Tricider

Tricider is a website for collecting ideas and encouraging group discussion.

Here is the link of Tricider, you can click and explore the website by yourself:

http://www.tricider.com/

As a English teacher, I would like to use Tricider to collect feedback from my students after the class, so I can refine my lesson according to the feedback I received and figure out the strength and weakness of each lesson.

Here I wanna share with you my idea on using Tricider to improve English class which lead to better learning outcome.

1.

• You can go to the website and enter your question in the blank.
• Click 'Go' and this button will bring you to the next webpage.

2.

Below is a question I put forward in order to gain some feedback about the class from my students.

• As you can see from the picture below, the sentence in bold print and red color is the question I want to get response from my students. 
• You can click the green button to add your own idea about the question.
• or you can show your agreement or disagreement to other students' ideas by adding your own argument.

Personally, I would use Tricider for discussion before or after class,rather than in class, some people may argue that using Tricider for classroom discussion can encourage students who are shy or unwilling to express their opinion publicly to participate in the discussion. However, the length of a typical English class in high school is only 45 minuites, so using Tricider for classroom discussion seems not very efficient as oppose to asking students to discuss with each other face to face in the class.

Duolingo

Duolingo is designed for language learning, it is fun and it is free! you can either download the app on your mobile device or you can go to the website directly! I would like to download it on my phone so I can learn and practice English anytime and anywhere.

Here is the link of Dolingo and you can explore the website by yourself:

https://www.duolingo.com/

I would like to briefly introduce how to use Duolingo to learn and practice your English.


1. Download the app on your phone and sign up for it.

2. You can start from the beginning or you can choose the level you want to start with.

3. Dolingo provides you with multiple choice exercise to consolidate and develop your knowledge of vocabulary and grammar, also it provides you with translation exercise. in each short lesson, you can gain instant feedback after answering each question.





4.You can track your progress after completing each task.





As a teacher,I would recommend my students to download Duolingo on their phone, so they can make the most of their spare time to learn and practice their English.There are two main reasons why I think Duolingo can engage students in English learning and makes learning more interesting and effective.

• Each time students complete a task, you got score.the system provides instant feedback after each task, it makes students feel like they are making progress. this kind of positive reinforcement can motivate students to continue the following task.
• Each time students go through a task, the system will help them to identify their weakness so that they can focus on practicing their weak skills, resulting in better learning outcome!

As you know, nothing is perfect, Dolingo is helpful and effective if you want to enlarge your vocabulary or improve your grammar, but it is less helpful if you want to improve your spoken English or improve your writing skills, as it doesn't provide you opportunity to communicate in English.

Glogster

Glogster is a website where allows users to create their own educational content, or you can find some interesting and inspiring teaching materials from the Glogpedia content library.

Below is the link of the website, you can click and explore the website by yourself :)
http://edu.glogster.com/
And here I wanna briefly introduce what you can do with Glogster.

1.Students can choose a topic which they are interested in and create a electronic poster individually or in a group.As you can see from the picture below, students can put together text,sound, video, images, graphics and etc in one poster, and they can present their posters to each other and share their ideas in the class.

2.The most intriguing part of Glosgster for me is that there are a variety of hand-picked glogs available online, and many of these glogs are high quality and well-organized! Compare to creating your own teaching materials from scratch, this website is super convenient and time-saving for you to select useful teaching materials :) 

and this website is not only for English teachers! if you want to teach other subjects in English, this website is absolutely suitable for you!

Although I am not sure whether it can improve the outcome of language teaching and learning. I still wanna recommend this website to you!

As a students, I would like to use it, because it increases learner-autonomy and creativity. I'd rather work with my peer to create our own content instead of following the instructions by teachers strictly.
If you are a teacher, using this website can help you save your time in preparing the lesson. Apart from time-saving, teaching English by using vivid images and video is more attractive than by writing down all the grammar points in the blackboard.In addition to this, a large amount of authentic materials is another benefit for teachers to introduce Glog to their language class.

By the way, if you want to use it you need to pay for it, the cheapest pricing is 39 dollars per year, it would be a good idea for many teachers in one institution to share one account,although it is a bad idea for the company!
I feel like I am writing an advertising for Glogster, so whether to use it or no depends on your budget and your preference.I should remind you of being a critical audience when you are reading my poster!