AI Helps Teaching -- Using ChatGPT!

John Dewey pointed out that “if we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow”. Traditional education is ICT-free, Teachers interact face-to-face with students using paper textbooks and blackboard writing in the classroom. However, contemporary education has recognized the importance of ICT and integrated technology and artificial intelligence (AI) into teaching. The AI we are going to introduce this week is ChatGPT, officially launched by enterprise OpenAI in 2022.

Software Overview

ChatGPT is essentially a chat tool. Compared to past artificial intelligence, it can not only answer structural questions such as grammar correction, translation, and answer finding, but most importantly, it can solve relatively open problems such as programming. In addition, ChatGPT can solve complex structured problems, such as creating tables, extracting abstracts, and so on.

Software Usage Guide

Step 1: Go to ChatGPT through the link: https://chat.openai.com/. Create an account and log in.

Step 2: Ask a question and wait for answers.

Step 3: Ask a more detailed question and wait for answers.

ChatGPT in Language Teaching

Firstly, ChatGPT can provide creative ideas for our course design, assist in searching and organizing literature, and generate complete course materials, such as syllabuses, course plans, and reading materials.

Secondly, ChatGPT can assist us in lesson preparation. For example, we can conduct simulated conversations with ChatGPT to better understand students' issues and prepare for class. In addition, if we need to use other languages in the classroom, we can use ChatGPT for translation.

Thirdly, ChatGPT can become a classroom teaching assistant, providing a real-time sharing platform for students, answering questions, as well as providing ideas for classroom activities, increasing classroom fun and richness, helping students understand complex content and concepts.

Fourthly, ChatGPT can help us generate brand new questions based on teaching requirements.

Fifth, ChatGPT can assist students in autonomous learning. It can provide rich materials to help students achieve self-directed and personalized learning.

Advantages of ChatGPT 😀😀

1. ChatGPT has a certain predictive model that can achieve accurate automatic chat service recommendations, and can complete accurate recommendations based on the user's actual environment, chat skills, and needs.

2. ChatGPT can automatically chat or assist with real-time services, providing services according to different user needs.

3. User friendly and easy to operate.

4. ChatGPT can achieve fast chat, save customers' time, and improve the service efficiency.

5. ChatGPT can enhance students' interest and participation in learning. 

6. ChatGPT can provide targeted teaching content and Q&A based on students' needs and feedback, helping students better understand and master knowledge.

7. Reducing teachers' work pressure.

Disadvantages of ChatGPT 😔😔

1. ChatGPT utilizes a large amount of data and requires it to be stored on servers. If the system does not have proper data security controls, it may lead to data loss or theft.

2. ChatGPT cannot meet users' needs based on their psychological needs like manual intervention.

3. ChatGPT may reduce our ability to express ourselves and think independently. The excessive use of ChatGPT may make users lack the willingness and ability of active learning and exploration.

5. ChatGPT may lead to Students plagiarize.

If you want to learn more about ChatGPT, you can see the video below. 👀👀

In brief, pay attention to balancing advantages and limitations of ChatGPT, and avoid excessive dependence and abuse, it is an excellent AI to assist teaching and learning. Although ChatGPT can answer almost all questions, teachers still have value in existence. In class, we need to emphasize the cultivation of students' independent thinking and expression abilities. Moreover, we need to supervise students' usage of ChatGPT and prohibit plagiarism.

How to Improve Oral Fluency -- Using SpeakingPal on Your Phone!

Nice to meet you! Last week, we learned about Speechling, a website for learning spoken language. Although Speechling can help our students practice speaking to some extent, its untimely feedback and detached practice content from reality has limitations. This week, I will introduce you a more convenient and effective software for practicing spoken language, SpeakingPal English Tutor. This is an interactive application that uses mobile voice recognition function. It features a series of mini courses, dialogues, interactive exercises, role-playing, and language activities, providing immediate feedback for users' oral performance and providing a review mode for the future. It can be used for free both on iPhone and Android. With this software, we no longer worry about searching for situational dialogues to teach words and sentences, and our students can also practice their communication skills.

