Speaking Skills and Web Tools

I am going to write about different web tools that help our students develop their speaking skills. They are great since using web tools is a funny and entertaining way of practising, without being aware of it!

Present.me

One interesting web tool to practise speaking skills is Present.me. With this tool you can share all your presentation content in one place. You can combine slides, audio and video.

This tool can be used with students for a research project (for example a history project). In groups, students have to look for information about a certain topic, make a power point presentation with the information, and then, using present.me, they combine the presentation with a recording of their voices explaining it. This tool can be used by students aged 10+, since they have to know how to use power point and, maybe with the help of the teacher, present.me

                                                         

Voxopop

Voxopop is a great tool to record your voice. In the classroom it can be used to practice speaking and collaborative writing. Instead of each student writing a sentence to complete a story, student can record their voices and create a story in voxopop. They would have to create an account, which is good so that the teacher can know who is the one that has to continue the story. This task can be done during several days, each day per student. Each day a student would hear the recording and add his/her contribution to the story and so on.

 

Voki

The last tool is Voki. With it you can create an avatar and give it a voice. You can type the text and you can also record yourself. In the classroom it can be implemented, for example, with an extra activity when reading a novel. Students can create a voki of a character of the reader and record themselves saying something that the character would say. Here is the voki I've created!