Video communication apps and mobile learning

One of the great things about mobile devices such as tablets, iPads and phones is that most modern devices have good quality cameras and microphones built in. This opens up a really wide range of potential for communication and speaking practice that used to be such a struggle to organise on older laptops and desktop computers.

App developers have also been quick to exploit the potential of this powerful tool and in this post I'd like to look at some of the tools that have been created and how they can be used for language development.

Mailvu for asynchronous messages

Mailvu has been a long time favourite of mine, mainly because the web based version is so easy to use and doesn't require any downloads. You just point your browser at: http://mailvu.com/ and as long as you have the Flash plugin installed on your computer you can start recording immediately. Mailvu also provides mobile apps for iOS, Android an Blackberry. These are easy to use and it allows you to send short spoken messages which don't require the viewer to have any specific software or to download large video files. They just click a link and watch your message. This kind of cross platform compatibility is really important if you are working in a BYOD environment where students could be coming to class with a wide range of devices.

EyeReport for picture in picture

EyeReport  puts an interesting twist on the video communication genre by adding the ability to record video on video. By this I mean that students can upload or record a video on their mobile device and then add a video commentary over the top explaining or commenting on what they see in the original video. This opens up a whole range of potential activities that we can get students doing. They could add commentary to sporting clips, give guided tours of places they have visited, explain processes or even make their own documentaries. Once students have completed their recording these can be shared to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or emailed directly from within the app.

CoachesEye for video annotation

CoachesEye is a similar app to EyeReport (though this one is no longer free) but is much more feature rich. Like EyeReport you can record video commentary over video, but with CoachesEye you can also add annotations and you can stop and control where you insert your comments into the video. This app was designed for coaches to give detailed feedback to athletes on their physical movements, but it's a great app to get students creating and talking about their own videos, and also a useful tool to use when observing teachers for training purposes.

Storytime for bedtime stories 

Storytime is another app which puts a new Twist on the video communication genre. It combines video conferencing with reading stories out loud. The app was designed to enable parents to read to their children from a distance and it contains a number of books you can choose to read and while you read you can discuss the books, ask questions and point to things on the page whilst chatting with the video window at the top. This is great for doing online tutoring with younger learners. There is quite a range of books from very basic and up and they are nicely illustrated.

Teleprompter for controlled speaking practice 

Teleprompter is an app that I wrote about a while back when it was still free (iPhone for Speaking Homework ). The app is what it says, it allows you to import text and then it scrolls through the text while creating a video of you reading it. This is great to get students doing controlled speaking practice and then watching and improving their speaking. You can set texts which include a range of sounds which they find difficult and then watch them together and help them to understand what elements of their pronunciation are causing problems.

Keek for video journals

Keek mixes web with mobile in the form of video journals. Users can post short messages of up to 35 seconds from their mobile or computer and these are published to the web or can be browsed through the app. This would be a great tool to use as a daily learning journal, but it's probably best used by adults or more responsible teens. It seems to be a very popular tool with teens in the USA and there is a wide range of content that students can browse through, some of which is not best suited to educational purposes, but as a concept this is quite a good app. If you prefer your students to be sheltered from this kind of popular culture app, then you can still take up the idea of the video learning journal and just get them to use their built in video camera app and post the messages to a Dropbox site.

Six3 for video messaging

Six3 is similar to MailVu and also compatible with most platforms, but it gives you the choice of recording private or public message and has an additional filter feature which can help to improve your appearance on the video. It's called Six3 because you have 63 seconds of recording time in each message. Like Mailvu, the messages are also sent via links through your email, but they can also be posted directly to Twitter or Facebook from within the app.

Skype for synchronous online tutoring

Skype has been around for a good while and was one of the first video based communication tools to break into the mainstream. It's being used by many online schools to deliver live online lesson from teachers to all parts of the globe. One of the great things about Skype, apart from the reliability, is that it keeps developing and adding new features. The recent addition of video messages that enable it to be used as an asynchronous tool will really help to widen its scope for use as a language development tool.