Usage Guidelines

(1) Use your mobile phone to download SpeakingPal through the link: https://www.speakingpal.com/. 

(2) Register and log in.

(3) Select a preview of the unit example dialogue, you can practice individual words and sentences, as well as entire conversations.

(4) The comment area displays the words and sentences you practiced, and native speakers will evaluate your recordings.

(5) You will receive color-coded feedback, green feedback means you do a good job, yellow feedback means your practice is ok, while red feedback means your oral English should be improved.

(6) You can repeat the word, the sentence, or the dialogue according to the advice of the native speaker and colorful feedback.

Software Evaluation

Advantage 😀😀

(1) Because SpeakingPal can be downloaded on mobile phones, users no longer need to carry heavy books or have a computer device to practice speaking. They can practice anytime and anywhere (Pachler et al, 2010).

(2) Compared to Speechling, students can not only receive help from native speakers, but also receive timely feedback through AI.

(3) The practice of SpeakingPal usually only requires users to spend 3-6 minutes, helping them use fragmented time to learn.

(4) The practice of SpeakingPal is based on interesting conversations in real life, which can not only provide users with a natural speaking experience, but also provide teachers with more language teaching materials. By practicing English in familiar situations, students can learn faster.

Disadvantages 😔😔

(1) The SpeakingPal lacks long conversation practice, making it difficult for users to form a systematic learning system.

(2) While teachers require students to use mobile phones in class, it increases the risk of distraction and makes it difficult to manage.

(3) The feedback provided by artificial intelligence is not always accurate, and it may mislead users.

(4) The voice input function is limited by the environment, thus noise and bass volume may lead to inaccurate content input.

If you want to learn more about SpeakingPal, you can watch the video below. 👀👀

In summary, SpeakingPal is a mobile app that is highly recommended for students to engage in autonomous oral practice. Through authentic conversations and timely feedback, it helps users improve their oral fluency, communication skills, and comprehension abilities. However, we need to guide our students to practice relevant dialogues in a targeted manner, and using the SpeakingPal in the classroom requires proper supervision to prevent students from being distracted.

Reference

• Pachler, N., Bachmair, B., Cook, J., & Kress, G. R. (2010). Mobile learning: Structures, agency, practices. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0585-7

How to improve oral fluency -- using Speechling!

Have you ever encountered the following problems in oral English teaching: students are unwilling to express themselves; their pronunciation is difficult to correct; their oral weaknesses are different, and we have difficulty coordinating course content. However, oral proficiency determines whether our students can effectively communicate with others. Therefore, it is important and necessary to choose a network technology for auxiliary teaching of spoken language.

Hard to understand

This week, I will introduce a foreign language learning website to you, Speechling. Speechling supports to learn 16 languages, including English. The Speechling includes over 1000 interesting exercises and free native language coach guidance to help users quickly achieve fluency in speaking. In Speechling, learning a foreign language is not only about reading through a single text, but about reading follow a sentence. On the one hand, users are able to compare their pronunciation with the standard pronunciation in order to see if their pronunciation is accurate. On the other hand, each user will be randomly assigned a pronunciation tutor. Every time the user finishes reading a sentence, the recording of his reading will be uploaded to his tutor, who will provide feedback as soon as possible. In brief, unlike other websites, Speechling provides both technical support and manual coaching assistance to users.

homepage of Speechling

User Guide

Step 1: Go to the website through the link: https://speechling.com/zh/

Step 2: Register and log in to your account, select the spoken language you want to learn;

Step 3: Select a speaking tutor, speaking projects, etc. 

Step 4: Make some oral practice and have recordings, wait for your tutor's feedback.

How to use Speechling

Website evaluation

Advantages 😀😀

(1) Each user is equipped with a native speaker tutor. Their tutors will give them personal feedback, which  is more authentic and targeted.

(2) Users are no longer nervous and embarrassed when practicing speaking. Research has found that in Internet environments, participants have significantly longer vocalization time than in face-to-face environments (Blake, 2009).

