Sync.in-Realtime Document Conferencing

Today's Website~

● Sync.in-Realtime Document Conferencing

Sync.in-Realtime Document converencing

What is it about?

●  Sync.in is a web-based word processor for everyone to write collaboratively in real-time.

●  Many people can edit the same document simultaneously, and you can see any changes

    on the screen instantly.  You can chat (on the right-hand side) at the same time, when

    edit the document together.

Why is the content good for language teaching?

●  It is useful for any notes (classroom/meeting), a place for brainstorming, project planning

    or training.

●  You don't have to sign up to create a new public note.

●  Different authors can choose different colors, and you can easily see each one's

    contribution.

●  Students follow the link (the note related by the teacher) and start the classroom

    activities.

●  The note can be exported as HTML file, Plain text file, or Bookmark file. 

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

●  This tool could be used best for collaborative editing, writing, brainstorming, project

    planning or topic discussing.  The teacher can write down some questions about the

    article students read.  Students can discuss in group,

●  Students can work collaboratively in group to rewrite a story, to summarize the article

    they read, or answer the questions after their discussion.

●  For lower-level students, the teacher can ask them to make sentences by the sentence

    patterns, vocabulary, or phrases they learned in class.

●  Students can collect some articles related to what they have read in class, and briefly

    describe the articles.  They could be a collection of some topics for students to keep

    as their resources.

●  The document could be saved or the teacher can paste the content in the class blog for

    students to review.

●  Students could learn from one another from reading the instant response.

●  Help teachers to assess students' language output after language input.  It can also be

    used to check students' understanding of what they have learned in class. 

Limitations

●  Sufficient computers are needed.

●  You can not add pictures, videos.  Writing activities are suitable for the tool.  It is better for

    collaborative writing and opinion sharing.

●  Even though they have a chat function, students still need to "speak out" to practice

    their speaking and pronunciation.

●  The teachers need to organize the questions or content they would like their students to

    answer in case it looks messy on the screen.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Example~ Start to use Sync.in 

●  Click on "Create a new public note".

Create a New Public Note

●  Select your color, type your name, and start to write or edit.

Select the Color, Enter Your Name, and Start to Write

●  You can zoom in to make the content bigger, or hide the chatbox column to have more

     space.

Zoom In or Hide the Chatbox Column

●  Click on "invite", and you can paste the link, or send e-mail to invite your friends or 

    students to co-write or co-edit.

Invite Your Friends or Students

●  You can click on "Export" and download your document.  However, there is no PDF or

    Word format.  You can paste the content on the word and convert it into PDF format.

Export the Content

●  Quick Introduction to Sync.in

●  The Collaborative Authoring Activity in Warwick ELT (ICT & MM)

This is a collaborative authoring activity.  Our tutor provided several blogs (related

to ICT in ELT) and several links for us to search the tools for language teaching 

and learning.  We have to search for the tools for ELT introduced in some blogs,

discuss the tools, learn how to use them, and briefly describe the tools.  Each group

gave a brief description about the tools below each question.  You could see what

we did below. Click on the page to zoom in.

Created by Issuu Publishing Tool

Open publication - Free publishing - More syn.in

Chatzy-Free Private Chat room

Today's Website~

●  Chatzy-Free Private Chatroom 

Chatzy-Free Private Chat room

What is it about?

●  Chatzy is a free private chat room.  You can start a quick chat.  It has no registration 

    steps.  Just invite your friends or your students, they can join instantly. 

●  You don't need Flash or any installation on your computer to use Chatzy.

●  Chatzy is user-friendly.   It works on many major browsers and with any languages.

●  It is an ideal chat room for idea-sharing.   

Why is the content good for language teaching?

●  It is a user-friendly interface for learners to share their ideas and communicate with 
  
    one another.  It engages students in cognitive learning through communication. 

●  Encourage students to interactive with their peers through reading others' opinions

    and have a deep discussion about certain topics they explore in class.

●  Encourage students to share opinions and respect one another by using the discussion

    interface.

●  Everyone has a chance to speak out their ideas.  Shy students benefit from the different

    way of communication a lot, too.

●  Encourage students to work collaboratively according to the tasks the teacher design.

●  Students could learn from one another from reading the instant response.

●  Help teachers to assess students' language output after language input.  It can also be

    used to check students' understanding of what they have learned in class.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

●  First, introduce students Internet Etiquette in the virtual room, e.g. how to greet with one

    another.