Built in camera app
With all these apps and the possibilities they offer, it can be easy to overlook the obvious. Most modern mobile device come with a built in video camera application and you can always use this to record and send video message. This has the advantage that messages are very safe from third party app providers and any possible security breaches, but sending the video clips to someone else often involves sending the whole clip via email which can be slow and require good connectivity.

For more ideas and activities for using video and webcams to develop languages see my posting 20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students

Why use video communication?

• Well one of the best reasons to use these kinds of apps is to get students speaking. Speaking homework has always been particularly difficult for students, but now you can ask students to produce spoken homework which you can watch and assess.
• Video as a communication genre is likely to become increasingly important as a 21st century digital literacy, so it's important that our students have practice and are able to use this communication genre, just as they do with speaking on the telephone or writing emails.
• Video can draw students' attention to many of the paralinguistic features of communication that are hard to highlight in a crowded classroom.
• Enabling students to record themselves speaking and then to watch themselves can be very enlightening for students as they can then start to self assess their own performance and look for ways they can improve. It can also encourage some students to try harder, because they know that someone else might see the video.
• Video can be very engaging and can be played repeatedly so it gives students the chance to listen again and in more depth.
• Video communication can help teachers to build a stronger sense of connection with their students, especially with online course when you might never physically meet your students. Conveying some sense of your personality, sense of humour and character can be very difficult in written communications, so video has some really big advantages.
• Giving students 1 to 1 time and having the time to just sit down and spend a few moments listening to a single student without the noise of others around can be really difficult in the classroom, but having a short recorded video clip of our students can really enable us to focus on their specific strengths and weaknesses and enable us to give them some really personalised feedback.

Potential problems

• As with any kind of online communication, make sure your students know how to protect their privacy and also themselves from harassment. Be sure to have a transparent and open policy on any kind of harassment so students know what is likely to happen to anyone harassing and how to report harassment.
• If you are using video communications with younger students also make sure their parents know what you are doing and why you are doing it and get their approval (in writing if possible) and if possible get them involved too.
• Make students aware of the difference between poor quality speaking and poor quality audio. You don't want them to think they sound bad if the real problem is the recording quality and interference from background noise etc. Help your students to understand how to get he best quality results from whatever recording tools they have, by finding somewhere quiet to record and experimenting with the best distance from the microphone.
• Helping students to look their best on video will also help to boost their confidence. Getting the camera angle right and having the light coming from the right direction can also have a big impact on how students look, so helping with this can be part of the learning experience. There is a useful article here which may help: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/look-good-on-webcam/
• Always remember and remind students that anything they do or say on video can potentially be seen by other people for years and even centuries to come, so whenever one of these apps is used, encourage them to think about what they are doing and saying and keep in mind that it could be seen by people they know and people they might yet meet as well as strangers who they might never meet. It's important to remind students of how they want to be perceived.

I hope you enjoy these apps and that they help to get your students speaking. Please leave a comment if you have any favourite video communication apps that you use to get your students speaking.

Related links:

• Mix Images and Animation on Your Mobile 
• Peer editing in digital and mobile environments 
• iPhone for Speaking Homework 
• iPad Apps for English Language Teachers
• Create Books for the iPad
• Getting Learning out of the Classroom with Augmented Reality  
•  Augmented Reality and Web 3.0
• Creating texting dialogues for students

Best

Nik Peachey

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20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students

Back in November 2008 I published Part 1 of a series of articles intended to explore the use of WebCams in education. I have now finally got round to writing Part 2 which is a collection of 20 activities EFL ESL teachers can do with their students.

Here are some links to useful free video communication tools that you could use for these activities.

• MailVu is a simple to use app which runs in the browser and enables students to record a short message which can be sent by email.
• EyeJot is another simple video email app which also has a mobile version.
• Skype is of course the mainstream choice for synchronous communication.
• Oovoo is a Skype competitor which also enables the recording of video interviews by capturing both interviewer and interviewee.

