Blog Post #2 - Presentation Tools & Screencasting Tools

1. Describe the Presentation Tool or Screencasting Tool you used. Provide a link to the website.

I used 'Prezi' to make my visual aid for the class. Prezi is a presentation tool we can use to create a poweful visual images, of course including information in it. It looks like a one big canvas on the wall, so it's easy for us to understand the whole flow of the speach by just taking a glance of it. Comparing with powerpoint that most widely used, Prezi is not linear but  multidimensional. Because of it, it looks very active and alive enough to catch the attention of the audience.
Plus, there are so many useful templates in Prezi so it's easy to make visual aids with it even to someone who's not used to it. The templates various and beautiful, too.
Prezi is very famous now. The number of users of it is going up everyday. Now, it's your turn to explore the world of amzing visual aid, Prezi.

Link to Prezi :  http://prezi.com/


2. Describe the presentation or activity you created using the tool. Provide a link to the location of your embedded presentation on your Google Site.

It was the first time I made a presentation file with Prezi. I made a mistake, and I didn't know how to use it at first. However, I started getting used to it by clicking and seeing what happens there.
The contents of my presentaion is very simple. When we learn foreign languages, we should cover 4 dimensions; listening, reading, writing and speaking. By practicing these four categories, we can be a fluent user of that language.

My presentation on google site :  https://sites.google.com/site/heyhjfly/pre


3. Describe your experience using the tool. Would you recommend it to other teachers? Why or why not?

I highly recommend Prezi to other teachers because it's a very powerful tool. It's not just the matter of  'this is better than this'. By using Prezi, we can give students the guidance before they even start learning. Prezi is consists of multiple images on one big canvas. Whoever sees it, he/she can get the flow of the contents of the class just by looking at it. It helps students to feel easy about what they are going to learn.
Moreover, in most cases students talks each other right after the class something like "What did we learn today?" or "All I can remember is the last/first part of the lecture.". In this kind of situation, Prezi will be very effective for them to reflect and remember the learned materials in a short time-all they have to do is just glancing the canvas.
Because of those reasons above, I strongly encourage teachers to use Prezi.


4. Describe potential uses the tool could have in the Korean EFL learning context.   Korea is the country learning English as a foreign language. It's rarely probable to talk in English outside of the classroom. In most cases, students don't have the chance to talk with foreigner on the street. So it is really hard for them to practice English everyday and their motivation can be depressed easily. Due to the specific envirnment we have in Korea, it's really important for teachers to motivate students to learn. Without motivation we cannot lead them to a certain level. To do so, Prezi can be one good answer to keep students motivated by showing them colorful and actively moving images.   

Blog Post #1: Teacher Resource Sharing Site Review

The site I'm going to share with you today is http://www.eslprintables.com/.

#1. Quick Peep

This website where English Language teachers exchange resources: worksheets, lesson plans, activities, etc.You can search resources you want to find by setting criterias like level, age, type, contents and users.

Teachers from all over the world upload their teaching materials to share with others. The accumulated information on it until now, it's huge.

You can browse the website without registration, but to download it, you should register and send your own contributions.

Plus, there are some rules you shoud chek before you send your own contribution.

Here's an example of those rules.

As you've seen above, just follow the rules and send materials you'd made. Then the administrator will check it and give you an authority to download every resource on this website.
Easy, huh?



#2. More details

The caregories of this website is devided  into two parts, contents and forums like below.

First of all, when you see contents, there are vocabulary, listening, speaking, writing and reading worksheets, etc. You can also find worksheets of cinema and TV, gmaes and songs.
Most of the materials are high-quality worksheets. As far as I concern, you won't need to spend lots of time to prepare your own worksheets in most cases because there are plenty of things you can utilize on the website. It will be a very effective way to prepare for the class teaching&learning activity, and even better than doing it all by yourself.

Here's an instance of an worksheet with songs for your reference.

As you see up there, there is an worksheet of songs, in this case, ABBA. It's very colorful and looks interesting. Students can  be stimulated by using this material.

Secondly, there's Forum. It's categorized by techniques and methods in language teaching, games, activities and teaching ideas, etc. Teachers can share their ideas on each topic and they also exchange their opinions about problems and questions they have.

In conclusion, you can share good-quality English teaching materials with other teachers through 'contents', and you can also use it as a channel to get a better ideas about teaching by talking with them through 'forum'.

Hope this review helped you to understand what eslprintables.com is.
If you have any comments, please write about it. I'm happy to share ideas with you.
Thanks! and have a good day ;)