(3) Speechling helps users correct their pronunciation, reduces ambiguity caused by pronunciation, and facilitates effective communication in subsequent life.

(4) There are diverse forms of practice here. Speechling does not only use text reading, but combines audio to help oral practice.

(5) The Skill Tree and Audio Journal functions in Speechling record the user's growth process, from which users can gain a sense of achievement and motivation. In addition, users can repeatedly practice unfamiliar words and focus on.

(6) Teachers find it difficult to take into account the abilities and characteristics of each student in the classroom, especially in countries with limited educational resources. While Speechling users can choose the difficulty level of their learning content and conduct personalized learning.

Provide a coach for each user

Disadvantages 😔😔

(1) Although Speechling equips every user with a coach, the coach is not real-time online. Therefore, users need to wait for a period of time to receive feedback, which is not timely.

(2) Users may experience blurry recording content due to their physical condition or noisy background sound, which hinders Speechling from evaluating their pronunciation.

(3) Speechling mainly improves users' oral proficiency through practice, lacking real-life scenario practice for communication and interaction, and its assistance in face-to-face conversations is limited.

If you want to learn more about Speechling, you can watch the short video below.

In short, we can recommend Speechling to our students to use it for autonomous learning after class. In addition, we can also present practice on Speedling in classroom to motivate students to speak and improve their oral proficiency. However, we must exercise students' face-to-face communication skills more in the classroom, which is the most important!

Reference

BLAKE, C. (2009). Potential of text-based internet chats for improving oral fluency in a second language. The Modern Language Journal (Boulder, Colo.), 93(2), 227-240. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00858.x

Blended Learning -- Using Genially to design activties!

Are you tired of using PowerPoint to present classroom content? Are your students also tired of traditional teaching methods? Under the trend of online education, enhancing learning engagement through interaction is becoming increasingly important, but traditional teaching tools seem to no longer meet teaching needs.

A tool from Spain provides us with more ideas. Its name is Genially, and the meaning of the word itself expresses happiness, implying the richness and joy of its function. Genially is a multi in-one design website specifically for creating dynamic and interactive activities, and offers thousands of templates to choose from. Of course, in addition to using templates, you can also directly create posters, infographics, games, and more from scratch. In addition, Genially has thousands of visual effects, including vectors, image libraries (including well-known libraries such as Unsplash, Giphy, and Pixabay), maps, and more, helping you quickly design interactive elements or add dynamic effects. After your work is completed, you can also turn it into a mini website, a product catalog, or other interactive spaces by adding buttons, or by inserting images and community posts, make the overall design interface more eye-catching and interesting! Meanwhile, Genially also supports multi person online writing, which promotes cooperative learning among students. Compared to Kahoot!, Genially focuses more on creating different forms of content, not just games.

Genially

User Guide

Step 1: Open the website through the link: https://app.genial.ly/. Create an account and log in.

Step 2: Choose the canvas, use keywords to search or browse directories for each creative type: infographics, presentations, games, etc

Step 3: Personalize it by changing text, colors, images, uploading your own materials, or using resource images, illustrations, images, maps, and more in the editor.

Step 4: Share your content with others or export your content to multiple platforms.

Genially -- games

Advantages😀😀

(1) The countless templates provided by Genially can help users quickly and easily create content.

(2) Genially's automatic synchronization save function reduces the risk of information loss.

(3) Genially's one-stop service provides convenience for users. Users only need to open Genially to produce content. If users want to search for images online, they can directly open websites such as pixabay and unsplash in Genially to search.

(4) Users can add more visual elements to the classroom through Genially to better explain complex information and concepts. Pictures or videos can attract students, allowing them to quickly grasp concepts and turn tedious experiences into unforgettable ones.

(5) Genially is a blended learning approach that integrates the advantages of face to face teaching with online teaching, such as classroom interaction and technology mediated interaction between students, teachers, and learning resources.

(6) In the sharing process, Genially not only supports to importe various forms of content, but also supports to exporte content to multiple platforms. We can share our works with students, rather than just presenting them in class.

Disadvantages😔😔

(1) There are too many resources and it takes time to filter.