I want this ebook

20 WebCam Activities

1. Chinese - video dictation - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it themselves and send it to the next student. Each student should rerecord and send the message on to another, until the last student sends it back to you. You will then see how accurately the message matches to your original text.


2. Interactive video learning diary - You could get students to create an interactive learning diary, they could email you their video summary of what they feel they have learned each day and you could then respond. The videos would form a good learning record and students will be able to look back at them later and see how they have improved - quite literally - and also hear the improvements in their speaking ability. This is also a great way to give your students one-to-one-time which can often be a problem in class.



3. Class survey - Action research - You could send a video message to your students with a class survey question that they could respond to. This would be a good way to carry out classroom research, decide on learning goals and make sure that all students had a means to feedback to you in private and on an individual basis.

 They could also create their own questions and send them to each other, then feedback in class.

4. The witness - Show half of your students a video clip or picture, that includes a number of people (scenes from films with bank robberies, where a number of people are involved are quite useful for this). Then ask the students to imagine that they are one of the people in the film or picture and they need to describe what happened. Ask them to record a video statement giving their account of what happened in the first person. You can then ask the other students to imagine they are detectives and watch the clips your students have created and make notes to piece together what happened. Afterwards they can watch the original film clip together in class and you can see how well they did and what they missed.

 Here's an example bank robbery scene

• Bank robbery - The Young Ones - BBC comedy


5. Favourite poems or haiku - Students could record themselves reading their favourite poem or haiku, you could then embed the videos into a web page or blog as a class poetry collection.


6. Video twitter - Using the feed feature you could create a kind of video Twitter, with your students video micro-blogging about learning English, their day at school, or any topic they find interesting.


7. Text and video error correction - Using the video email feature, you could record a video of yourself reading a text, then add the text within the email message. You could include some errors in the text and get them to watch the video and correct the errors.


8. Create a collaborative story - Email students a video with the first line of a story and ask them to record your line of the story and add their own, then pass it back, or pass it on to another student. This way you could build up a story between the group over a period of time.


9. Tip of the day - Send you students a learning tip each day by video email. These could be exam tips, study tips, recommended website etc.(The URL for the website would appear in the text part of the message below the video.)

10. Video dictation - Send a video email of yourself dictating a text and ask your students to watch and write the text in the email and send it back to you for correction.


11. Vocabulary record / word of the day - You could ask your students to create a video to record the words and example sentences. You could also do something like this yourself as a kind of 'Word of the Day' channel.


12. News Reports - Ask students to read the news ( in English or their own first language) and then produce a video news report on one of the main stories that they are interested in.
 They could also create their own local or school video news channel for other students to subscribe to.

13. Present continuous (sound on or off) - You can record video clips to demonstrate present continuous sentences. You can do this with sound on or with sound off and the students can guess the sentence
.

14. Questions for response - You could set up clips with questions and ask your students to respond online. They could also set up a sequence of their own questions for other students to respond to.


15. Guess the object - You or students could record a description of and object and viewers have to listen and guess what the object is. Getting students to create these clips will help them to be concise and really identify the key concepts behind describing objects.


16. Sales pitch - A variation on the idea above is to ask students to produce a video trying to convince users to buy a particular object. Again this helps them to identify key concepts, gives them practice with using language of persuasion and it may well help them to push for faster speaking speeds and better fluency.


17. Moods - You can create video clips of yourself or your students expressing different moods. This can help them to learn the vocabulary of the moods, but you could also use it to get students to predict the cause of the mood ( and practice present perfect; "He's angry because he has just been made redundant." etc.)

18. Live tutoring support - Video conferencing is an ideal tool for supporting distance learners and doing 'face to face' tutorials.


19. Video interviews - You could get in touch with someone for your class to interview. Just have one computer plus camera set up in class, and a visiting expert, friend or colleague on the other end for your students to interview. They could also interview an expert in groups from home with a conference call.
 The interview doesn't have to be done 'live' it could also be done through a series of email video messages sent to the interviewee.You can try it here by watching this video and then clicking reply.