●  The teacher could either ask individual student to make sentences (e.g. the sentence

    patterns they learned in class) to check their understanding, or ask students to work in 

    group to make a story (e.g. with vocabulary, phrases they learn in class or a topic  

    related to your curriculum).

●  Students can work collaboratively to rewrite a story, e.g. each group takes turns to write a

    sentence.  They should try to make the story cohesive and reasonable.  The teacher can

    give guidance to help students use appropriate linguistic meanings of  expression and

    generate appropriate content.  Students will learn a lot through the negotiation of meaning.

●  For low-proficiency students, they can do some simple spelling competition, type what

    they hear (words or sentences) from the teacher or news, or answer some simple

    questions to check students' understanding of the sentence patterns and the content.

●  The teacher could ask high-proficiency students what they know about the topic

    and the experience about the topic they are going to learn.  The teacher could also

    encourage students to reflect what they have learned in class. 

●  The script of the discussion or classroom activities can be printed out, which can be used

    to assess students' in-class performance.  The teachers can also reflect their own

    teaching and revise the curriculum, and make it more suitable for the students' learning

    process.

●  The students could always go into the room and review something they are unfamiliar or

    reflect their answers, or print out the transcript.

●  The teachers can paste the saved discussion in the class blog for students to review.

Limitations

●  Might need computers for everyone in order to assess individual performance.

●  If it is a large class, it might take students lots of time to read everything in a short time.


●  Students still need to "speak out" to practice their speaking, pronunciation and

    communicating skills.

●  It might not easy to read if there are too many students writing on the same screen.

●  It is better for collaborative writing and opinion sharing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Example~  How to Use Chatzy 

●  First Click on "Start Quick Chat".  Write down your name, and choose your color.

    After filling in your "Title/Subject", you can invite your friends or students.

 Start Quick Chat

●  You can either write e-mail or offer the link to your friends or students so that they can

    join the chat room.

Invite Your Friends

●  Now you can start to chat.

Start to Chat

●  Check on your visitors you invite.

Vistor List

●  Click on "Save/Print" to save or print out your discussion.

Save or Prin

●  Here is the video tutorial from YouTube.

●  Here is the transcript of our discussion in class.  "Second Life" in language

    learning was our topic in class.  And after the presentation of our classmates, and

    the oral discussion led by the presenters, guided by our tutor, our tutor asked

    some questions for us to think about.

    The transcript:

Classroom Discussion 1 (By using Chatzy-Free Private Chatroom)

Classroom Discussion 2 (By using Chatzy-Free Private Chatroom)

TagCorwd- Teaching Vocabulary, Reading, and Writing in Another Way.

Today's Website~


●    TagCrowd

amadeus (1) bbc (1) born (1) breakthrough (1) comic (1) die (1) doubtless (1) england (1) entfuhrung (1) experience (1) extraordinary (1) father (1) figaro (1) final (2) flute (1) freelance (1) gained (2) germany (1) health (1) idomeneo (1) kemp (1) led (2) major (1) mannheim (1) marriage (1) member (1) mozart (3) munich (1) musical (6) opera (4) orchestra (1) particularly (1) performed (2) pianist (2) political (1) popularity (1) position (1) poured (1) premiere (1) recognising (1) salzburg (5) seriously (1) sort (2) style (2) success (2) throughout (2) travelling (1) trip (1) visited (1) waned (1)

created at TagCrowd.com

What is it about?

●  Like wordsift, It is a useful tool to visualize word frequency in any supplied text.

●  To visualize the text, you can either upload your text source from web page URL,

     from your file or paste the text. 

●  It quickly identifies the most frequent words, presents them visually and shows

    word count next to each word.

●  There are some options, you can visualize different languages(15 of them,

     but no Chinese) showed in the text, and select maximum number of the words

     to show.

●  You can embed the visualized text in your blog, save it as an PDF file, print it

    out (post it in the classroom bulletin board), and show it in full screen.

Why is the content good for language learning?

●  Visual aids of the vocabulary help learners identify the key words and link

     the meaning in the text.

●  It helps summarize the speech and written words.  Students can paste their

    writing and see if they can use synonyms to replace some words  which are

    used too many times.  It helps students to reflect on their work.

●  Could be an visual analysis for text or survey date because it shows the word

    count next to each word.

●  The function of "group similar words" could help categorized word groups, help

     teachers to introduce tense and the roots of words.

●  If the teacher would like to introduce special website for learning English,

    the teacher can select the source "from web page URL" and specify the main

    ideas in that website, text or the source.

