Review of CALL Class

Before I review further on my CALL class, I am very happy to share that I'm not a computer illiterate anymore! :)

I always had a poor ability in IT and always blamed my bother who is a web developer that he took all of my mechanical gene;) Because I knew I was bad at using computer, I always asked him to help me everything with computer, however, I feel like I won't need his help anymore:)  I feel like the time went by so fast because I still remember the first day our class talked about why technology is important in learning language and it is already time to review this class. As we discussed the first day of class, computer is more interactive and more flexible comparing to books, whiteboard and chalk, because computer would never tire it self to give a repetitive explantation to students.  

I believe that there are countless pros of CALL class. 

First of all, I learned so much and so many great tools. Starting from PPT, Google to Blogger, another greatest presentation tool Prezi, video editing tool Daum PotEncoder, a developing pronunciation tool Englishcentral, a great digital storytelling tool Storyjumper, a real time collaborative editor tool EtherPad, a screen recorder tool Screencast-O-Matic, and online student response system Socrative. I really think that my classmates and I learned the most important and necessary main technical tool for learning language. I think giving students time to present each material as in pairs was also very effective, because then students are able to engage deeply and understand a deeper sense of new materials. 

Since I can't really think about the cons of this class, I would just like to share the cons of overusing technology for students. One of my friends works for the most well known English academy in Korea, and she shared the problems of students using technology in class before.  Since we live in the computer era especially for younger students, her workplace changed to use a tablet PC instead of a book. I was very shocked and wondered if it is going to be effective and really work for the students because I'm still in the era of using pencils and paper to memorize and study better. However, she said it is hard to maintain the students because she has to put more time on monitoring students because some students plays with the tablet instead of following the direction, and she said that students with understanding new contents seemed easier before when they could actually use a pencil to write on paper. Since they can't write, it's hard comprehending the materials. Here, we all can think about learning language through technology can be difficult in some cases. 

Overall, I learned how important the technology is for teacher, too.  Having a deep knowledge of technology can be more effective for teachers' use, and also for the students in class. I really believe that this CALL class was very effective, especially for me. And, I'm sure it's not just the class materials, professor Warren was there.  Learning new material can be very boring or exciting, and I believe if you are poor at doing the material, it can be even difficult and easy to lose interest. However, with professor Warren's clear "step-by-step" instruction and explanation, I believe my classmates and I could easily engage into the new tools, and it really brought us one step closer to become a better teachers in the future.  

Review of Socrative.com

What's Socrative.com?

Socrative is a simple, dynamic online student response system that can help teachers spark conversation and learning through user-created polls and quizzes. With this free software, teachers can engage their classrooms through a series of educational games and exercises via smartphones, tablets, and laptops. It is a student response system, so the only person in the class who needs an account is the teacher. Students can easily join a room without having to log in. As I mentioned the teacher creates the room and gets a room number, the students will join using that room number. Once everyone is in the room the teacher can ask questions and the students can respond in many different ways. Basically, you can manage the quiz by sign up to make a quiz, or take a quiz by clicking student login on Socrative.com.

 

How Can Teachers Use It?

Once a quiz is created in Socrative, you can then administer it at a controlled pace or allow students to go at their own pace. Teachers can display the class's responses to multiple-choice, true/false, or short-answer questions. In addition to polling students on a single question, teachers can also create longer quizzes, which the software grades. If you want to provide immediate feedback, including explanations for wrong answers, there's an option to do so.  Quiz results land in an Excel spreadsheet, which you can download or receive via email.

How Can Students Use It?

For a student, they need to go to m.socrative.com. When they get to the website it will ask for a room number. When a student joins a class, this is what they will see until the teacher picks a type of question to ask. When a question is asked, there is no question to read just choices or a place to type in their response. That is pretty much it for students. It's very simple and easy to utilize as a student.

Just like other softwares, there are some considerable pros and cons of Socrative.com.

Pros:

• Easy to use, very simple and flexible that users just need to sign up & no student registration is required.
• Great for review and quick assessments, and students can see their grades right away if they are using quizzes.

• Gives teachers the option to create quality quiz-type content.

• It helps a quiz-happy teacher & go paperless.

• It works on most any Web- or app-enabled device.

• Can import and share others' quizzes by inserting their SOC-#.

• It's a free tool!

Cons: 

• Needs more import options such as uploading questions from Microsoft word, moodle, or other question generators.

• It will be great if there were more variety of games.