20. Video lesson with conferencing - You could use the conference call to videocast your lesson or presentation to a group of distance learners.


I hope you find these suggestions useful and manage to use some of them with your students. Do drop me a line if you have other recommendations for useful video conferencing tools or activities. You can find more video related activities for EFL ESL here.

Related links:

• Very Easy Video Conferencing
• Online Video: As Communication
• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Video conferencing for EFL
• Send Free Video Messages

Best

Nik Peachey

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Brainstorm and Debate Collaboratively

This morning I spotted Solvr on MakeUseOf and decided to give it a try. Solvr is a free easy and interesting way to collaboratively brainstorm and attempt to solve problems online.

It's very simple set up. You just got to http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/ type your problem into the field and then click 'Start'.
You will then see your problem with a number of options underneath.


You can add different elements of the problem, make suggestions by adding ideas and leave comments.

The collaborative part comes in when you share the URL with someone, then other people can come and join in the problem solving and brainstorming. Here's the URL for the 'Making a living 'problem I set up.

I also set up a problem earlier on today, which was about integrating technology into the ELT classroom. I added a couple of elements of the problem and then posted it to Twitter. With a few minutes, the problem started to develop as people added in comments solutions, and even started to vote on the solutions.


If you would like to see how this problem is developing go to http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/d/eltrilxlwu and feel free to contribute.

So how do we use this with students?
We can set up a whole range of debates and online collaborative tasks.

• You could set up debates on the environment or other issues that your students find relevant. Here's an example on how to end world hunger. Each students could have their own topic to brainstorm the elements and causes of the problem, then students could exchange links and try to offer solutions to each other's problems.
• You could use Solver to get anonymous feedback from your action research tasks. This would also enable you to enter into debate with the students and get a deeper level of understanding of their responses.
• You could use it to address classroom issues or learning issues and explain some of the rationale behind activities. This would enable students to safely and anonymously discuss the issues with you. Here's an example We don't like reading in class
• You could use it to brainstorm vocabulary around a topic or theme and then get your students to add definitions, and other elements of information about the words, like their parts of speech, collocations, example sentences etc. Here's an example on politics. Feel free to add to it.
• We can get students to share their strategies for learning English. Example: How can we improve our English?
• You could use Solvr to plan an events like a class outing, party or doing a play. This way you can get students to think about the different jobs involved and decisions to be made, decide who will do them and explore the potential obstacles.

What's so good about it?

• It's free. very quick and really simple to use.
• It encourages critical thinking skills and the breaking down of problems into manageable elements.
• It encourages debate and interactive discussion.
• It's very versatile.
• Great for interactive homework tasks
  
• It can be used synchronously or asynchronously.
• It can give students time to think about and review what they write.
• Students can see the ebb and flow of ideas and opinions and the way they interact.
• Solvr also seems to work in Second Life. Check out Peter Miller's posting: Problem Solvr
  
• It's anonymous so students can be honest without being identified.

What I'm not so sure about

• It's anonymous, so can be open to abuse.
• It shouldn't be used to replace face to face debate in class, where that is possible, but could be useful to prime students before class so they have more ideas when they come to class for discussion.
• Carries some advertising, but students can be asked to ignore the ads.
• It's still being tested, so you debates could disappear or there could be bugs.

I think Solvr is a really useful addition to any teacher's technological tool set, especially if you are involved in any kind of distance learning courses. I hope your students enjoy it and that you think of other useful ways to use it.

Related links:

• Create your own social network 7 steps
  
• How to create a wiki
• Using wikis with EFL students
• Using wikis for teacher development
• Online Video: As Communication
• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Video conferencing for EFL

Best

Nik Peachey

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Online Video: As Communication

Over the past couple of years online video communication has been transformed, not only price and quality, but in ease of use and accessibility. This tool has great potential for extending the reaches of our classroom and opening access to much better support for distance learners.

