Assessment Tool: Canvas

    Canvas is a network for educators which helps them to create digital classes, materials & assessments. Though it is not a tool that is assessment only, it includes a variety of assessment tools integrated within its system. Thanks to this feature, a teacher can use many different assessment tools to grade various assignment. For example, a teacher can create online quizzes and grade them as he/she likes, they are free to edit & customize however they want. Exit tickets can be given to students. The teacher can change the deadlines, percentages of assignments however s/he likes. Online forums/discussions can be opened by the teacher for the students. Students can do peer reviews of each other. Other integrations such as Turnitin can help the teacher for assessment. The teacher can create his/her own rubric or use Canvas' for assessments too. It is mostly about course development, but it helps plenty in the assessment of students too.

Speaking Tool: Voki

     Voki is an online, free tool where students create an avatar character and use them to talk about anything. The students can do their homework, projects or engage with each other through their avatars and their audios.

The Voki website is shown above.

The webpage also gives information on how Voki can be used.

    The students can sign up for free and create their avatar. With this avatar, they can join their classrooms or casual hangout sessions among each other. It is not only good for students but also for teachers, they can sign up as the teacher and teach their class through their avatars and as well as find designed curriculums to use for their classes made by other teachers.

Speaking Tool: Discord

 

Discord is an app that allows individuals to create groups called "servers" dedicated to a topic or just for chatting, and these servers can be divided into separate groups called "channels" that are dedicated to different topics. These channels can be put into two different categories: text channels and voice channels. These are self explanatory, the text channels are for texting and the voice channels are for individuals to speak with each other. 

A teacher could create a server for a classroom, and use the voice channels to practice speaking with the students. The teacher could also monitor the students speaking each other via muting themselves as to not distract the students while they practice. Also, as the server manager, in this case the teacher, could mute or unmute someone at any time, and they could also check if the student has lower their voice input and make it higher, so no cheating! 

Speaking Tool: Speak & Improve

    Speak & Improve (https://speakandimprove.com/) is a research project from the University of Cambridge. By using it, English learners can both improve their speaking/pronunciation by talking to the robot on the screen and also help Cambridge improve technology that will help English learners around the world. 

    The robot's called Sandi and it asks the learner some questions, then gives them a grade for their speaking. It uses new technology developed at the University of Cambridge so it can tell how well one speaks English just by listening to them. Plus, the grade that English learners get is an accurate grade on the internationally-recognised CEFR scale. This can help students understand their speaking ability for study and exams (including Cambridge exams).

Listening Video: Wall-e : How to Tell a Story Visually - Pixar Video Essay

                        Question: What do you think the speaker means when he says "This shot tells you                                         everything you need to know about Wall-E."? (Timestamp:5.32)

Listening Video: What's the smartest age?

Comprehension check question: Why is there no single answer to the question of what's the smartest age?

Listening Tool: Does grammar matter?

 

    "According to the video above, how did grammar become so important through the years despite almost all the languages were in the spoken form for the vast majority of history of the humanity?"

Writing Tool: Ludwig

     Ludwig (https://ludwig.guru/) is a sentence search engine that helps learners write better English by giving them contextualized examples taken from reliable sources like BBC or ScienceDirect. Furthermore, it helps learners organize their thoughts and put their words in order.

    It has also a translation option where one can type a sentence in any language and the website shows if the automatic translation makes sense in real contexts. It is very useful for students of every level who want to improve their writing skills in a different language. The fact that the website acts as a corpus promotes independent discovery and learner autonomy through the exploration of authentic language. 

Writing Tool: Linguix

Linguix is an online writing tool & extension that provides grammar features, such as fixing the mistakes or improving the quality of your writing with better synonyms through AI. After checking your grammar & rewriting, it also provides a plagiarism check. However, it is not free.

This is what the user sees when he/she starts his/her writing in Linguix. Other than grammar mistakes, linguix also shows the quality of the writing as a feedback or its speech time. When one becomes a member of Linguix, he/she can make an online appointment with someone who can guide them through their writing. For students, using its alternative "Grammarly" would be better; however that is also not free.

Reading Tool: Reading Rockets

 

    Reading Rockets (https://www.readingrockets.org/)  is a nationwide multimedia initiative that provides a multitude of research-based reading techniques, lessons, and activities to assist young children in learning to read and improving their reading skills. The website's reading materials help parents, teachers, and other educators help struggling readers improve their fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

        It has an option as "Teaching Reading" and you can find many detailed options including classroom strategies, which might be helpful for novice teachers. Also, reading courses come as modules and each module focuses on a different feature of teaching reading such as fluency, vocabulary, spelling, assessment etc. 

    There are many reading topics that can help teachers to find information and assistance and the topics come with videos.

Reading Tool: Archive of Our Own (Ao3)

 

Ao3 is a website that allows users to share their creativity and read what others have written. Ao3 is actually a fanfiction sharing website, which might make it seem inadequate for classroom use to some people, but Ao3's contents and tagging system allows readers to be autonomous in their reading and learning. 

Ao3's unique tagging system allows readers to filter out what they want to or do not want to see. Readers are able to search for works that align with their interests, so they have the freedom to choose from the thousands of works Ao3 has to offer. Readers are able to select if they would perefr a light reading or not, or if they want to they can choose the language level, altough it is not very adequate. If the reader accidentally stumbles upon a work that is NSFW, the website warns them asks the reader if they wish to proceed before showing the content. This allows the readers who did not exclude the necessery tags to avoid encountering unwanted content. 

Ao3 is made by fans for fans, so the content and the grammar are not regulated or checked for errors. There is also a chance that the author of the work does not tag their work properly, so the reader might stumble upon a work that is harder for them to read based on their level. To become an author, one must be sent a digital invitation by another author, so not everyone can share their work.

In conclusion, while Ao3 can be inadequate at times, the fact that it allows readers to engage in their interests while reading in English outweighs that.