If you want to learn more about Genially, you can watch the video below. It introduces Genially in details. 👀👀

In brief, Genially is powerful and rich in designing interactive content, adding color to our teaching. I can hardly imagine what disadvantages it has. Let's quickly use it! 😀😀

Tools For Collaborative Work For Language Learning -- Using BookCreator!

In last week, we have known about VoiceThread, where we could engage students in collaborative work for language learning. This week, I will introduce another application for you. 😀😀 Its name is BookCreator, you can visit the website through the link: bookcreator.com. It is a place where supports jointly constructed knowledge and understanding through interaction and "scaffolding practice" (Cullen & Kullman, 2013).

Users of Book Creator can generate their own digital books by typing, drawing, or uploading video, audio files, and images. On the one hand, as teachers, we can provide students with the books we design; On the other hand, Book Creator allows multiple students to collaborate to create a book in real time, which is conducive to students' cooperative learning.

Since Book Creator is so powerful, let's take a look at how to use it! 👀

Usage Guide

Step 1: Go to bookcreator.com and click sign in.

Step 2: Sign in as a teacher or a student.

Step 3: Create your own library and click “+New book” on the upper left.

Step 4: In your new book, use the “+” sign on the upper right to import or generate any content.

Step 5: Use the “i” sign on the upper right to adjust settings of the page.

Step 6: Use the play button to get the preview page to share, download, or use “Read to me” button to listen to your book.

Due to the complexity of the steps, here is a video that specifically shows you how to use this software.

Software evaluation and recommendations

Advantages 😀😀

(1) Substitution. Digital books have replaced traditional textbooks, which are green and environmentally friendly, with richer forms and larger content capacity. For example, when students are learning pronunciations of English words, watching a video or listening to a standard recording is more helpful than reading a line of text.

(2) Easy to modify. When users create their own book, they can modify the content repeatedly, which is more flexible and convenient.

(3) Students can create a book with their personal characteristics. Traditional unified textbooks are difficult to design teaching content based on the characteristics of each student, while Book Creator is more unique and targeted. For example, while students are learning English, they can create a book where records the key points they are not familiar with, avoiding reading already familiar content.

(4) Students and teachers are free to exchange ideas and brainstorm through Book Creator.

Disadvantages 😔😔

(1) Information security. Due to improper actions, the edited content may not be successfully saved. In addition, public information platforms increase the risk of information leakage.

(2) Lack of regulation. The speech is not regulated, and some dangerous negative remarks may have an impact on users.

(3) Visual impairment.

In summary, I highly recommend you to use Book Creator in the classroom, as it can effectively help students participate in textbook production and promote interaction between teachers and students. However, when guiding students to use Book Creator, we need to provide them with technical guidance and appropriate information supervision. 

See you next week!

Reference

Cullen, R., Wild, C., & Kullman, J. (2013). Online collaborative learning on an ESL teacher education programme. ELT Journal, 67(4), 425-434. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/cct032

Tools For Collaborative Work For Language Learning -- Using VoiceThread!

Cullen and Kullman (2013) pointed out in their work that knowledge and understanding were jointly constructed through interaction and "scaffolding practice". The rapid development of the network and the opening of software provide more opportunities for us to engage students in cooperative learning. In this blog, I will introduce a simple but powerful learning website, VoiceThread, which you guys can use in teaching, especially in remote online teaching. 😀😀

Software Function Overview

The name VoiceThread indicates that this is an application that allows users to participate in discussions and become the main body through voice. VoiceThread combines Flash production tools with audio recording, allowing users to add voice comments through the microphone, to add video comments through the camera, to add text comments through keyboard. Similar to Google Docs, where multiple users can edit the document at the same time, users of VoiceThread can effectively annotate videos at the same time. Moreover, their annotation has a more diverse formate.

Software Usage Guide

Add recordings to a video in VoiceThread

Step 1: Go to https://voicethread.com/ and register an account.

Step 2: Upload a video.

Step 3: Add your comment (voice, video, text, images, etc.).