Video conferencing
Video conferencing was once a very difficult and expensive activity that required specific software, hardware and in many cases an expensive account with a service provider. You can now do video conferencing for free using software like Skype or free web-based services like Tokbox

Tokbox doesn’t require any downloads. You just create a free account and then star connecting with other users. You can do this by sending them a link to a conference.
Using Tokbox you can:

• Make live (synchronous) video calls from your computer either to one person or a small group.
• Record video messages (asynchronous) and send the by email
• Create a series of public broadcasts that anyone can access.

Here is a video which shows you How to use Tokbox
Here you can find some Teaching suggestions for using Tokbox with students:


Sending Video Greetings
Bubble Joy is a website that enables you to create short video greetings and then email them to people. All you need is a webcam with a microphone. The service is free and very quick and easy to use.

Here you can find some suggestions for teaching ideas and some instructions for how to make this work on your computer: Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students


Annotating the web
The bubble comment site enables you to create and share a brief 90 second commentary of a website. You can use this to get students talking about and sharing their favourite sites.

To find out more about using this tool go to: Great Video Commenting Tool


Video Microblogging
Video microblogging is a way of creating your own short video broadcasts. The first such site to enable this was 12 Seconds TV. The idea behind the site is that you create a short 12 second long video clip using your webcam. Other people can then subscribe to your channel and watch your video clips. It’s often used among friends to keep each other up to date on what they are doing, but it does have a range of uses for the EFL classroom.

 Here you can read about ways to use ‘microblogging’ with your students to create digital narrative, create vocabulary records and even practice verb forms: 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL

• You can see some of my examples here: http://12seconds.tv/channel/nikpeachey
• Here’s an online activity I created for students: Create a Video Vocabulary Record

I hope this gives you a few ideas and hints for how to use online video communication tools and by all means leave comments below if your own favourites haven't been mentioned here.

Related links:

• Find out about free video editing software
• YouTube for IWBs with PicLens
• Free Educational TV Channels
• Open source video animation
• News Videos for EFL ESL Materials Design
• Things You Can Do With Your WebCam 1
• Exploiting a Video Viral
• Lesson plan Top 10 Cartoons for Children’s Rights
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• Videos for Global Issues Lessons
• Update on the Education Clip Library

Best

Nik Peachey

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12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL

What can you do with a web cam, 12 seconds of live video and some EFL ESL students? Well quite a lot when you start to think about it.

12 Seconds TV is a new website for microbloggers! Unlike it's text based equivalents, Twitter and Plurk, 12Seconds TV enables users to post 12 second video clips. Apart from that it is very like any other microblogging site. You can sign up to follow the feeds of other users and comment on other users' video clips. 12 second TV also integrates with Twitter so that you can configure it to post links to your video clips into your Twitter feed.

The image above shows how to record a 12 seconds TV clip. Click the image to enlarge

How to use this to create video materials for EFL ESL students
Here are a few ways you can use 12 Seconds TV to produce materials for your students or to get your students producing English.

• Vocabulary record / word of the day - You could ask your students to create a video vocabulary record using a12 second clip to record the words and example sentences. You could also do something like this yourself as a kind of 'Word of the Day' channel.

Here's an example:

• 12 Second Learning Diary - Ask students to record a clip each day saying what they have learned and how they have improved their language.

• Personal diary - You could ask the students to add a 12 second personal entry each day on anything that concerns them or any personal news they have.

• 12 Second News Reports - Ask students to read the news ( in English or their own first language) and then produce a 12 Second report on one of the main stories that they are interested in.

• Present continuous (sound on or off) - You can record 12 second video clips to demonstrate present continuous sentences. You can do this with sound on or with sound off and the students can guess the sentence

Here's an example:

• Questions for response - You could set up clips with questions and ask your students to respond online. They could also set up a sequence of their own questions for other students to respond to.

• Guess the object - You or students could give a 12 second description of and object and viewers have to listen and guess what the object is. Getting students to create these clips will help them to be concise and really identify the key concepts behind describing objects.