• No collaboration.

Conclusion

I do love technology, and it is because that technology brings something new to a classroom that was impossible before. It can be very helpful or sometimes makes no difference, however, this student response system "Socrative.com" is definitely a helpful tool because students can simply use any device to log onto a website and respond to questions in real time. It is a nice service. It will be a great way to review or start and finish a lesson for both teachers and students.

 

 

 

Review of Screencast-O-Matic

Screencast-O-Matic is a free screen recorder for instant screen capture and sharing on Screencast-O-matic, YouTube, or save to a video file. Because it is completely web-based, you can use it right in your browser without an install at Screencast-O-Matic.com or download to run anytime. Screencast can be a useful recording tool for creating things like product demos, explaining features of a website, etc.   How to use? It is very simple to explore and be a master of Screecans-O-matic. Step 1. Go to Screencast-O-Matic. You'll find it at: http://www.screencast-o-matic.com. Step 2. Insert a microphone. Step 3. Press the "Start Recording" button. Step 4. A box with a dotted border will pop up. Step 5. From the dropdown menu at the bottom of the box, select "Fullscreen". Step 6. Press the record button to start recording. The screencast will record your voice, too. Step 7. Press Alt + D to stop recording. Step 8. To the right of the video, you can choose where you want to publish your video; Screencaster-O-matic, Youtube or to Video File.   Just like each software has it’s pros and cons, there are some considerable pros and cons of Screencast-O-matic. Pros: It's free! No login/ No account can record an entire screen or only a portion It's very useful to teach/explain things because you can also record audio It’s super easy to use It places a yellow circle around the mouse so you don’t lose track of it It places a target over every mouse click can save it to your computer as an mp4, flv or avi can easily upload to YouTube or the Screencast-o-matic website for sharing Cons: Doesn't offer as many attractive features/functions as some of the recording software You do not have the ability to edit your screencasts once they are published However the audio quality is quite good, the image(video) quality is notedly different from the original one Provide only 15 minutes of free recording time (You have to upgrade to Pro account to create longer videos, get much more) I believe that Screencasting has tons of uses in education, and I thought this Screencast-O-Matic will be very useful recording tool, especially for teachers! For example, if you are a math instructor and have to teach complicated math problems. Then, you can use a tablet to write out the complicated formulas and problems on the computer and record the screen with your voice as you explain how to work the problems. This allows your students to review the problems outside of class with your expert instruction. I believe that anything that you want the students to view over and over again outside of class is a great candidate for a screencast. I'm in love with Screencast-O-matic after I realized that we can always do quick little screencast videos for people/learners to demonstrate how to do one thing or another on the computer. Whatever the topic you want to share, the instruction is too simple that you just need to think of the steps, record and present!

Review of EtherPad

Etherpad is an online writing program which is a real time collaborative editor. Etherpad can be used for taking minutes for online or offline meetings, workshops or any even about which you wish to keep records, text-based planning of projects,  a tool for education and reflection,  collating resources, research and other forms of data.

How to use it? 

Step1. Online access (You can get on the internet or smartphone at the same time)

Step2. Open Etherpad

Step3. Make a room (ex. Jasmine)

Step4. Write a name or nickname 

Step5. Choose favorite color 

Please click the link below to see the common features:

 http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/call1

There are strong pros and cons of Etherpad.

Pros: Because Etherpad is software that can be installed on many different servers in many different places, there are a lot of features. 

- Easy to set up/ No login required

- Free of charge

- Anyone can create a new collaborative document, known as a "pad".

- Clear collaboration; It is possible to see changes being made by other people in real time. Each participant is identified    by a color and a name.

- Offers a Chat; By default there is the ability to 'chat' with other people who are using the pad (Interacting with others on one document in real time).

- Generating ideas and lists, sharing pieces of information when working in a group or collaborative environment.

- Improving important typing and written skills as well as critical thinking, task management, story writing.

- Exporting work: the text contained in the pad document can be downloaded in plain text, HTML, Open Document, Microsoft Word, or PDF format.

Cons:

- Have to memorize the address

- Can't upload and add images or videos to the document, only memopad/typing

- Only light formatting available (bold, italics, and underlining)

- Collaborations are deleted 15 days to 2 months after creation so you have to export and save the collaboration when done

While using and writing things down on Etherpad, I was surprised how fast I could interact with people at one space in really real-time similar to Kakao Talk, and I could tell that it is a highly customizable open source online editor because I could correct over one's writing while my corrections could be retouched again by others. I always believed that interaction is a key motivator for language learning, and this Etherpad is the right one to write on and interact with people at the same time as well.

