Phonetics: The Sounds of AmE

This collaborative project led by the University of Iowa is an example of the Web incredible potential. It is a tool for students (and also professionals) of Phonetics, Linguistics and foreign languages. The site contains animated libraries of the phonetic sounds of English. You can see an animated articulatory diagram, a step-by-step description and a video of the sound spoken in context. Who has not yet faced difficulties in producing English sounds? This is the right place to solve that kind of problem. However, bear in mind this is an American tool, so the results you will get are for American English.

eGlossary

The eGlossary is part of the Moving into English series by Harcourt School Publishers.

It is an important piece of instructional material especially for beginners who need to learn the most important words at their own level. You can choose the level (from 1st to 5th grade) and then you choose a letter to start your search. Finally, you see a picture with the meaning and two sentences to clarify the comprehension. 

You get the meaning, the phonetics and the word in context, from basic vocabulary to more difficult one. If you are a teacher this is a good resource to explore your students' autonomy inside and outside te classroom.

Wordnik

Back to tools that may be useful both for teachers and students! Wordnik is an outstanding example of that... It is more than a dictionary because it brings not only the definitions you want to see, but also examples from social networks like Twitter. When you type a word you get as a result photographs from Flickr and the statistics and ocurrences of the word besides its pronunciation. Suitable for understanding the use of new words around the cyberworld. It defines itself as "the most comprehensive dictionary in the known universe". 

Social Networks

Here is a map of several social networks and their main targets. Which one do you prefer?

Blended Learning

Blended learning combines face to face classroom methods with computer-mediated activities to form an integrated instructional approach. In the past, digital materials have served in a supplementary role, helping to support face to face instruction. The goal of a blended approach is to join the best aspects of both face to face and online instruction. Classroom time can be used to engage students in advanced interactive experiences.  Meanwhile, the online portion of the classes can provide students with multimedia-rich content at any time of day, anywhere the student has Internet access, from school to the coffee shop or the students’ homes. This allows for an increase in scheduling flexibility.

In addition to flexibility and convenience for students,  there is evidence that a blended instructional approach can result in learning outcome gains and increased enrollment motivation.

The following scheme, from the blog Free Technology For Teachers, sums up how an educator can take advantage of using tools, such as a blog or a wiki, as a complement of traditional ELT: