According to our national curriculum one of the competences is to develop speaking/communication skills. This competence requires accurate presentation of a verbal message, participating in dialogues on familiar topics in everyday life situations. The students must be able to identify key information from audio or video messages. They must identify and distinguish stylistic registers of the audio messages and establish relations between speakers, narrate the content of a film/ of a story/ an article on the basis of a given plan.
During a lesson the teacher can’t dedicate too much time to develop speaking skills and not all students have the possibility to speak and express themselves. Online tools may easily help the teacher and the student as well to enhance their speaking skills. The platforms , which I want to present, give our students the opportunity to practice speaking. In order to register an excellent presentation they will register it not only once, and not twice , but may be three and more times. Only when they are happy with what they hear they will publish it. In class, for sure they don't have the possibility to say again what they have already said, and, of course, they don't hear themselves when they speak in class. At home they listen to their speech and they may notice some mistakes, and after the teacher comments their work they can reregister it again.
I would love to present you three of these amazing tools:
Voicethread, Voki and UtellStory, which may help the students to enhance their speaking skills.
During a lesson the teacher can’t dedicate too much time to develop speaking skills and not all students have the possibility to speak and express themselves. Online tools may easily help the teacher and the student as well to enhance their speaking skills. The platforms , which I want to present, give our students the opportunity to practice speaking. In order to register an excellent presentation they will register it not only once, and not twice , but may be three and more times. Only when they are happy with what they hear they will publish it. In class, for sure they don't have the possibility to say again what they have already said, and, of course, they don't hear themselves when they speak in class. At home they listen to their speech and they may notice some mistakes, and after the teacher comments their work they can reregister it again.
I would love to present you three of these amazing tools:
Voicethread, Voki and UtellStory, which may help the students to enhance their speaking skills.
Voki is an educational tool that allows users to create their very own talking character. Voki characters can be customized to look like historical figures, cartoons, animals, and even yourself! Give your Voki a voice by recording with a microphone, or uploading an audio file. Voki characters can be emailed, shared on social media, and embedded on websites! It is a very simple tool and even don't need to have an account to register your voice. |
Here you can follow a tutorial and learn how to create a voki. Your voki may be used as short presentation at the beginning of the year or as an introduction to a topic. It is funny and students will love it, primary school pupils will adore using it.
A pretty nice tutorial how to sing up and how to use UtellStory
Pupils very easily get acquainted to this tool and create projects with pleasure. UtellStory projects created by my students http://straightedgeisme.weebly.com/showcase.html
- You may speak about a personality
- It may be used for a film review
Voicethread is a totally web-based application that allows you to place collections of media like images, videos, documents, and presentations at the center of an asynchronous conversation. A VoiceThread allows people to have conversations and to make comments using any mix of text, a microphone, a web cam, a telephone, or uploaded audio file. |
Follow the link to see some assignments done with the help of Voicethread:
http://ratanatalia.weebly.com/11th-form/ludwig-van-beethoven
I am just at the beginning of this path full of different possibilities and I am going to explore it more and more. I advise you to explore the online tools and use them with your students. Good Luck!
- You can ask a question and the students asynchronously may answer to the question one by one. In the same time they can listen to their classmates answers and try to be more ingenious.
http://ratanatalia.weebly.com/11th-form/ludwig-van-beethoven
- They can read their essays using pictures and videos, being as creative as possible https://voicethread.com/share/6512852/ http://vickypostovic.weebly.com/showcase.html https://voicethread.com/myvoice/#thread/6481279/33606246/34968471https://voicethread.com/new/share/6481394/
- They can present a film and wait for comments http://dancornilov.do.am/news/about_sinister/2015-02-08-3
- to debate a topic
- to brainstorm ideas
- to role play a dialogue and others.
I am just at the beginning of this path full of different possibilities and I am going to explore it more and more. I advise you to explore the online tools and use them with your students. Good Luck!