• 12 Second sales pitch - A variation on the idea above is to ask students to produce a 12 second video trying to convince users to buy a particular object. Again this helps them to identify key concepts, gives them practice with using language of persuasion and the 12 second limit may well help them to push for faster speaking speeds and better fluency.

• Moods - You can create video clips of yourself or your students expressing different moods. This can help them to learn the vocabulary of the moods, but you could also use it to get students to predict the cause of the mood ( and practice present perfect; "He's angry because he has just been made redundant." etc.)

• Sentence each day story - You or your students can build up a story by adding a new sentence to the story each day. You can make this more interesting by using a few props or even costumes. You could get each student to build their own story by adding a sentence each day to their 12 Seconds feed, or you could add a sentence each day, get your students to watch it and decide what they want to happen next.

Here's an example:




What I like about 12 Seconds TV

• It's free and a really simple idea.
• I like the restriction of having only 12 seconds to produce something
• I quite enjoy looking at what some other users have produced (though not all)
• It's something that would be simple to get students using everyday (as long as they have a web cam on their computer)
• The site produces an embed code for each video, so you can add the videos to a blog or multimedia materials without having to go to the original site or feed.
  

What I'm not so sure about

• It would be really nice to create multiple channels so that you could create a number of different types of 12 second programme feeds (but I guess this is something that only a very few people would want to do).
• The site isn't really suitable for younger or more culturally sheltered students as some of the people expressing themselves through this medium are a bit 'wacky'.
• As ever be sure to protect your students privacy and make sure they don't give away too much information about themselves and their location, especially in the case of younger students.
  

Well I hope this helps you and your ESL EFL students to have some learning fun. I leave you with a question though and welcome your comments on this; Is 12 seconds too short?

Related links:

• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Video conferencing for EFL
• Send Free Video Messages

Activities for students:

• Create a Video Vocabulary Record

Best

Nik Peachey

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Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students

It's amazing how you can spend ages looking for something you want and then when you find it a whole bunch of other things come along with it. That seems to be the way things have happened for me with video conferencing. I found and posted about tokbox last week and then came Bubble Comment this week which I wrote about on my Quick Shout blog, and now Bubble Joy!

Bubble Joy is a way of sending short (60 seconds) fun video messages to people.


Click here to see the live video message (only good for the first 50 visitors)

They have a selection of message cards and you just record your video message to go in the middle using a webcam and microphone. The whole thing is very quick and easy to do.

So why use this with EFL / ESL students?

• It's good listening and speaking practice
• It's good fun and easy to do
• It's communicative
• It's creative
• It's free, easy to use, doesn't require registration
• Nice selection of cards

So how do we use this with our ESL / EFL students?

• Well a lot of the suggestions that I mentioned in my posting Video conferencing for EFL will also work with Bubble Joy, but be sure to remember that with Bubble Joy you only have 60 seconds, and the video card expires after it has been viewed 50 times.
• You could also try using it for specific occasions (there are cards specifically for Christmas, Easter, Valentines etc.)
• You could also get students to create messages that match the other themes (What would you say from inside a lion's mouth, inside a shark, on safari) and then build a story to go with the cards explaining why this happened.
• Students could also plan an imaginary holiday and then send a card to tell other as about it (on safari, riding in a hot air balloon etc.)
• Students could use one of the TV or stage designs to give a brief news report. They could each report on their day in class or what they did on holiday, at the weekend or on a class visit.
• They could use the stage or TV designs to record a joke each and then send them round and vote on the best one.
• The cocktail glass card could be used to create warnings against the dangers of alcohol.

See the full range of Bubble Joy designs here:

What I'm not so sure about

• Students need to email the cards, so to avoid them having to share their email addresses it might be better to have the students send the cards to you and then you grab the links and share them in class or on a web page etc.
• It would be nice to be able to upload your own frame to put the video in.
• 60 seconds can be a bit limiting
• Shame the cards expire after they have been viewed 50 times

Well I hope you enjoy Bubble Joy and that it helps you to spread some joy among your students.

