The power of Visuals...
In the subject Materials Design we have learnt about some usefool tools to bring visuals into our foreign language instruction classrooms. It is important to provide variety to our students because they all learn in different ways.
My favourite tools to work with visuals...
Avatarshttp://www.buildyourwildself.com/ Specially designed avatars realistically imitate different types of students to help teachers practice classroom management and relate to their students. I found "BuildYourWildSelf" really funny and easy to use. |
Word Cloudshttp://www.wordle.net/ Wordle is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. |
Comicshttp://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ Today the focus in education is on enhanced student learning. Recognizing that capturing the attention of young readers is an essential component of effective teaching practices, many tachers are now resorting to comics as a tool to reach struggling readers as well as students who are new learners of the English language. |
Infographicshttp://piktochart.com/ Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends.The process of creating infographics can be referred to as data visualization, information design, or information architecture. |
My work with visuals...
NGAkidArtZone was one of the tools for working with visuals that I was assigned during my course. Thus, I have included below my report on this tool. I think this tool is lovely! Students can create works of arts with different tools and according to different themes. The most wonderful thing about this tool is that students can create their own scenes by using different materials. If I were to use it with my studends I would definitely make them create the scenes of a storyline and then make a big book in which they have to add the text! I'm sure you and your students will love it!
Check out my work
Comic Strip
During my course I was asked to chooe among many comic tool for creating my own comic strip. I chose "MakeBeliefs". At your left you can see my own creation.
I highly recommend this tool because it is user friendly. However, bear in mind that once you finish your work you will not be able to edit it. In my case, I had a typo and so I had to fix it with paintbrush so as tu avoid the burden of creating it all over again. This tools gives you the option of printing your work, or either send it by email. I think it's worth giving it a try tho!
I highly recommend this tool because it is user friendly. However, bear in mind that once you finish your work you will not be able to edit it. In my case, I had a typo and so I had to fix it with paintbrush so as tu avoid the burden of creating it all over again. This tools gives you the option of printing your work, or either send it by email. I think it's worth giving it a try tho!
Infographs
After creating my own MakeBeliefs' comic strip , I was asked to use "Piktochart" (an infographics) as a means to explain how the comic generator"Makebeliefs" works. I commented on the positive and negative aspects of using it. Thus my work will show in a brief and visual way how to go about the creation of your own comic strip using MakeBeliefs. I found Piktochart in itself a rather complex tool. I managed to do this work but I definitely think I need to keep on exploring it as it gives you a whole range of different possibilities. Clic the button below to check my work.