Technological advancement is changing our world and our way of life since long time. One of the areas of development with significant change is communication, especially exchange of personal messages. Mobile phone and email services are relatively recent developments I witnessed. It has also been possible to leave voice mail on phone since quite recently. Now I am experiencing video mail. Mailvu is the ICT tool that I came across this time from my ICT in ELT class. This is a technology that can enable us to send video message like we send written email messages.
No one doubt that the first possible use of such technological development could be for personal and business communication. However, I want to explore the possible ways that we can use Mailvu in the education sector, especially in teaching and learning of English language.
As usual, I will consider three issues in this article for my blog. The first is describing Mailvu. Following that I will try to share what I think about using Mailvu for teaching English language. Finally, I will try to show some possible limitations of the tool.
What is it?
Mailvu is an ICT tool just like the familiar internet service logos that we know such as YAHOO OR GAMIL, OR HOTMAIL or others. One thing different is that it enables to send video recorded messages than the customary written document or written document with attached videos.
How can we use it to teach English language?
We often ask students to conduct different activities that can help them to improve their knowledge and skills of the target language. One of this is to ask them to engage in real life communication. We can use Mailvu to help students to record their real language use while communicating with others. For example we, can ask students to send a message to their friends about their project, or send a message to their parents about what they want for a new year. Students can record and see how they are working on their language. We can have different activities at different levels. Mailvu is simple to record sand send. What mailvu add more than simple recording of activities is that friends can exchange messages and comment each other’s works.
The following videos show my practice for a job interview and the comments my friend gave on my language use.
Comment of a friend on language useLimitations
The first limitation that I observe in mailvu is unidirectional. However, as I often mention, if it can serve as a variety in our lesson, we can say that it is worth using it for classroom purposes.
It is always a pleasure to see creative ways of using an ICT tool and share with others. Please give mailu a try and see what it can bring for you.
cheers
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