Bubblr

http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/

Purpose:

Bubblr is an online tool that allows users to create and share online picture strips using high quality pictures sourced from Flickr.

Relevance:

If you believe that learning outcomes improve when students are highly motivated then this tool can be quite helpful. It facilitates a great deal of creativity, which may ultimately increase student motivation.

The high quality and wide variety of pictures available means that you can reinvigorate any topic by making a visually appealing presentation.

Bubblr makes it compulsory for students to comment on pictures, which means that they will always have the opportunity to develop their writing skills.

Tip:

Why not introduce idiomatic expressions or proverbs using pictures? Following your example, ask your students to create picture strips that portray idiomatic expressions or proverbs in the target language and/or their mother tongue.

Limitations:

The availability of thousands of pictures means that creating a picture strip is potentially quite time consuming.

There is no way to filter the quality of the pictures; some may be inappropriate for young audiences.

Tags used to describe pictures may not be reliable.

Published picture strips are automatically made public.

MyBrainShark

 MyBrainShark.com

Purpose:

Mybrainshark, originally designed for the business community, has amazing potential for use in the foreign language classroom.

The free version allows users to create, share and track video presentations of their PowerPoints, documents, photos or video clips.

Relevance:

An important aspect of language learning is review/ revision. This tool allows students to make, edit and replay their audio recordings.

They therefore benefit from an increased awareness of their pronunciation and fluidity in the target language.

It would also allow them to track their progress in developing their speaking skills.

Tip:

Outside the classroom, one great way to use this tool to develop speaking skills is by asking students to make an audiovisual presentation on a chosen topic: family, food, favorite hobbies, life accomplishments, vacation, etc and then email the link to the teacher. My video illustrates how this can be done.

In the classroom context, as part of a lesson, students can work in pairs and record themselves conducting an interview, which can then be shared with the teacher or their classmates in a larger online forum.

Limitations:

While the basic service is free, sign-up is required in order to upload documents.

Also, the quality of the content created depends greatly on the teacher/ student’s ability to manipulate the software used, for example PowerPoint.