Here are some related links:
Great Video Commenting Tool
Video conferencing for EFL
Send Free Video Messages

Best

Nik Peachey

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Video conferencing for EFL

It's not often that you look at a product and think 'Ah! That's exactly what I've been looking for! And it's free!' But tokbox does seem to be that kind of product for me.

For some time now I've been looking round for a suitable video conferencing type application and while there have been a few that look okay, like SnapYap which I reviewed a week or two back, when I saw tokbox this morning I realised that here was a video conferencing tool that had exactly what I wanted and a bit more.

Here's a quick video demo of what it can do.

• To view the demo in a new window click here (3mins - 3.5Mb)
• Download the demo as Quicktime movie (5Mb)
• Download the movie for i-pod (7Mb)

So what do I like about it?

• It's free and doesn't require any downloads.
• I was registered and signed in without disclosing any personal information (apart from email address) within less than 3 mins of finding the site!
• It has a range of ways to communicate including group video conferencing, person to person live video calls, video email messages, and a video feed.
• You can embed videos or your call messages into blogs websites and a whole range of social media sites including Facebook and Blogger.
• You can report inappropriate use and users who are doing 'unsuitable' things with their accounts get deleted.
• Students can use it privately, with groups of friends or publicly.
• I like the inbox idea so you can check your video mail and get alerts sent to your own email inbox when someone wants to call you or has left you a message.
• It has a really nice clean easy intuitive interface.
  

Here's a quick message that I created to show you the kind of quality you can get.

So how could we use this with ELT or EFL students?

• Chinese - video - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it themselves and send it to the next student. Each student should rerecord and send the message on to another, until the last student sends it back to you. You will then see how accurately the message matches to your original text.
• Interactive video learning diary - You could get students to create an interactive learning diary, they could email you their video summary of what they feel they have learnt that day and you could then respond. Your videos would form a good learning record and students would be able to look back at them later and see how they had improved -quite literally - and also hear the improvements in their speaking ability. This is also a great way to give your students one-to-one-time which can often be a problem in class.
• Class survey - You could send a video message to your students with a class survey question that they could respond to. This would be a good way to carry out classroom research, decide on learning goals and make sure that all students had a means to feedback to you in private and on an individual basis.
• Different perspectives - Show some of your students a video clip or picture, that includes a number of people (scenes from films with bank robberies, where a number of people are involved are quite useful for this). Then ask the students to imagine that they are one of the people in the film or picture and they need to describe what happened. Ask them to a video giving their account of what happened. You can then ask the other students to imagine they are detectives and watch the clips your students have created and make notes to piece together what happened. The 'detective' students should then try to recreate the scene using the student videos to guide them. Afterwards they can watch the original film clip or picture together and see how well they did and what they missed.
• Favourite poems or haiku - Students could record themselves reading their favourite poem or haiku, you could then embed the videos into a webpage or blog as a class poetry collection.
• Live tutoring support - This looks like an ideal tool for supporting distance learners and doing 'face to face' tutorials.
• Video interviews - You could get in touch with someone for your class to interview. Just have one computer plus camera set up in class, and a visiting expert, friend or colleague on the other end for your students to interview. They could also interview an expert in groups from home with a conference call.
• Video lesson with conferencing - You could use the conference call to video cast your lessons to a group of distance learners.
• Video twitter - using the feed feature you could create a kind of video Twitter, with your students video micro-blogging about learning English, their day at school, or any topic they find interesting.
• Text and video message - Using the video email feature, you could record a video of yourself reading a text, then add the text within the email message. You could include some errors in the text and get them to watch the video and correct the errors.
• Create a collaborative story - Email students a video with the first line of a story and ask them to record your line of the story and add their own, then pass it back, or pass it on to another student. This way you could build up a story between the group over a period of time.
• Tip of the day, word of the day - Send you students a tip or word of the day by video email. These could be exam tips, study tips, recommended websites, or words and definitions.
• Video dictation - Send a video email of yourself dictating a text and ask your students to watch and write the text in the email and send it back to you for correction.

