[4th] Tube Quizard: learn through fun!!!

If you find your students are interested in the TV 👀shows, dramas or videos on YouTube, you may use this technology Tube Quizard to encourage your students to learn with fun!😍

Tube Quizard is a website allowing teachers to find and create listening quizzes based on Youtube videos. 

Explore this website, link is here: http://www.tubequizard.com/

Let us see how to use it!!!👇

1.       How to find the quiz you want😎

In the quiz collection section, you can use a filter to find the quiz. You can select the quiz, including level, type, category or variety of accents. This technology enables teachers to find the quiz matching your students’ level, your quiz aims, and the topic you want to choose.

2.       Tube Quizard helps you create the quiz with different aims!!!

👌With an aim for practicing the grammar---

Tube Quizard provides videos for you to practice particular tenses, such as the past tense. Students can listen to how tenses are used in the video.

 

👌With an aim of practicing the pronunciation---

Particular vocabulary could be chosen from one video to practice one accent like /I/. Students can observe how British or American people pronounce it.

 

👌With an aim of practicing the vocabulary---

Students will complete all the words they hear in the video together. You can choose to check the part of speech of the word, such as verb or adjective.

 

😅Other aims could also be fulfilled with this Quizard, like practicing spelling. However, there are only four videos for practicing the spelling and grammar in context. They need to add more to this perspective.

 

3.       How to create your own quiz👊

Option A: click the ‘Train with your video’ section and type the keywords or URL to find your favorite video topic and edit your quiz based on others’ quizzes.

 

Option B: you can ‘Search in subtitles’ section and find the quiz according to the subtitles, different aims, topic or time.

 

See more guidance from this video:👇

 

4.       Advantages

 👼Help students match the vocabulary with the pronunciation.

👼Improve students’ listening skills, such as identifying liaisons.

👼Offer the authentic context and opportunities to hear English communication in real life.

👼Increase students’ motivation by choosing their favorite topic.

👼Provide self-study channels for students.

 👼Provide quick quiz design, easy to practice by teachers.

 

   5.       Disadvantages👿

  👿Only provide two accents: British and American.

 👿Be too difficult for beginners: videos could not slow down, too much environmental noise etc.

 👿Only provide gap-filling quizzes, and the answer is sole.

👿Cannot improve the listening skills and lead to students' excessive concentration on the single words and ignorance of the video’s general idea

 

6.       The application of the Tube Quizard in the classroom😃

👀Use the quiz as the main task for listening class

Teachers could design the quiz and especially practice their listening skills. They could first ask students to predict and listen for the general idea and give the gap-filling task to focus particularly on their grammar or vocabulary.

 👀 Use it as the pre-task or complementary task for the input  

Teachers could use this quiz as a pre-task for students to discover the grammar or vocabulary they will learn in this class; Teachers could also use it as a complementary task matching with the content teacher taught in the previous part. For example, teachers could teach the past tense firstly and use this quiz as a pre-task for a complementary task for students to practice the past tense by filling the gap.

👀Use it as the test

Teachers could use this as a small test for students to find whether they have understood the grammar or vocabulary they learnt.

[3rd] Learn form one of the Best WebQuest : Persuasive Speaking

WebQuest is an activity where most information used by learners is drawn from the web. Here I found one of the best WebQuest to teach persuasive speaking! And this WebQuest could serve as an excellent example for guide teachers to design a WebQuest. I hope everyone can see this WebQuest! This is the link: 🔗 http://questgarden.com/68/00/2/080716182031/process.htm.

1. what is this activity? (evaluate it from several aspects)

 This WebQuest is a website to help students in grades 6-8 practice their oral English through debate after reading the novel hoot.  Let's see why it's so great!

Engaging opening

The hook mentioned at the beginning is very life-oriented and directly mentions that students benefit from this task. It first asks students to imagine a scene they may encounter in life: they want to go to their friend's house for the night but are rejected by their parents. Then he mentioned that after completing today's task, students could learn how to persuade others and benefit from it. Such two steps can catch students' attention instantly. 

The question/ task

On the whole, the instructions of WebQuest are obvious and fully exercise students' cognitive ability. In completing the task, students are first asked to do some research. After understanding the background by researching, students need to summarise all the information, choose their arguments and give reasons for third arguments. At the same time, students also need to judge which argument is more robust and which is weaker. This exercises students' ability to summarise, compare, analyse and give reasons, which helps students exercise their cognition when learning English.

Background for everyone 

Before starting the actual debate, the students were assigned to different groups to read and fill in the forms provided by the teacher. These articles are from the novel hoot, which helps students understand the background knowledge of the debate topic. At the same time, the teacher also provides some websites that are helpful for debate. Students can learn basic debate skills by entering these websites. We can see that it provides many resources to help students learn. 

Roles( this is my favourite part.)

Students are assigned different roles and have different tasks during the debate. And these tasks are not repeated. For example, the opener is responsible for opening the debate topic. The questioner is responsible for providing reasons for the main points of view and challenging the opponent’s points of view. By completing different tasks and corresponding forms, each student can take independent responsibility and have a fixed time to speak in the debate. This ensures that they can fully participate in the debate and practise their oral English. 

Although their tasks are different, they also need to cooperate. For example, the questioner needs to support the opener’s views, while the closer needs to summarise the views of all his teammates. This part fully gives students independent exercise and opportunities to practise oral English and promotes their cooperation.

Real-world feedback. 

 The students were analysed and evaluated from four aspects. This evaluates their ability to help demonstrate their views through body language, their language flow, and whether they can support their views through their own experience. However, these aspects are limited to their performance in the debate. Maybe the evaluation of students' teamwork ability and ability to do research can be added.

The conclusion of this WebQuest

At the end of this WebQuest, the benefits of completing the task are also mentioned. Students can exercise their ability to express their views and provide reasons. Such ability may be used in future groups and society. At the same time, it also emphasises that the students also exercised their ability to use technical means to conduct information investigation. This end is closely related to the previous introduction, emphasising the significance and importance of this task.

2. Limitations of the question

Some instructions need to be more apparent. For example, when the teacher asked the students to summarise their arguments and write a form,  he used an example seen in the figure below. This example about the bubble gum ban has nothing to do with the subject of the debate. At first, it confused me. Later, I understood that this was just an example of the format. The content of the table can be some simple arguments of their debate. This will make it easier for students to understand. 

 In general, this WebQuest provides a good teaching template to teach speaking. More teachers can use such a template, and only a few minor changes are needed. This has some inspiration for the teaching of other teachers.

[2rd] Use voki to teach!!

Use ‘Voki’ to Teach 

Today, I want to introduce a teaching game called 'Voki'. Teachers can create their roles and dub through this tool, which will attract students' attention, especially young learners. 

want to explore more, click this link:https://www.voki.com/

1 - how to use Voki.

First, after registering and logging in to the account, click the "create" button on the home page and click the "learn more" button under the "Creator.’

The second step is to choose the role you want.‘ 'Voki' offers many roles to choose from celebrities to pets. At the same time, you can also choose the background, accessories and appearance of the task.

 The third step is to input the content you want to say in the voice bar. You can choose the language you speak and different timbres at the bottom to dub the content. 

If you want to read the content yourself, You can also choose the "Earpiece" button and click the red button to dub by yourself. It will make your voice more vivid and exciting. Of course, you can also upload other audio, which is your choice! 

Finally, remember to name your character. You can share it with your friends! You can share it through URLs or ins and other ways. 

This is a dog Voki I made. The dog's words can help students learn imperative sentences. 

https://tinyurl.com/ycyry96e

2 - advantages of teachers using Voki 

👼Voki is more suitable for teachers because some students cannot use electronic devices. At the same time, straightforward content may not keep students interested all the time. 

👼 teachers can use it for teaching, especially for young learners. Using images like animals and other exciting images, we can avoid boring teaching and attract students' attention. 

👼 For teenagers, Voki can be used as a teaching aid to change the image of teachers and make teaching more enjoyable. (it may also make students turn their attention to your image, haha) 

3 - limitations. 

👿Voki is more suitable for teaching young people. It won't be easy to maintain students' attention for a long time.

 

👿Voki can only be shared in the form of video. It will be more convenient if it can be developed to change the image of teachers and spread the voice of teachers at the same time. It especially helps the teaching of online courses.

[1st] Does your blog have similar characteristics?

Evaluation of the blog created by Larry Ferlazzo

Last Friday, our teacher recommended we read one particular blog and evaluate it. The blog I read is Larry’s website of the day, which gives personal news and resources to other teachers. I summarise some characteristics of this blog. See if you have similar advantages or problems. 

(See more information on Larry’s blog; you can click this link. 

Larry Ferlazzo http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/ )

👍Organisations and navigation are transparent.

At first glance, the style of the blogger is exceptionally organised. First, The colour of the layout is blue and refreshing.  And for every section, is given an image relating to the topic, which is exciting and fun to read. Second, he gives a brief introduction to every section. This is clear and helps the audience to choose the topic they get interested in. Apart from that, the navigation he used was effective. When the audience clicks the button, the button's colour will turn black, indicating they have read about the topic.

👎Content is small.

The content the blogger wrote is little. However, the main aim of the blogger is to give some teachers guidance and advice. The whole content fails to achieve this goal because each topic contains few words, and advice is vague. Taking one section as an example, the blogger advised the teacher to give students more opportunities to talk using simple pictures. Instead of giving more information like the students’ situation or actions teachers should take, he gives an image. Therefore, I doubt whether it can help teachers to solve the problems. Everyone could say some general principle. But stating the reasons and solutions the is the central part should concentrate on.

👎Lack of interaction with the audience.

I can not see any conversations or comments from the audience. The blogger switches the comments feature and refuses the audience to give the comments, which is the main problem. Since the blog is a platform offering people to share opinions, it is a communication. However,  here communication is missing. This is more like a blogger's personal diary or an advertisement for his book.

Conclusion 

The blogger tried to share his experience and ideas to give advice. The overall style and structure are evident. However, due to too little content and lack of interaction, the purpose of giving suggestions has not been achieved. This makes me wonder if anyone wants to see his blog or gets a lot of inspiration from his blog.😢

Advice

The problems should be paid attention to. If you have similar problems, maybe you should solve them now. The video below may give some meaningful tips.👇