Review of Storyjumper.com

There are a lot of great digital storytelling tools, such as "educreations.com", "storybird.com", and "storyjumper.com". However, today I'm going to go over Storyjumper.com which is one of the greatest online storytelling tools that is very easy to make a digital book. Before I explain further, I would like to share the importance of digital storytelling first. The digital storytelling is known for combination of storytelling and multimedia tools, and the reason why the digital storytelling is important is because it can be interesting and fun learning, effective communication tool, easy to access and make, improve output skills(speaking), and develop creativity and self confident. For teachers, you can apply any subject on your stories for your students, too. For examples of learning geography, you can describe interesting area, president Lincoln story for history class, and weather for science class.

There are some considerable pros and cons of Storyjumper.com. The good things for Storyjumper is that they offer a lot of pictures and icons to choose whatever suits for your story. They provide various functions so that you can change the font style and size, you can write anywhere you like on the page, upload your own photos and pictures and use them in the story. You can also public your stories through online, and since you are able to create up to 16 pages you can create a custom book or revise one of the books they have already made. However, the biggest pro of all is that it is FREE! 

Some of cons I found comparing to the another well known storytelling-website called Storybird.com is that the quality of pictures and images, and you can briefly look over and compare these two websites: www.storyjumper.com vs. www.storybird.com. 

In my opinion,  Storyjumpers' pictures and images are lagging behind the Storybird, because it doesn't offer a wide variety of scenes and props to use, but Storybird seems to deal with more beautiful illustrations, and emotional and decent images that capture the imagination. One great thing of Storybird is that you can write comments for other people about their stories which Storyjumper doesn't offer yet. Though Storyjumper is aimed for elementary students, it would take some discovery for first and second graders to use the tool, and while you could print off a paper copy for free of the book you create, it would cost $25 to order a book version of it.

Overall, I had fun, and enjoyed using storyjumper.com. It could be used as a writing center on an iPad or computers, and just to simply build students imagination and explore their creativity. Personally, while I was creating my own story, I thought it would be a great way to make a custom book for my kids in the future, too. Because I can upload my own pictures and photos for my story, it could be an awesome personalized book for my kids and also a useful reading centers for them.

Edited Video

Here is a video I created using Daum PotEncoder.
I edited the original clip "About time"with a Korean movie "Miss Granny".
The reason why I edited them together is because these movies are a story of time travel! :)

Review of Daum PotEncoder

Daum Pot Encoder is a video encoder that one of the most famous Korean Internet firm called Daum Communications developed. It is a program that converts videos/ films to play in cellphones, game devices or pc. Also, you can simply edit and put the video clips on your blogs that you edited right away. The way to use this program can be roughly categorized into four groups:
1. Installation of the program Daum Pot Encoder 2. Video editing, such as cutting/adding/pasting to other clips and inputting text 3. Encording 4. Uploading

There are some considerable pros and cons. The strength of this program is that uploading speed is relatively quick, and the streaming speed is quicker than the world-famous web site Youtube. Also, they offer the program for free as a freeware. Because there is a video edit function, it is very useful for you to re-create your video clip with various subtitles, and you can also find out its capacity. I, as a first time user of Daum Pot Encoder, also realized that this program provides a convenient video encoding, uncomplicated editing tool, syncing with Daum service (very useful network,  especially in Korea), and  partial editing. However, one of the most attractive point I found was that we can save the video clips into our mp3 players and ipods.

However, there are few demerits I found. It takes a much longer time encoding the video clips compare to the other encoder program called Umile Encoder. Once you choose the settings for video quality and encoding it, it lowers the image quality; It can't be better than the original one. Also, comparing this program to Youtube, Youtube offers better quality of images and videos.

After reviewing Daum Pot Encoder, I came up to ask why video editing is important, and here are some examples based on my experience. I had experiences of taking videos with my phone and I loved the scenes that I took on my phone, however the background-noise was inappropriate for the beautiful scenes. Also, when I was looking for a video on the internet, I've sometimes found a video that contains uninteresting content, however the background music caught my fancy. If we use a video editing tool in these kinds of situations, we can make a new video clip by abstracting only the video or just the sound. Editing video is so great, and I believe that video-editing tool can be very useful for our everyday life.