So why use video conferencing with your EFL / ELT students?

• It' a great real life IT skill as these kinds of tools are going to become a normal part of our day to day work and pleasure daily routine.
• IT adds an element of personalisation to your lessons and materials and can make it easier to build up rapport, especially with distance students.
• It can help you get some one-to-one time with your students.
• You can use it to create some really nice personalised materials.
• Students can use it (with caution) to find people with similar interests to talk to or to do learning / language exchanges.

Possible problems

• As ever be sure your students are aware of how to protect their privacy and that they don't share any personal information or contact details with people they don't know.
• Try to keep any video messages you make quite short or they will become slow / bandwidth heavy to watch. This is almost certainly a tool that will be more useful to broadband users.
• Students are going to need a webcam and a microphone of course.
• Even though inappropriate use can be reported, someone has to see it to report it, so if that is going to be one of your students, make sure they know how to report anything that disturbs them.
• You have to be careful with any tool that enables mass communication, even if it's only email, but despite that I think that tokbox is a fantastic product and one which can really enhance your teaching and your students learning. I think they have come up with a fantastic product that could become a market leader in the field of web based video communications.
• Appearance is important, so watch out for bad hair days, hangovers ad make sure you wear something nice and try to find a room with some good natural light.
  

Fantastic! Hope you and your students enjoy it. Happy EFL video conferencing

Nik Peachey

Similar postings

• Make your own chat room

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Make your own chat room

Chatmaker helps you to do just that! I'm amazed at just how easy things like this have become these days and it's free! I used this website to create this chat room:
http://www.chatmaker.net/chatap/rooms/NikPeachey/
It took probably less than 2 minutes!


Here's a quick tutorial showing how it was done.
Chatmaker tutorial (Flash 202k)

This is the kind of thing that you used to need your own server and a lot of knowledge to create, Now anyone can do it.

How to use this with your students
Creating a chat room especially for distance students can be really useful, but don't just expect them to use it. You'll need to set them some goals and tasks.

If you can get your students using it, then you'll also need to decide what level of English you want them to aim for. Do you want them using text speak? e.g. "W8 4 ME, I’M L8, SOZ "OR Would you prefer them to express that in 'plain English'; "Wait for me I'm late . Sorry". Both have some value, but make it clear to students which you're after.

If you want to develop their 'text speak' then there are some good materials here on one of the British Council's sites for teachers.

Some possible tasks you could set could include:

• Interview role plays (make one student a reporter and they have to interview another student by chat.
• Mystery guest. Tell your students that they will interview a famous person and they have to ask questions to guess who it is (You could answer the Qs yourself OR get a student to pretend to be thee mystery celebrity)
• Interview an expert. Get students to interview an expert on a specific topic. they should research the topic first to make some interesting questions, then interview each other to see who is the real expert
• Chat room Quiz. Get the students to write general knowledge questions to quiz each other.
• Trivia Quiz. You can be the quiz master, ask questions and award points to the student who gets the answer first.

This kind of text chat interaction can be really useful if you want to work on both accuracy and fluency because it pushes students to produce language in 'real time' , but you also have a written record which you can copy and past into a word document and get students to analyse and correct.

It's worth being aware that in chat rooms sentences don't necessarily come on screen in the order they would in a face to face conversation. You may get two questions appearing and then two answers. learning to cope with this can be a challenging but useful skill. You can also use this as a follow up exercise and get the students to put the sentences in the order that they should have appeared.

What I liked about it

• Extremely easy to use and create
• Very simple interface
• Very fast to get working

What I wasn't so sure about

• There is no logging in required, so you can't really tell who it is you're speaking with and so there's no accountability for what people say.
• If you use this with your students I would advise creating a new room each time and as close to your meet up time as possible, that way it's unlikely you will get any unwanted visitors

Happy chatting and if you do drop by the chat room I created we might just have a quick chat.
http://www.chatmaker.net/chatap/rooms/NikPeachey/

Best

Nik

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