My Brainshark

MyBrainshark is quite the 'grown-up' website among all the other tools I have explored. It is a site that allows one to embed their voice into the power point slides one has prepared. It is suitable for those who wish to present their slides from afar or send their slides (voice included) to their tutors for assessment.

What is amazing about it :

1. Useful tool to embed voice in presentation slides.

2. The quality of voice embedded is good.

Limitations :

1. Not that easy to use.

2. Requires time to explore the whole tool.

3. The slides are not saved directly sometimes. May result in doing the whole recording session again which can be annoying.

4. It cannot play the voice once it has been recorded right away. One would have to wait till the whole recording session ends then one can listen to it. It would be annoying if one made a mistake and wishes to correct it and had to do it all over again which is definitely time consuming ( especially if one has to say a lot of things on a certain slide.)

How it can be used in the language classroom (suggestion):

Although I made a point that it is a rather grown-up tool to use among learners, but with the right instructions and guidance from teachers and cooperation from students, brainshark would serve as a great tool for all.

It is a great tool for school projects for instance.

1. Teachers could group the students up and assign topics for them to do a research on.

2. Each student would do their part and they would gather their findings and make a power point slide out of it. They will be expected to embed their voice too in it thus brainshark will be used.

3. The project would require them to use the target language and they would all have to record themselves speaking the target language.

4. Once the students have completed their slides, they would send the slides to the tutor.

5. The tutor/teacher will then listen to all the slides, and making notes on the language usage of the learners. The teacher would bring in the common errors made by students to the class and carry out a lesson based on  the analysis he or she has made.

6. This approach resembles a task based learning approach for it requires students to carry out a task first then have a focus on the language used.

Have fun trying it out with students! Click on the link to give it a go :

 http://www.brainshark.com/