Software evaluation and recommendations

Benefits 😄

(1) From the brief steps above, it can be seen that VoiceThread is easy to operate and suitable for people of all ages.

(2) Students no longer passively accept knowledge during learning, but actively participate in collaborative discussions.

(3) Participants do not need to be online at the same time and can access the video at any time, making time arrangements more flexible. Moreover, students can deeply reflect on the classroom content and are no longer limited by class time.

(4) Students can replay their comments on VoiceThread to learn what they have been thinking in the past.

(5) Students have the opportunity to freely exchange ideas with their classmates on VoiceThread. They no longer feel anxious, and teachers can learn more about students' thoughts.

(6) For beginners of a second language, VoiceThread is more practical. Unlike keyboard text input, the functions of voice input and video comments allow beginners to record their comments without the need to accurately spell words. In addition, the voice input function reduces the time and improves learning efficiency.

Shortcoming 😔

(1) The voice input function cannot ensure the accuracy of information. The highlight of VoiceThread is the diverse form of discussion. However, speech input is influenced by factors such as the speaker's physical condition and environment. For example, if the speaker's voice becomes hoarse or the background is too noisy, the recording cannot be understood.

(2) The video function increases the risk of information leakage.

(3) Lack of regulation. The age of VoiceThread users is not restricted, and their speech is not regulated. Some dangerous negative remarks may have an impact on teenagers.

Suggestions

In short, VoiceThread has more advantages than disadvantages and it is a website that is very suitable for teachers to use to develop their teaching skills and engage students in collaborative work. However, when guiding students to use VoiceThread, we need to exercise effective supervision.

Finally, if you want to learn more about VoiceThread, you can see the video from YouTube below. See you next week! 😄😄

Reference

Cullen, R., Wild, C., & Kullman, J. (2013). Online collaborative learning on an ESL teacher education programme. ELT Journal, 67(4), 425-434. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/cct032

Guide Students to Learn Autonomously -- Using Tubequizard!

The traditional language learning classroom is often teacher-centered. In order to make students achieve good results in the exam, teachers mechanically outputs knowledge points to students. The questions they set have standard answers, which in fact reduces students' imagination and interest in language learning.

The 'Empty Vessel' Theory of Learning

However, modern teaching usually advocates student-centered. As the saying goes, it is better to teach people to fish than to give them fish. In addition to giving students more interactive time in class, we should also guide and encourage students to make efficient use of their free time after class. It is worth noting that in modern times, the development of the Internet and artificial intelligence has also provided students with richer resources and more flexible methods for autonomous learning. According to Pikhart’s (2020) survey, the younger generation uses the Internet more often and for longer than any other generation. Therefore, as teachers, we can use the Internet to strengthen students' interest in language learning and increase their language practice.

 

Today, I want to introduce a language learning platform: Tubequizard. Users can create interactive listening quizzes based on subtitled YouTube videos to understand real life promotion of high frequency language. Obviously, the purpose of this website is to boost users' listening skills, improve their understanding of top frequency expressions and grammar, and learning some special vocabularies.

I recommend Tubequizard to you as it has wide range of topics, including business, entertainment and language learning. Meanwhile, users can adjust the speed of audio playback at will. This function is necessary for repeated practice. Interestingly, students can upload any YouTube video they are interested in. It is really attractive!😜😜 Most importantly, this website is free! 😊😊 Therefore, we can recommend it to our students and ask them to make efficient use of their spare time.😏😏

 

Of course, as a conscientious blogger, I would like to declare that I did not charge their advertising fees! 👀 We need to note that tubequizard also has its own shortcomings. Firstly, the website does not need to register an account, which leads to the disappearance of students' practice records. Meanwhile, students need to upload the same video over and over again. Therefore, as teachers, we need to guide students to summarize their mistakes, so as to facilitate review. Secondly, this website can only learn English, and can't help in learning other languages. 😖

 

Finally, if you want to know more about tubequizard, you can watch the following video!

Reference

• Pikhart, M. (2020). Intelligent information processing for language education: The use of artificial intelligence in language learning apps. Procedia Computer Science, 176, 1412-1419. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2020.09.151