TED-Ed module.

Teachers can also provide feedback directly on the TED-Ed lesson page, while reviewing the students’ answers. On clicking on the ‘Give Feedback’ the student is sent an email that contains a link to the teachers’ feedback.

TED-Ed goal is for each great lesson to reach and motivate as many learners as possible. With this new technology and tools it offers teachers can maximize time in class and create great lessons which are interesting and engaging.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Facebook Group and Tutor Blog

Most of the people are familiar with these two websites facebook and blog. These two websites are very important for those who wants to learn and teach English language as well as gain there knowledge through technology. There are some advantages and disadvantages of facebook group and tutor blog which are pointed out below:

Advantages:

Facebook is a good solution for many as everyone is on facebook. Being a facebook means you don’t have to log in somewhere else. We were on facebook anyway so checking into the group was never a problem. The posts made in a facebook group also go to the news feed and people can check this from there. However a notification is sent to each member letting them know that a new post has been posted within the group. It is beneficial for the members that they won’t miss out on a post and check the update easily. By tagging someone in a post or comment you are drawing his or her attention to a group. One member can interact directly with another members in a group.

Blogging has the power to learning, reflection and communication. Tutor blog is run by the teacher. Here teacher can easily instruct the student for their better understanding. It provides reading practice for students and also increase their critical thinking skill as well. Students can gain knowledge by reading those effective writing from the tutor blog. Students can check tutor blog from everywhere. Without any blog student can easily check tutor blog.

Disadvantages:

Sometimes it’s very hard to find a facebook group if you aren’t already a member in this group. In a closed and secret group you must ask to join it. When the admin approved the request you can see all the posts of this group. In a group all members can directly add their friends to the group. People can be added to the group without even knowing anything about it. So there is a possibility that it could feel like spam.

In tutor blog, students are restricted to write any comment to teacher’s post. In addition, students cannot post their writing in the tutor blog. Students may give more interest on blog rather than their text book and it may hamper their study. Sometimes students may not find tutor blog because of their inadequate knowledge about blog. Too much dependency on tutor blog may hamper student’s interaction with the teacher in the classroom.

Review on Duolingo

Couple of weeks ago, I get to know about the language learning app Duolingo. Duolingo is the world’s largest online language learning platform. It is a multilingual website where learners can learn Russian, Dutch, German, Irish, French, Greek and many other foreign languages. I have used Duolingo to learn French. French is pretty easy to learn using Duolingo. Now let’s have a look how the app works and support the learners to learn a language.

The learning objective of this software is to provide free lesson and effective learning to acquire learner’s target language. Learners can easily use this app by set up a profile, select target language and set their goals. Duolingo is designed by different modules such as basic, phrases, food, animals, weather, and color and so on. Learners can’t access the new module without completing the previous one.

Duolingo is a user friendly website. We can use it in our computer and also in our mobile devices. It is not necessary to creating an account for using this app. Duolingo has taken English language as a translator for learning the target language.   In the begging it doesn’t focus on grammar, only focus on vocabulary which help the learners to learn and remember those easily. Another important thing is audio pronunciation and it helps the learners to learn accent of French language as well. Each lesson in Duolingo is made up of a range of activities such as translation, pair works, sentence making, correct the sentence etc. vocabulary is taught though images, so it helps the learners easily remember those vocabulary. The instruction is very simple that’s why new learners can easily understand. Duolingo also gives you the option to redo all your lessons, even if you got everything right first time around.

Duolingo has different methods which can easily hook the learner’s attention to this app. It has goal setting tool. The goal you can choose vary from ‘casual’ to ‘insane’, depending on how serious you are about learning and how quickly you want to progress. I have picked ‘regular’ goal and it reminds me everyday whether or not I am on track to reach my goal. At the first lesson learners start learning with some vocabulary such as boy, girl, apple, woman etc. So learners can easily done this and feel good and motivate to move the next lesson. Another thing for motivate the learners is its slow pronunciation button of any word or phrase. This slow voice is a very useful feature to exercise the words perfectly. The process of visual learning is also seek learner’s attention to use it regularly. They play it like a game and keep learning everyday.

After learning the target language from this website learners may able to speak, write and identify the language easily. They learn a lot of vocabulary and able to make sentence by those vocabulary. Although Duolingo is a loveable website, but it has also some limitations. It is very essential to interact with the person when learning a language. But Duolingo has lack of interaction. Here learners learn the language only by clicking the task. It doesn’t teach learners interactive communicative skills to communicate in a real context. It is very natural that learners make mistake. In Duolingo there is no option to back the previous question when learners click any wrong answer. A few selected words are provide here and learners need to practice only those words. It has limited vocabulary store that’s why learners can’t learn another vocabulary whatever they want. A few French words are similar to the English words which may confuse the learners such as rich, orange, calm etc. Sometimes the instruction create puzzle among the learners to understand the lesson clearly. Although Duolingo is a toy effect software, but its effect doesn’t work last longer.

The developer should focus on learners need and make a lit bit change to this website. The developer should works on the interaction part as well as the instruction. It can’t be used offline, needs net connection. Sometimes we are in trouble due to data connection and we need to wait for the correct answer and for the next question. So it’s make the learners too much bother. If it is an offline mode, it will be easier for the learners to practice. Apart from some limitations, Duolingo is a great website for those who wants to learn foreign languages easily without any cost. Before knowing about this app, French is an unknown language for me. Now it is easier for me than the previous days to listen, write even speak the French language. I want to conclude by saying one important thing that, we should practice lots of times and do it often otherwise we might forget some French.

Hello everyone.... This is my first blog.