Digital Tools for Language Learning

In the 21^st century classrooms today,  digital tools should coexist with traditional tools. There are a mixed bag of online tools exist today that students do not need to rely only traditional tools anymore. The online tools are not only free but they are easily accessible and time saving. Besides, online tools provide wider and more precise information compared to the traditional tools. They allow teachers to plan interactive lessons based on specific themes and topics.

Enhancemyvocabulary

A website that provides a wide range of creative phrases. I use this website very often to look for creative phrases, especially for writing. I have also introduced this to my students and they find this site to be very helpful.  You can also find a plethora of vocabulary activities, online test and classroom ideas here!     

thesaurus.com

I introduced this site to my students so that they can effortlessly look for alternative words and their meanings. I find this web to be both reliable and user – friendly.

kahoot 

Many teachers in Malaysia have been exposed to Kahoot and are using it very often. Kahoot is a user – friendly tool for designing in – class questionnaires and quizzes. Teachers can design  quizzes, surveys or questionnaires to test the knowledge of their students on a topic. Kahoot is an interactive tool that promotes interactive and fun learning environment. Besides, Kahoot also allows teachers to get a better understanding of where their students stand while the students are engaged in a fun learning experience.

Socrative

Socrative is just another online tool created for interactive quizzes and questionaires just like Kahoot. However, it is less colourful and more suitable for matured students.

Languagetool

Language tool is an online grammar checker that helps in proofreading. All you need to do is simple type a paragraph in the textbox and it will highlight all the errors from spelling to grammar problems.

Enchantedlearning 

This page produces children’s educational web sites which are designed to capture the imagination while maximizing creativity, learning, and enjoyment. This page is very user – friendly and one can learn very fast. The page is designed to help young learners, therefore it has the simplest computer interface and the clearest instructions. The pages also has several educational materials that help to enhance creativity and promote fun learning.

Lexipedia

Lexipedia is a simple virtual thesaurus. All you have to do is to type any word and it will display all the words that can be associated with the target word. The words are also colour coded  according to their types and it also gives complete definition for the displayed words.

Snappy Words 
Just like lexipedia, Snappy Words is another visual thesaurus. Teachers can actually introduce a few thesaurus tools to students so that they can pick and choose the one that works for them

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Shahi 

Shahi is a visual dictionary that combines pictures from Flickr and other similar pages. I think this is a great tool for English language learning.

Lingro  
Lingro is a very useful tool and I find it to be interesting. All you have to do is just type on the Lingro website and it will take you the web where you can click on any words on the web and it will translate the text/word in 12 languages. All you have to do is to simply click on any words and several definitions will be displayed. This is a very helpful too that will be very helpful to struggling ESL learners.

ThingLink 

ThingLink is a tool for making interactive images. Teachers could us ThingLink to teach students key vocabulary or students could design interactive images with the vocabulary provided. Anyways, there are just many ways that one can use ThingLink.

WordSift

I am sure all of us are aware of Wordle. Just like Wordle, Wordsift id just another tool where students type or copy and paste text and Wordsift will just sort them out based on word frequency. However, Wordsift has additional visual thesaurus displayed. With the visual thesaurus, students immediately see how words are grouped semantically. 

My Letter to Editor......

Shadowing the life of an American Student.......

This is Dawson and Me with Macy

Today instead of doing my normal school routine I decided to shadow a student to all his classes to experience the life of an American student. It turned out to be an exciting and learning experience. The student whom I shadowed was Dawson, an 8th Grader ( 14 years old). He was handsome and had blue sparkling eyes.... He was warm and very respectful in his own ways. I got along very well with him within a few minutes.. The classes he had today was English reading (Honors), Mathematics, Social Science( History), Science, English writing, music and Bible Studies. 

  

Technology made the lessons easier to understand

I followed  him to all the classes and had great opportunities to observe different teaching styles of different teachers.  Different teachers had different styles in handling their students and all of them had the aura of their own… some teachers made sure the students remained quiet throughout their lessons, some had amazing group activities and made sure students were engaged and some had great ICT skills that they made learning so simple. One similarity I noticed among the teachers was, they were all using technology during their lessons and I am sure they were not doing it because I was there as the teachers were not aware I was shadowing Dawson and gave a surprise look when I showed up in their classrooms with Dawson, however they were very welcoming. They did not use any specific software, but exploited whichever software  or online tools which was free and available. It was easy for the teachers as these softwares/tools were not so complicated and made their lives easy.

Dawson, do not have fixed classmates, his classmates differs from one lesson to another lesson based on their ability and the previous year’s results, and the school do not have uniformed lessons as well. The lessons differ from one class to another depends on students’ learning ability. For example, If a student is in English Reading(honors) class, it means this class is for students who have higher level of understanding texts where at this level they learn to study literature deeper. They study  Charles Dicken's, Great expectations which is meant for higher level, where as the weaker ones will not study Charles Dickens but a simpler one which help to build their ability to understand texts better.

I did not shadow Dawson to his bible studies as it was conducted in a church nearby; in America religious studies are not allowed to be conducted in the school compounds as to respect and not influence students of other religions and it is not compulsory. They truly practice 'respect all religions' policy.

Different lessons at different classes

My day ended with a happy note......