Ta Da it's 'TED-Ed'!

TED-Ed:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. TED-Ed, TED’s youth and education initiative, is an online library of short, award winning animated videos about ideas that spark the curiosity of learners and also celebrate the ideas of teachers everywhere. This is a free educational and interdisciplinary global website which contains creating lessons worth sharing. The approach to education is an extension of TED-Ed’s mission of spreading ideas about art, music, science, technology, literature, language, mathematics, social studies and several things.

  

TED-Ed needs sign up activity to create a new account (as teacher or learner or other) even user can sign up with ‘Facebook’ also.

After that, users can access the whole website and also can assess the lesson plans, materials and exercises of other peoples. They have the options of watch, think, dig deeper, discuss and throughout the process they have enriched by the particular idea. Moreover, they can customize this lesson by creating and sharing a new lesson based on this one. Mainly, TED-Ed does teaching and education, thinking and learning.

                                

                                                                                                                                       

TED-Ed for English:

TED-Ed uses engaging videos to create customized lessons on language learning for English language, literature from which learners can autonomously improve their English at home. There are more than 1,400 official TED talks on the website, offering high quality and engaging practice for English language. It can help students improve, not only their listening skills, but also their pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and writing.

Some TED talks can help English language learners in a various ways.

Talks about language- some TED talks are given by linguistics and language teachers. TED talks feature content that can increase English language knowledge and teach more about linguistics.

Simply listening- it is helpful for improving the vocabulary, comprehension and pronunciation skills by simply listening to a native English speaker.

TED transcripts- transcripts are available with TED talks so learners can read along with the spoken word. They can easily understand what’s being said and also can learn the spelling of the word.

For English learners, the coolest thing is that all presentations are in English or with English subtitles and they are free and available to anybody with internet connection. One of the best learning tools for ESL students. It gives the golden opportunity not only to develop the English language, but also to improve the quality of information, entertainment and revolutionize the life. It also helps to expand the perception of whole world. 

  Five great talks for English learning-

·         James Geary: Metaphorically Speaking

·         Tim Doner: Breaking the Language Barrier

·         Erin McKean: Go Ahead, Make Up New Words!

·         Jean-Baptise Michel & Erez Lieberman Aiden: What we Learned from 5 Million  Books

·        Stephen Burt: Why People Need Poetry

  How to Make English A Part of Your Life:

  There are several links of funniest videos for English teachers and learners-

•  The World’s English Mania (Jay Walker) -4:34
• Schools Kill Creativity (Ken Robinson) -19:29
•  The Linguistic Genius of Babies (Patricia Kuhl) -10:18
• What Our Language Habits Reveal (Steven Pinker)
• www.fluentin3months.com.
•  Dreams From Endangered Cultures (Wade Davis) -22:05
•  Smash Fear, Learn Anything (Tim Ferris) -16:21
•  Don’t Insist on English! (Patricia Ryan) -10:35
•  Txting is killing language. JK!!! (John McWhorter) -13:48
• The Joy of Lexicography (Erin McKean) -15:54
•  Massive-Scale Online Collaboration (Luis von Ahn) -16:04
• Greatly improve your English with Duolingo
•  Metaphorically Speaking (James Geary) -9:30 

  Challenges for Teachers in the Classroom:

Teachers have to provide latest ideas or thinking and they can build a better school or classroom by reinventing the education. But they have more challenges too. For instance, they have to explore regularly the TED-Ed’s growing library of educational resources. There are several Ted Books also and they should know the every tiny detail about TED to face the classroom. There has an online blog site where teacher can communicate with students or learners and also can provide the own materials or exercises. There has options to create own lessons or change others’ lessons. Teacher can use it, tweak it or completely redo any lesson featured on TED-Ed. So, teachers should be more attentive and also should aware of the idea of the lesson in front of class. Teacher might face the problem of less interaction between teacher and students, students and students in the classroom.

For instance, I have learnt about a new topic ‘Epigenetics’ from TED-Ed and it is an awesome feature; by going through it I have gathered some new information & experiences.

