Online Social Media
Applications for Language Teaching & Learning
Social
media tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, are changing the way
students and faculty communicate, share ideas, and build networks. Social Media
can be an effective tool for teaching and learning in higher education. It can
help connect students to information and help them generate a dialogue with
their teacher and other students about a course. The interest in social media
is increasing, and the educational community is looking to harness the potential
of these resources to improve teaching and learning while also being mindful of
privacy concerns.
There are so many applications supports in
teaching and learning language as follow:
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Edublogs
Edublogs is a
blogging service specializing in blogs for educational institutions. The site
is designed for students, teachers and educators, as well as entire schools,
districts or universities. Users can maintain a free blog on the site with
limited features, storage space and advertising displayed on the blog by the
site. A Pro paid plan is available which allows more storage space, allows the
user to remove the advertising on up to 30 free blogs, and which adds more
features. The Pro plan is ideal for individual teachers to add and maintain
student blogs for their class. A Campus plan is available for schools,
districts and universities which offers a blogging platform usable by an entire
institution.
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Edmodo
A teacher is
able to pose a question and students were able to respond and discuss it, often
times at home. Teachers were able to post assignments and students were able to
see them all the time, even when they are absent. Edmodo helped us make the
transition to going paperless.
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Moodle
Moodle is a free
online learning management system, providing educators around the world with an
open source solution for e-learning that is scalable, customisable and secure
with the largest selection of activities available. Moodle is supported by an
active network of certified Moodle Partners to assist with support and an
active community of developers, users and supporters.
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Google
Forms
A Google Form is
a great way to gather information related to meetings or conferences, for
example. Before a meeting, collect the names and contact information for
attendees. The day of a meeting, survey people to streamline your lunch order.
After the meeting, use a survey to get feedback on conference sessions and
gather suggestions for improvement.
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Animoto
Animoto provides
an array of tools for creating videos in your classroom. Animoto automatically
analyzes music, photos and video clips, and orchestrates a custom video,
leaving you free to focus on the content and narrative of your videos. Animoto
makes it easy to share your videos via email, on a blog/website, exported to
YouTube, or downloaded to a computer for use in presentations.
