Edmodo

What is Edmodo? 

Edmodo is a social network which is almost similar to Facebook. The only difference is that, it created for learning purposes that aimed for teachers and students. It allows teachers and students to have a secure online place to connect and collaborate, share content and educational applications, and access homework, grades, class discussion and notifications. The goal for this tool is to help educators especially teachers capture the advantages of social networking to make the classroom more accessible and flexible for learners. The most important thing is that, it  is free!

How it works?

So, how to set up and operate Edmodo? It is very easy! If you can create an account for your Facebook, than you should have no problem setting up your Edmodo account. You only need to use your email or any preferred username and password and sign up as a teacher! You also will be asked to create a group to enable you to connect with your students.

Once you succeeded, you will be provided a code. This code need to be given to your students for them to sign up and join the group you have created as a teacher. 

Signing up as a students will undergo the same process and your students have to insert the code given to enable them to join your group. 

And finally you are ready to connect with your students online! 

Edmodo in ELT:

Advantanges:

1) Through Edmodo, you are able to have an online classroom with your students. The things that you have no time to do in the actual classroom can be carried out via Edmodo. For example discussions and giving feedback.

2) Edmodo enable you as a teacher to post grades or report about each of your students' performances in the classroom and they can keep track of their own results. Besides, this tool also provide a code for parents' access and parents can also view their children's progress in the school. 

3) This tool will also help to make your classroom more accessible for the students. You can post all the notes and worksheets that you used in your lessons. This definitely will be helpful for your students especially for those who are absence during the lessons because they are not well.  

Disadvantages:

1) Students with no access to the internet might feel discouraged because they are unable to keep their own progress online like their friends.

2) Students might be too lazy to check their Edmodo account everyday.

In conclusion, Edmodo may have a few downside but its benefits in teaching language could not be dismissed. Edmodo may be able to create a new dimension that make a classroom more flexible and accessible for the students. Both of the teachers and students may interact and communicate with each other at any place anytime they feel the need to. This in turn, may help in students development and progress as well as helping both parties create a better teacher-student relationship.  

Dvolver

What is Dvolver?

Today I'm going to share a new tool that can be used in English Language Teaching (ELT). This tool is introduced by our lecturer Russell and it is called Dvolver movie maker. Dvolver is an online movie making tool that enable you to become a movie maker within minutes! It allows you to direct your own animated movie up to three scenes. You can also choose you own characters, your own scenes and create your own dialogues. All this can be done in a few easy steps and you can send your newly created movies to everyone! And the best part is, it is free!

How it works?

As I mentioned above, it only take a few easy steps to become a movie maker by using Dvolver! Follow me!

Step 1: Go to Dvolver website and be ready with your story line ideas! Now choose your movie background.

Step 2: Now you can choose your plot based on your idea of story line.

Step 3: Now you can choose your characters! Dvolver provides many characters that will definitely suits your story line. For example, I chose Ben and Nic for my movie!

Step 4: Now you can type in the characters' lines according to your own ideas. Here you can choose to add more scenes to make your movie more interesting!

Step 5: Now you can choose a background music to your movie or you can just simply add NO MUSIC if you decided to make a silent movie!

Step 6: Now it's the time to put a title to your movie and choose a design for it!

Step 7: At the end of movie making, you are able to preview your movie and send it to someone. You are a movie maker now!

Here is the example of a final product that I produced from this cool website! Check it out!

Dvolver in ELT:

Advantages:

1) The first advantage of using Dvolver in your English classroom is that it is fun! Your students will be able to enjoy learning English language using this tool because it is different from the usual classes where only papers and pencil involved. Once they found it enjoyable, this will encourage more participation from your students! More participation means more exciting your class will be!

2) Next, Dvolver provides context for the students. Contextualization in language learning is very important as it will enable the students to use language accordingly. Dvolver allows your students to choose their own context and create their own dialogue and expression based on the scenes and the characters they preferred.  Thus, it enable them to use language appropriately similar to real-life situations.

3) Dvolver may also enable your students to improve their communication skill especially when they work in pairs or groups. The discussion about making their own dialogues and movies with their friends will indirectly help them to practice and enhance their communication skill.

4) This tool also encourage creativity among your students. They are able to develop their creativity during the process of selecting the scenes, the characters and creating their own dialogues.

Disadvantages:

1) The first disadvantage of this tool is that it has limited characters, limited scenes and limited number of utterance in each dialogue's box for the characters. Therefore, it would be a bit difficult for the beginner to compress their dialogues in one box. Besides, the limitation of characters may discourage your students if the characters provided does not match theirs in mind.

2) The movies that your students produced cannot be saved for editing at a later time for a correction purpose.

3) Your students might get carried away by the technology and ignore the important instructions or information that you gives during the lesson.

Regardless all the disadvantages that you may find with Dvolver, it is still very useful tool to be used in ELT or in other classrooms. The idea of engaging students with this lively movie making tool is very much more exciting compared to the normal language class. For more information about Dvolver, just click on Russel Stannard 's website! Thank you!