Finally can say that TED has an ocean of spectacular information that will transform the way we look at the world, and if possible then we can see that also why their slogan is “Ideas worth Spreading.”

  

Everwrite- The Web-tool for Writing

Everwrite is a web-based learning tool that promotes the self-exploration of reading and writing skills which mostly appropriate for the pre-intermediate learners. This tool has been designed and managed by the ‘VPG Integrated Media’ of Boston, USA. However, this learning tool can also act as a platform for the learners where the phantom of digital technology based learning takes place followed by a lucrative evaluation. 

It is a CD-ROM accompany to ‘Evergreen’ (7^th edition) that consists of six different practice and test contents.  The factors or contents are editing exercises, identify rhetorical paragraphs, working with transitions, organizing your thoughts, recognizing your thesis statements and practicing grammar. There are two types of tasks in this software e. g. practice and test where practices help students to practice more and enhance their writing skill and tests emphasize on the feedback and evaluation. The evaluation results is published in such a way that a learner can takes the print of the result page and thus can maintain a case history of his performance level.

Editing Exercises part comprises of proof reading tasks where student read through texts and corrects different parts of language. The learners can always check their answers in the practice sessions. Identifying rhetorical paragraphs part coaches the divergent types of paragraphs where the learners need to detect the correct option. The next part focuses on the transitional verbs by allowing pedagogues to select words from the attached texts. Fourth part consists of rearranging sentences to choose the correct answer. The rest of the two parts also gives some M.C.Q. questions where the test-takers need to choose the correct option of the thesis statement and practice grammar respectively. Here are some examples of Everwrite excercises:
                                                                                                                                    

 

                         

                                                                             

                                                                                                   
Now I would like to discuss about the Everwrite software, according to some factors like learner motivation and interest, user friendliness, interaction and some other minor aspects.

According to Howard Gardner’s (1983) multiple intelligence the various types of apparatus help students to perceive more in terms of language learning. Here, the software EverWrite has the writing tests and practices but in a different way that related to technology. And a student himself/herself can learn through it without any interference. That is why students of tertiary level in our country will be interested and motivated to use this software. 

Moreover, it is a CD-ROM type software that has no link with internet. So, the students of rural areas and without internet service can use this software. It is also another issue that can motivate students. This particular learning aid can be considered as an authentic material for the learners where they can explore by themselves by following the given directions.

This learning tool is made up of some exercises which bears communicative value and therefore promotes learning the target language, English. And it also gives the scores to the students that will also motivate students to explore it and learn more as well. The prompt feedback that it provides can motivate the learners to take the test for several times until they have achieved their expected level of competence. Therefore, repeated drill and practice sessions can help the learners to sharpen their confidence in using English in the real-life context.

In terms of user friendliness, Everwrite is a very easy to access software where a learner needs to write his user name and starts to explore the practices and tests. The each and every practice sessions are put separately and the areas are also stated separately and it is helpful for the learners to choose his/her weak part and practice those. In addition, the instructions of the tests and practices and the eye soothing background color of the software home page is also another user friendliness aspect for the learners.

In the case of interaction, this software is not interaction based software. It is based on learner autonomy and here learners are responsible for their learning. But teacher can provide some writing task e.g. writing essay or paragraph after exploring the software. And this software is not free software like some other software, it is quite costly and students need to buy it from the Evergreen website. And there is no time limitation for the practices and tests in this software that is another weakness. However, this software follows the notional-functional approach to manage the tests and practices which is interrelated to communication language teaching which is an important factor.

Above all the discussions, we can say that this is  an excellent and quick conversion software for language learning especially for writing skill. It can be suitable for the rural and urban context with adult and younger students. And teachers can use it for the students to teach grammar to follow notional-functional instructions of language teaching.