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

●  Have students predict what this text will be according to the most frequent 

    words showed in the text.

●  Students can guess the topics/genre/context from the most frequent words and 

    see how frequently they appear in related texts/genre/context/topics.  (Teachers

    can select a text related to the topic and compare the words used in both texts. 

●  Look at the word counts of the most frequent words and see if students can

    find synonyms or antonyms to replace the words or rewrite the sentence.

●  You can set the minimum frequency (for example, 5 times) in the text and have

    students focus on the vocabulary and talk about the way they are presented in

    the text.

●  Choose the function "group similar words", and teachers can introduce the tense,

    such as learns/learned/learning, or the word groups in the text.

●  You can have your students work together to summarize the text by using the 

    chosen words, or rewrite the text and paste it on their TagCrowd.

Limitations~

  

●  Unlike Wordsift, TagCrowed only provides data.  It is not interactive.   However,

    it can be used to compare with the result of Wordsift.
 
●  The least frequent words are not clear, especially when choosing more words to show

    in the screen, you barely see the smaller-size words. 

●  The "full screen" function isn't working well.  The visualized text still looks small 

    in the screen. 

●  Some words with capital letters are shown in small letters.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Example~

●   Choose the web page text you would like your students to learn, and copy the URL.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

● Choose the text source from web page URL (see the picture below).

● Or you could choose the text source from your file or paste the plain text 

   (see the picture below).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

●  Before you visualize the text, you can select the options provided.  (Here, we choose

    "show frequencies" and "group similar words".  The maximum number of words shown

     is "50".

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

● You could see 15 most frequent words in the text in bigger sizes.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

●  You could have students guess the topic, the genre and what context these words

    will be shown.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today's Meet- Chatroom for Classroom Activities and Idea Sharing

Today's Website~

● Today's Meet 

Today's Meet

 

 

What is it about?

●  It is more like a chat room for students in English class.

●  The teacher creates a room and invites students to join the classroom talk.

●  Students follow the link and start the classroom activities.

Why is the content good for language teaching?

●  Encourage students "talk" and communicate in the virtual room

●  Encourage students to read other students' language outcome.

●  Encourage students to share opinions and respect one another

●  It is interactive.  Everyone has a chance to speak out their ideas, especially shy students.

●  Encourage students to work collaboratively or individually

●  Sudents could learn from one another from reading the instant response.

●  Help teachers to assess students' language output after language input

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

●  First, introduce students Internet Etiquette in the virtual room, e.g. how to greet

●  The teacher could either ask individual student to make sentences (e.g.

    with past tense) to make sure they understand the grammar, or ask students

    to work in group to make a story (e.g. with past tense, words students learn

    in class or a topic related to your curriculum).  Each group takes turns to write a

    sentence.  The story should be cohesive and reasonable.  The teacher can give

    guidance to help students use appropriate linguistic meanings of  expression

    and generate appropriate content.  The story should be cohesive and reasonable.

    (The teacher could introduce conjunctions)

●  The teacher can encourage low-proficiency to key in the vocabulary,

    words or sentences they hear or they remember from the last lesson or

    some topics (e.g. Name one animal you know).  If the teachers would like to

    know whether students are familiar with the sentence patterns and the content,

    the teacher could ask simple questions and encourage students to answer

    them to check their understanding and students' language output  (e.g.

    What does Mary usually do before she goes to bed?).

●  The teacher could ask high-proficiency students what they know about the topic

    and the experience about the topic they are going to learn.  The teacher could also

    check students' understanding by asking them to answer certain questions

    in class or at home. 

●  The teacher could print out the script and assess students' in-class performance, and also

     it could be used to reflect the teacher's own teaching and revise the curriculum, adjusting

     to students' learning process.

●  The students could always go into the room and review something they are

    unfamiliar or reflect their answers, or print out the transcript.

Limitations

●  Might need computers for everyone in order to assess individual performance

●  If it is a large class, it might take students lots of time to read everything in

    a short time.

●  Students still need to "speak out" to practice their speaking, pronunciation and

    communicating skills.

●  Might take teachers too much time to assess students' performance if they

    have too many students to teach in a short time.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Example~ 

TodaysMeet

Our Tutors Russell and Tilly created a room for us to sharing the ideas about

the tool "Wordsift" we learned in class. The link is: http://www.todaysmeet.com/wordsift

Here is the transcript:

● Transcript of the "Ideas about Wordsift"

    The transcript: