Week 8 Discussion

This week’s discussion is on ‘Teaching with Online Tools’. We were asked to explore different tools and exercises and share our ideas on how the use of these tools might change the way we teach and/or the way that our students learn.
We have Jeff Magoto, the director of the language center at the University of Oregon, (and a very experienced EFL/ESL language teacher) with us this week. With Jeff we are going to have a synchronous chat session On ANVILL. Here are some information related to ANVILL taken from the discussion.

ANVILL was initially developed for K-12 foreign language teachers in the U.S. But now it's used by teachers all over the world, and EFL/ESL teachers are the second largest group of users (after Spanish teachers).
ANVILL tries to provide language teachers with a speech-based toolbox. The kind of toolbox where teachers and learners feel as comfortable working with speech (and other media) as they do when they word process, blog, or use a wiki or a ning. While our tools lack the pizzazz of commercial offerings, they have two advantages: 1) they're designed for language teachers/learners (in an Internet age, and 2) they're free.

ANVILL tries to have something for every language teacher, but it's probably of most use to teachers who want (and are able to) extend or enhance opportunities for spoken language practice.

For some teachers that means they use it as a space for student audio and video recordings, much like Voicethread or Wetoku. Others use ANVILL as a course website, that is, primarily as a container for other web-based resources (like those at CLEAR) or elsewhere. And, finally, other teachers (such as the two teachers mentioned in today's video below) use it a use it as a space for audio-video cultural exchanges or collaborations.

Wow! I need to try this!