Using Technology in the English Language Classroom
Here is a list of different web sites and applications to use for writing, speaking, listening, and reading:
Writing
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Wikispaces- http://www.wikispaces.com/
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Edublogs - http://edublogs.org/
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Wikispaces Classroom is a social writing platform for education. We make it incredibly easy to
create a classroom workspace where you and your students can communicate and work on
writing projects alone or in teams. Rich assessment tools give you the power to measure student
contribution and engagement in real-time. Wikispaces Classroom works great on modern
browsers, tablets, and phones.
The World's most popular education blogging service. Edublogs lets you easily create & manage
student & teacher blogs, quickly customize designs and include videos, photos & podcasts.
Prezi - http://prezi.com/
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Prezi is a virtual whiteboard that transforms presentations from monologues into conversations:
enabling people to see, understand, and remember ideas.
Presentations/Speaking
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Slide Share -http://www.slideshare.net/?ss
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Rich Internet Applications - http://clear.msu.edu/teaching/online/ria/index.php
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An online presentation application that enables users to create, record and share presentations.
This is helpful for students to practice CALP, and become more familiar with academic
presentation and speaking skills.
The goal of the Rich Internet Applications project is to create tools that are informed by language
acquisition research, and engage language learners in active learning.
This is a collection of different applications that enable teachers to design audio worksheets that
are interactive and incorporate multimedia into them. Teachers can also design prompts to
questions and conversations for students to listen to and record
There are also quiz applications where teachers can record questions and quiz students on their
responses.
Revisions—an application that enables students to collaborate on writing assignments. This
program allows students and teachers to maintain a record of revisions for assignments. This
enables students to see the process of writing, and not just the product.
Another great feature is Mashups—This application enables teachers to combine video clips with
interactive quiz features which test students listening and comprehension of material. Students
can also create their own activities and mashups to share with the class.
Voxopop - http://www.voxopop.com/
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An online recording application that enables teachers to create discussion boards for students to
record and listen to others’ postings. It’s free, and students have access to listen to speakers
from all over the world.
Brian Shevory, Using Technology in the English Language Classroom
Teaching and Learning Center
Temple University
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Jing - http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html
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A desktop application that enables you to capture screen content, both a picture and a
film/movie, and add recorded audio output. This application is great again for designing
presentations; however, it could also be used to overdub film recordings. Students can have a
script of a film or video and record their speaking parts to practice things like pronunciation,
intonation, and pitch.
Listening
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Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/
Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab -http://www.esl-lab.com/
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ESL Podcast - http://www.eslpod.com/website/index_new.html
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Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab is designed to provide language learners opportunities to
improve their listening comprehension skills in English.
The site was mainly designed for (1) self-access learning where students do the listening activities
on their own, and (2) teacher-directed learning where the teacher asks students to complete
certain exercises as a means of supplementing their classroom objectives. The main objective
isn't to test listening, but to help students how to learn to improve their listening.
Features many podcasts (downloadable audio files) about various topics; includes listening
guides featuring complete transcripts, definitions, sample sentences, comprehension questions,
additional explanations, cultural notes, and tips on improving English
Voice of America Learning English- http://learningenglish.voanews.com/
o Learning English is VOA's multimedia source of daily news and information for millions of English
learners worldwide. Audio programs and captioned videos are written using vocabulary at the
intermediate and upper-beginner level and are read one-third slower than regular VOA English.
Online texts, MP3s and podcasts let people read, listen and learn American English and much
more.
Reading
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Magatopia - http://www.magatopia.com/
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An internet directory of free online magazines
Critical Reading Strategies (Academic/Advanced)- http://www.criticalreading.com/
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This website shows you how to recognize what a text says, what a textdoes, and what a text
means by analyzing choices of content, language, and structure. It shows you what to look for,
and how to think about what you find.
Other
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Random Image Generator http://ddeubel.edublogs.org/2011/06/21/random-image-generator/
o This is from a blog, but click on the image to lead you to an application with Flickr that will
randomly generate images. This can be good for writing or speaking activities.
Brian Shevory, Using Technology in the English Language Classroom
Teaching and Learning Center
Temple University