Triptico

What is Triptico?

I’m going to introduce a useful tool that I really enjoyed during our MA course and it’s called Triptico!

How it works?

There are so many applications that you can use but I won't go through all of them. Here’s a short tutorial for creating a word mix activity.

The activity helps students to practice their spelling. You may add audio clues or picture clues.

Benefits

1. Increase motivation and engage students, with sound effects and graphics.

2. Very diverse activities that focus on different skills and can be used in different subjects/ topics.

3. They are not just games as some explanation will be provided when students get the wrong answer.

4. Potentials to help students develop higher order thinking skills. Take 'Word Mix' for example, it appears to be a simple spelling practice, but there is a function for you to limit the number of moves. Students can only move the letters within the times set by you. Then they not only need to know how to spell the word, but need to calculate and think about the order of moving the letters. This helps them develop logical thinking, one of the higher oder thinking skills. Of course, these kinds of activity will be more difficult to design as we need to think of a reasonable number of moves! 

5. Quick and easy to create. I can see how 'Find the Answer' can help me avoid all the preparation of printing out picture cards and word cards and carry out a Pelmanism activity easily. More importantly, I don't have to worry about forgetting to bring the material to class!

6. I like that the tripticos created can be shared. It is always nice to share our resources not just to save time, but also get some new ideas and learn from each other.

Limitations

1. It works better with an interactive white board. You can still use it by clicking the answers for the students or inviting them to come out and click it by themselves, but then it won’t be as attractive as touching the white board directly. In Hong Kong, not all schools have IWB and even if they do, they usually only have one or two in the activity room. 

2. The trial only lasts for 7 days. Then you need to pay for a small amount for the upgrade. I think it is still worth it, especially when you have an interactive white board in your classroom as they work very well together.

3. In some applications it is hard for teachers to think of enough distractors or options, but it’s fine, this happens even when we’re using pen and paper

4. In some applications that are in competition mode, such as What's the Question, when students get the wrong answer, the rest of the class will automatically get the points. What if the rest of the class also do not know the answer? They simply get points because their classmates make mistakes. I think it will be better if it allows the other groups to answer and get the marks rather than getting them automatically.

Some ideas to use Triptico

1. Lucky Draw
I usually use lolly sticks to do the lucky draw and nominate students to answer when i need to. This is perfectly fine!
However, when you are only doing a one-off workshop or special lesson, when you have some new comers or some teachers (usually because they are here to observe your lesson) and you want them to participate in the activities, Triptico will come in handy!

To find out more:
My friend Joe likes Triptico very much! Visit his blog and find out what he says! He also designed an activity using Ten words'. Have fun!

Voki

What is Voki?

After registering with your email, you can use Voki to create your own speaking avatars by choosing your own character, choosing the voice and even adding your own voice in it. You can listen to the created animation, and get it posted online or email to your friends. Voki has been expanding and there are paid versions such as Voki Clasroom, Voki Presenter and Voki Teach. Take Voki Classroom for example, teachers and students not only enjoy extra charaters and animations, but also can enjoy the management system as teachers can review students’ work.

How it works?
Watch the video and find it out!


Benefits
- It is free.

- It is easy to use. Teachers do not need to spend much time on explaining the steps to create a speaking avatar. 
- It is user-friendly. The product produced can be shared via email or posted on websites.

- It provides a speaking model for students, especially those who do not speak English at home. They can even be exposed to a variety of accents. 

Limitations
- There is limitation in customizing the characters. On the other hand, students may spend too much time on customizing the characters, instead of focusing on the function of the tool.
- The length for each audio is 1 minute maximum. Students or teachers cannot record long speeches. 
- It is still possible for teachers to review student work using the free version, but will be difficult to manage and organise student work when they use it often.

Some ideas to use Voki
1. For dictation practice
I used to record some audio files of dictations on Vocaroo to help my student study for their dictations. Some of them could not play Vocaroo so I introduced Voki. They can copy the words and sentences on the dictation revision sheet posted on school website and create their own Voki. I find this and Vocaroo particularly useful as the spelling of my students improved. I think listening to L2 more often help them develop their phonological awareness.

2. To proofread our writing by listening to it
This can be useful to students like me to review our essays. At the beginning of the school year, my classmates and I discussed that we got exhausted after writing long essays and sometimes our brain just do not function very well while we proofread. One of my classmates told me he just copied and pasted some parts of his essay that didn't 'sound right' to Voki and listened to it a few times. Then he usually comes up with another way to write the same idea. I have tried this and it helped me proofread some sentences that I found problematic, but it would be more helpful if we can copy and paste the entire essay to it. Sometimes my brain just doesn't function and can't spot the problems at the first place! This tip may not as powerful as some other ways in terms of developing writing skills, but it certainly helps me with proofreading!

3. Voki is not only limited to help students develop listening or speaking skills. Avatars can be the teacher for carrying out 'Shadow Reading' practice. In a structured Shadow Reading exercise, even without questioning or discussion on the texts, students can internalise the content by simply following a teacher to read aloud the texts. There is evidence showing that Shadow Reading can improve students reading comprehension (Sadeghi ,Afghari & Zarei, 2016). If students can develop a habit of following the avatar to read aloud some texts every day, I believe their English will improve very quickly!

Review of an ELT blog

There are a lot of blogs about English learning. Some of them are run by publishers or a group of language teachers but I like this blog the most. I think it's a very personalised blog by David Didau and I enjoy reading it a lot. The blogger is an experienced teach and he has been blogging for six years! I like that he is not only sharing English learning tips and useful resources, but also discuss some issue in ELT and gives his opinions.

Update on 3/4/2018
In the book called Digital literacies written by Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum (2013), they talked about how blogs can be examples of Personal Learning Networks (PLN) and I find that chapter particularly interesting. If you are interested, you can read p.30-32 in chapter 1 and chapter 4. On p.351 of chapter 4 there are some relevant blogs suggested by the authors. I visited a few and they are all very informative and are useful for teachers.