Wordle

http://www.wordle.net/

Purpose:

A Wordle is a creatively designed collection of words taken from a text with the most frequently occurring words appearing in large print. The website also allows users to work with texts written in a host of other languages such as French, Spanish and Dutch.

Relevance:

A Wordle can make vocabulary and grammar learning more interesting.

It facilitates group work.

It allows both teachers and students to be creative when working with texts or vocabulary lists.

A Wordle can be used to encourage use of the target language in the classroom.

This tool can also be useful in giving feedback to students about common spelling or grammatical errors.

Tip:

A Wordle can be an interesting way to start off a grammar lesson. Select a text from a newspaper, song or magazine. Create your Wordle and distribute among students. Ask students to work in groups to identify a particular grammatical structure, suggest a rule indicating how the structure operates and, using other words in the Wordle, create examples of grammatically sound sentences. Once you are satisfied with the results, introduce the original text and have students compare their sentences with those found in the text.

Limitations:

It is not possible to save a Wordle in a jpeg or pdf format. 

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.

WebQuest

http://questgarden.com/

Purpose:

A WebQuest is an educational tool designed to develop higher learning and linguistic skills in students by having them use Internet resources to accomplish real life tasks. It allows students to engage in both group work and autonomous learning.

Relevance:

I am particularly impressed by the potential this tool has to develop students' higher learning and linguistic skills. Carefully designed WebQuests provide students with the opportunity to give sufficient attention to each linguistic skill: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Well-designed WebQuests also result in students engaging in meaningful lifelong learning since they allow them to analyze, synthesize and evaluate information as they work on real life tasks.

Using this tool could contribute to increased motivation in language learning since students will feel a sense of accomplishment after finishing a task in the target language and will also have created something tangible that can be shared with others.

This tool can also be useful in classroom management in that a well-designed WebQuest ensures that each student must make a meaningful contribution in order to successfully accomplish the task at hand. Engaged students mean a more orderly, productive classroom environment.

Tip:

In designing a WebQuest for your students, in addition to your educational goals, you must also think of your students general interests.

For example, it might be interesting to use comments from an online magazine as the text for a reading comprehension (The What Shall I Wear WebQuest illustrates how this can be done).

Also, an online video recording tool can be embedded into the WebQuest so that students can record themselves conducting an interview (job, sporting event, celebrity, etc) or engaging in a role-play activity.

Limitations:

Designing a WebQuest is extremely time consuming. It involves finding the right resources, constantly checking that your choice of activities suit your objectives and constantly remembering to save all changes that you have made before moving on to another page.

It is not the most user-friendly website, some knowledge of web editing is required.

There are many poor quality WebQuests published on the Internet and therefore you need to be very selective to ensure that the WebQuest you choose fulfils your educational goals.