MeeGenius

Meegenius is a website for kids. It provides a nice collaction of online books and stories that come with audio playback, word highlighting, and personalization. It could be used by children whose language is English.

Why can it be used in  language classes?
It is interesting and motivating.
It s full of  nice pictures which can attract children attention to learn.
 It provides authentic material for language learning.
It helps to improve childrens' reading and writing skills.
The languae is simple and comprehensible for children to understan
Children can listen and read the story.

How can it be used in the class?
A teacher can ask the children to listen to a story which could be chosen by the children themselves. After listening, the teacher can ask the kids to retell thestories to each other. Then, he can tell them to draw pictures describing the story.

Limitations
It can be difficult for younger children to navigate the site. They need their parens or teachers' help.
Not all books are free.

Animation

     
    Xtranormal  is a briliant website that allow you to create text to speech animated movies. What is great in this site is the range of characters and backgrounds that enable users to create different situational dialogues. It is simple to use and enjoyable.

Why is it good?

• It is free , enjoyable and easy to use
• It is suitable for collaborative work
• It  makes students creative and it helps them to think and construct
  ideas and knowledge
• It assists students to use language in different contexts
• It coild develop students' writing, listening, pronunciation, and vocabulary
• Teachers can use it to create materials for their students.

How can it be used in language classes?

There are various ways to use it in the class. Students can create dialogues in different contexts.For example, after finishing a lesson on my favourite place to visit, students can go to xranormal and create a scene or a movie trying to convince other students to visit their favuorite place. Students can work in pairs to set a dialouge and then they show the class their work. You can also get your students to create a short story or choose a poem and present it to the class by using xranormal. A teacher can create a clip with grammatical errors and ask the students to watch, find the mistakes and correct them.



The limitations

It is not 100% free.  You  may need to pay for choosing some characters, otherwise you can not publish your movie.  Some students may not use it in apporporiate way and for educational purposes.
 
This video shows you how to use xtranormal

What is it?

Zimmertwins is an incredible site that enables  you to make a movie.  It is a simple and interesting site for language learners to make  an animation.  It can work well with younger learners. It has three characters in t a cat, a boy and a girl. There are four categories one for writing a text, if you like. The second one is about actions such as laughing or running, while the third one is about emotion. The fourth one is

Why is it good for language learners?
I think this site is very beneficial for younger learners because it is presented in a form of cartoons which can motivate students and make them eager to continue playing and creating animations. It also helps to develop students' writing skills.  It is a good stimulus for writing texts. During creating a movie, a  student will construct ideas and knowledge which leads to creativity. Since it can be published, students will be accurate about their grammar and spelling. Students can use it to learn some action verbs and adjectives of emotion.

It could be used in class or at home.  It could be used to support textbooks.  For example, after finishing a lesson about  adjectives of emotion, Students can go to zimmertwins and create movies describing the emotion of the characters.

For limitation
You can not embed or share the movie that you created. You need to have an account to save the movie. If you want to show the movie to your friends, you need to go to your account and copy  the link.

Second Life

What is it ?
A second life  is a virtual  space that used by many people to communicate and to contact with each other by creating their own avatars. Actually, you can talk, move around and fly to different spaces in this  virtual world. You can also land a land and built on it.

Why is it good for language classes?
There are many benefits for using it in the classes
students can meet  English native speakers and communicate with them.
It is interesting and motivating
It helps to promote creativity which is an important element in language learning
Students have the possibility to think and construct ideas in English. Second life provide a real situation for language use
Students will be actively envovled in.
It makes students independent and autonomous.
It encourages collaborative learning

How can it be used in the class?

Students can use it in their class or at home. The school can obtain a land for students to connect other students from English speaking country . Teachers can also build lands and create an educational envirnmoent for the students. For example thay can create games such as car races or any othe activities. They can encourage students to decorate the land and design activities for other students.
The second life could work well when using literature in teaching English. For example students can choose a play or a novel in English and perform it in the second life. they would be very motivated to choose the clothes and to decorate the stage.


Limitations

It is  a complicated tool.
students might become addictive to use second life.
Younger learners are not legally allowed to use it.
It needs a good internet connection and a powerfull computer.

Screan Caputer

Sreen caputer is  a tool that helps you to record your lesson and send the link  to your students to watch the lesson. There are some free softwares that provide you this service. One of these softwares is Jing.

This video shows you how to use Jing




Why is it good for language learning?
It can be used for feedback to correct their work.
Using visuals and arrows. students can listen and watch.
Clarity; it can be used to explain specific information( feedback)
It provides authentic materials

How can it be used in language classes?

students can use it to correct each other mistakes
students can use it make presentations
students can use it to practise their speaking like describing a picture, a movie and  on a sreen
Students can use as a storytelling. They might tell a story using mixbook, bubbler, bookur.
I think it can be used in many ways to help students practise their speaking
Students may use it to practise some grammatical structures and vocabulary. Forexample, they make sentences and then write them on the screen and explain why they used special structures.
Film dubbing. Students can show a film without sound and they work in pairs to take roles and record themselves
Record discussion
peer correction
Present a process
providing students with bad made model of writing and ask them to use caputer screen to correct it
Explaining and evaluation web tools. This can help to improve students' autonomy.
Teanslation
Reading and grammar activity
Students can use it to debate and discuss an argument

It can be used as scaffolding

Its limitations

There is a problem of compration. You have to compress your feedback

Teachers may offer too much feedback that might confuse the students

It can be teacher-centred learning