MyBrainshark— a good tool for presentation making

What is it?       

MyBrainshark is a brilliant tool that
users can combine different forms of documents (e.g. voice recording, picture, video, powerpoint, podcast) into one integrated form of exhibition.

Some Advantages/Why is it relevant to language teaching and learning?

• The greatest advantage of MyBrainshark, I think,is that it can have audio, video and written documents synchronised.
• This tool can be used to promote distance learning and learning autonomy since they can do it at home or anywhere else if there is network connections.
• It is interesting and motivating for students to give a oral presentation by combining students' own life, for example, their photos or creative pictures, with their oral expression.
• It provides a good opportunity for teachers to make a mini-lecture! 
• It's helpful for students to practice their speaking and presentation skills.
• The recordings encourage students to pay more attention to the accuracy because everyone wants to show a perfect talk to the public.
• Your talk can be embedded, if you like, into another site, like a blog, as I show on my second page"Echo's talk", to share your information with others.

Some approaches to facilitate teaching/learning

• As individual work, teachers can let student make a oral presentation of his/her life,commenting on his/her photos.Or,give personal opinion of an event.
• As group work, students can make a combined presentation together  which also improve their collaborative working skills.
• There are a number of talks already being uploaded on this website, so it can also be used for listening activities to promote learners' listening skills as well.
• Use this tool to add others' voice in order to give a oral feedback.we can send our uploaded written documents to other people to ask their feedback, such as students sent their homework or presentation to their tutor or teachers send their handout to other fellow teachers.
• Teachers can use this tool to make a mini-lecture, thus students can replay several times until they are fully understand.
• Use this tool to make a product. In terms of "Presentation, Practice, Production" teaching model, after giving instructions at class, teachers can ask students to complete a task as the "production" stage at home by using this tool. It not only saves time but also connects inside and outside class!

Limitation

It can only record for 15 minutes. Maybe it's not enough for teachers to give a mini-lecture while it's quite a long time for students to talk.

Jing

              

Try to download Jing by free.

• What is it ?

Jing is a very useful screen-capture tool produced by TechSmith. It enables other people to  view what you record on your computer screen as well as hear your voice of explaining at the same time. Another  important feature of it is user can easily store and share the recording.Of course, all of these are free.

• How to use it?

Following video will show you how to use it step by step.

• Why is it good for language learning?

1. In the language learning process, Jing can be regarded as a superb tool for teachers to give feedback. They can mark students' homework online and highlight the mistakes or errors, and then explain in detail. and give and record  the oral feedback. 

2. Compared with traditional written feedback, it is more clarified by using Jing to record an oral feedback since amount of suggestions will be given during recording. 

3. As for lower-level learners, this type of feedback provides them a plenty of time to digest and understand their confusing or difficult problems. 

• How to use it to foster language learning?

1. As for giving feedback, teachers can  point out the part they want to make a comment, either by explaining more details, or by giving examples. Then students can go back to listen the comments and watch the video again and again until they understand.

2. It can also used by students. For example, describe a picture using target language structures or phrases as a follow-up activity after speaking class or draw an outline and demonstrate their thoughts to the teacher before a writing work.

• Limitations

1. It is impossible to give such an oral feedback to each students,especially in a large size class like China. Taking a record one by one is a time-consuming work. 

2.If it's a free version, there is only a 5-minute length for one Jing recording.