কেউ তারে দেখে নাই ;- মানুষের পথ ছেড়ে দূরে হাড়ের মতন শাখা ছায়ার মতন পাতা ল’য়ে  যেইখানে পৃথিবীর মানুষের মতো ক্ষুব্ধ হয়ে কথা কয়,- আকাঙ্ক্ষার আলোড়নে চলিতেছে বয়ে হেমন্তের নদী,- ঢেউ ক্ষুধিতের মতো এক সুরে হতাশ প্রাণের মতো অন্ধকারে ফেলিছে নিশ্বাস,- তাহাদের মতো হয়ে তাহাদের সাথে গেছি রয়ে : দূরে পড়ে পৃথিবীর ধূলা – মাটি – নদী- মাঠ – ঘাস,- পৃথিবীর সিন্ধু দূরে ,- আরো দূরে পৃথিবীর মেঘের আকাশ !

Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes: http://hotpotatoes.software.informer.com/

  Hot potatoes is a simple-to-use program

  which allows to create an interactive 

  multiple choice, short-answer text, 

  jumbled-sentence exercises, crosswords, 

  match/order and fill in the gap exercises 

  for the World Wide Web, that can easily
  publish online.

The Hot Potatoes home page is located at the University of Victoria. Hot Potatoes was created by the Research and Development team at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Center. The interaction of this application is plain and easy to work with. After initializing, have to set a username and choose the language. 

                                                                                                               

There are six applications ‘JQuiz’, ‘JCross’, ‘JMix’, ‘JCloze’, ‘JMatch’, ‘The Masher’ and each of these modules comes with configurable settings. They focus on the appearances, user strings, buttons, links, index, HTML tables, media objects, grid management.

It helps to alter the default source files and configuration file location, translate the interface, view help contents, tutorial, as well as use the undo, cut, copy and paste functions.

Hot Potatoes was released as freeware. Half-Baked Software Inc. handles the commercial aspects of the software. 

There are my own created several exercises by using of Hot Potatoes-


Download here: Hot Pot

AWL

Academic Word List (AWL) 
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/index.htm

     The AWL is a list of words which appear with high frequency of English language academic texts. Averil Coxhead compiled this list at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The list contains 570 words within 10 sub lists. The sub lists are organized in less frequent by chronologically.  The AWL is useful to all second language learners who wish to study in English-speaking institution without concern about what their field of study. The AWL does not include technical words. It does not contain generally used words and very high frequency words also. It will help to improve the comprehension of academic texts.

    The AWL home page contains the several options on right hand to create or practice the exercises easily. Those are Home, Learning, AWL Highlighter, AWL Gapmaker, Teaching, Word Lists, Texts, Exercises, Concordances and Links. In every option, there are detailed instructions and information, also several links of useful sites. That’s why very easy to access.

Learner:

    Learners need to know this academic vocabulary for their English-speaking institution. These words are very common and useful which have frequently shown in newspaper, magazine, novel, television or movie conversations. At first, learners should know the GSL (General Service List) which contains 2000 basic words in English and then learn the AWL, which will increase the understanding of vocabulary 10% in academic texts.

AWL home page contains around 285 gap-fill exercises and these can be found on each sublist page. Gap-fill exercises help to recycle vocabulary through different contexts in an excellent way. It can be used to broaden the learner’s range of understanding the meaning of vocabulary. Learners can get the immediate feedback for their answers because it’s online based. Learners can tell teacher to check their writing.

Teacher:

    Vocabulary exercises on this website were created by using Gerry’s Vocabulary Teacher(www.cpr4esl.com/gerrys_vocab_teacher/).  Teachers can download the demo from this website. The program will allow quick and easy review on AWL vocabulary in depth. In a matter of minutes teachers can create the exercises for use on their own website and also can use hard copy in their classroom for study or homework. Students will benefit through the review of target vocabulary in each sentence in context and using gap-fill exercises on this website. Teacher can contribute also on this website if they want to.

    In AWL, using English for academic purposes. The specific words are presented as a heavy list without having any definitions or neither have any hyperlink towards dictionary definitions. Beginner learners can easily misinterpret the meaning of the word or subject. I'm not sure how much useful it is for learners mainly beginners.