Mozuku

The thing above is a QR (Quick Response) code. QR codes can contain various information including text, links, phone numbers, and even some images. They are primarily aimed at cell phone users recently and are becoming increasingly common in advertising. At the recent Wireless Ready conference, one presentation discussed the way in which QR codes can be used in classes. You see, these codes are easily generated with one of the many online generating services (just google QR cod generator). And once you have the code squares, you can print them out or paste them into a blog or website. You can use the codes to have learners put short texts (up to about 140 characters) into their cell phones. These messages can be saved and learners can take them with them. The presenter at Wireless Ready was doing interactive treasure hunts with groups of his learners. Of course, you could also give some important vocabulary or usage information. The best part is it involves no downloading for either the creator or the user, and no internet access fees.

There is a Second Life-like site that I recently came across. It looks more like a wholesome version of the Sims, with buggy or jet ski races, fashion shows, scavenger hunts and other such activities and events. It might be a good alternative to Second Life, especially for younger learners. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks like it could work well. Sign up is free for now.

It seems that there are almost too many tools available these days to allow students to interact with course material and with each other. In a Treasure Hunt column many months ago I introduced Splashcast and how it can be used in Moodle to deliver student-produced content into a course. What I did at the time was to record students as they spoke in class in a Speech and Debate class and then feed the recordings into a Moodle page with a Splashcast player. This allowed all students the chance to hear (and compare) the voices of all students from one page. It was fun, it worked well and the interface was easy to use. The downside (or the upside, depending on your point of view I guess) was that the entire exercise had to be controlled by the instructor. It didn’t take all that much time–the students simply took turns doing their short speeches into my laptop along with their turns speaking for different partners in class. But it did provide a few logistical challenges, and if you have more than 10 or 12 students, the exercise will probably be unmanageable to do in class, and that means more scheduling challenges. A better way might be to use VoiceThread. Here, students can post sample speeches, and post comments on any image or media you load onto the page. They have the choice of voice comments or text (for those students who don’t have a microphone) and the interface is very clean and very intuitive. Though the VoiceThread people have created a safe space for K-12 learners and educators, EFL students are left to their own in the regular part of the service. That said, I searched around and didn’t find any content anyone in my classes might need to warned about. I love the way student comments are arranged around the media: this can make the experience more classroom-like (by which I mean familiar, in a good way). Registration needs an e-mail address and a password, as well as a name.

Update: There is a good tutorial available for VoiceThread here. The authors are especially interested in using this tool for digital storytelling.

Two games to introduce here that are accessible to English learners in Japan. The first is Phantasy Quest. It is simple but engaging with limited vocabulary. You play a shipwrecked sailor trying to find his way around an unfamiliar island with suspicious inhabitants and find the woman who was on the ship with him before the shipwreck. The next is Job Pico, a challenging problem/mystery-solving puzzle in which you try to escape from a room. The situation is that it is a kind of job interview task that you need to perform to show that you have the smarts needed for the job. It’s a nice interface (playable in both Japanese or English for people who might get stuck and want to remove the language barrier for a while). The game has great 3-D walk-through graphics and could be used for some reading practice or, even better, for a type of do and report orally assignment.