Kamal Shafie's Blog

Introducing Blendspace  Welcome back to my ICT in TESOL blog! I hope you enjoyed reading my previous entry on Screencast-O-Matic.  In this post, I would like to talk about a website that I think is very useful for interactive online resources for blended learning classroom – Blendspace! Blended learning  The tool that I will discuss in this post is useful for supporting “blended learning” so it is best that I first briefly talk about it before we look at Blendspace later in details. According to Gruba and Hinkelman (2012, as cited in Gruba et al. 2016, p.135), “blended approach” in ELT refers to the teaching and learning process that incorporates the use of modern technologies and media in a face-to-face situation. Thus, if a teacher uses an online platform such as Blendspace to share reading materials and notes for their students before they come to the actual class, it is considered as a blended course. Here is a YouTube video on ‘blended learning’ if y...

Screencast-O-Matic: It's fantastic! What is Screencast-O-Matic? Screencast-O-Matic is a digital tool that allows you to record, edit and share video online for free. With Screencast-O-Matic, you can choose to: §    record a video of yourself using your webcam,  §    record your own computer/phone screen just like in a screencast, §    or even do both simultaneously.  You can watch a video that I’ve made using Screencast-O-Matic in this blog below: ATTENTION: Please be kind and promise not to laugh okay? 😆 I was a bi t nervous whilst recording the video but I think it turned out quite well in the end. It was a fun and new learning experience for me!😊 How can language teachers use Screencast-O-Matic? A screenshot of Screencast-O-Matic homepage As a  language teacher, I think you can use Screencast-O-Matic for a lot of different purposes: §    Virtual classroom (online teaching and l...

Create a collaborative class with Padlet! Introducing Padlet! As teachers, we often try to get our learners to collaborate and work together for our lessons, most of the time as a pair or in small groups. However, aren’t you tired of the traditional way of asking your students to do a group presentation using paper or writing things on the whiteboard? Perhaps you are worried that your students might be bored of it too? If your answers are yes, then why not try to incorporate the use of technology with websites such as Padlet for any collaborative task in your lesson? Padlet is as a digital pinboard that let you do more than just sticking notes (think of pictures, videos, and link) - cool right? [Source: Image by Gerdd Altmann from Pixabay ] What is a Padlet? Padlet is an online-collaborative learning tool that provides a ‘free’ shared working space for learners to work together on any given task, homework or project. Using Padlet, they can share their idea...