What is Nearpod? Nearpod is the interactive tool for presentations and assessments. Teachers can use the site to create original multimedia presentations. Teachers can upload videos, images, audio clips, and PDF files as well as embed multiple-choice quizzes, polls, and Draw Its (students write directly on a slide), collaboration boards, and open-ended questions. Teachers launch the presentation and monitor progress either from the website or through the app. Using the Nearpod app on their devices, students input a code and their names to access content and submit responses. With Nearpod, teachers interact with students and view student responses in real time, enabling students to take ownership of their learning rather than passively viewing a teacher-directed whole-class presentation. Why is it good for learning? Real-time Check: Nearpod provides immediate feedback and lets teachers know where reteaching would benefit students.  When students receive quiz score...

Defining Blended learning: Blended learning is subjects that utilise some significant online activities in otherwise face-face learning, but less than 45 per cent. Distinction: Web enhanced learning is subjects that make use of a minimal amount of online materials, such as posting an announcement. Hybrid learning will include online activities for 45-80 per cent and fully online learning will include more. From my point of view, using a blended learning approach could be time-saving. Students will no longer waste their time walking to the classroom. Instead, all they need is the access to Internet and Intranet. Besides, it might fulfill some expectations from learners. The young generation grows up with new technology. They will feel satisfied and motivated if they are involved in a technology mediated environment. Social interaction will also be less stressful for some students if it is carried out online. When designing blended learning courses, these websites may be helpful:...

Communicative competence It is an ability to understand and use the language and communicate in social contexts. Core skills  Pronunciation, performing speech acts, managing interaction and organising discourse. How to enhance communicative competence It is always an anxious task to speak something especially in a foreign language because we might feel being judged when talking to others. Besides, compared to writing, there's no chance for correcting and re-organising when communicating orally. The information jumps out and is received by others instantly. To solve this, CMC (computer-mediated communication) might help L2 learners open their mouths with less anxiety. Advantages Some advantages may be: Sufficient planning time, Equal participation, Increased production. However, there are still some drawbacks like affective interference and absence of interpersonal communication.

What is Tube Quizard? Summarised by its founder Orya Sergeeva: Tube Quizard ( http://tubequizard.com/quizzes.php ) is a feel tool that generates listening decoding quizzes based on subtitled Youtube videos.  It allows you doing listening quizzes based on videos clips from news, movies, interviews and so on. Lots of resources which cover various aspects of the authentic using of English are provided in this website. You could even create your own and personalized quizzes generated from Youtube videos. Obviously it has lots of advantages including: Enhance users' listening skills, spelling competency, grammatical accuracy.    Users should fill in the blank with correct words while listening to the video clips. Hence the skills mentioned above are practiced. Authentic English and contexts.  Users are using authentic English materials when learning it. It's so important in L2 learning. Motivating, Interactive and Communicative.  Have a try of ...

After making the film through Dvolver, some may wonder how to embed it in our articles since the film made cannot be downloaded as a video and uploaded here by the    button. The truth is that the film we made through Dvolver is a flash instead of a video file. So we cannot simply click the video button and upload it. We have to embed the flash here by a bunch of code instead. But don't worry, the progress won't be complex. Just follow these steps: Open the "new post" page Click on the HTML button Copy the code: <embed align="middle" allowscriptaccess="always" height="285" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/dv_assets/plot_template_lang3.swf?movie_id=1294486" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="381"></embed> Find the e-mail that Dvolver sent you after you made the fi...

In week 2 we checked a number of game-like tools that could be used by teachers like us to increase learners' learning motivation. According to Henry Alastair, learning opportunities should be created by teachers to allow students experiencing the types of creative and interactive digital gaming, which focuses on aesthetic and personal expression. Tilly's lecture also suggested that  Teachers need to create activities that allow students to: be individual, be creative, interact, relax and be autonomous.  Based on this, some tools to design classroom activities/games that are suitable to the L2 learners are introduced. Here's the list accompanied with links: Voki – make an avatar  https://www.voki.com/ Triptico – What’s the Question, Find Ten, Bingo  https://www.tripticoplus.com/ Kahoot - quizzes  https://getkahoot.com/ Socrative – Space Race  https://b.socrative.com/login/student/ Quizlet Live – vocab game  https://quizlet.com/live Dvolver...

Ozege Karaoglu's Blog  is quite an attractive and user-friendly blog with lots of information and techniques in education sphere provided for its readers. Starting with a colorful and inviting graphic, Ozge's blog is filled with vivid pictures and interesting images which makes the reading a kind of enjoyment. The biggest difference between this blog and others is that it is not time-consuming and quite easy to gather useful information from it because it's so concise and to the point. Personally speaking, it could be regarded as a neat and clear blog model for every bloggers to learn from. The link of Ozege Karaoglu's Blog is  http://ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org/ For some tips for how to start a blog, this video could be an informative support.