Russell Stannard gets his students recording themselves.
Readers who follow my Webwatcher articles will know that I am very keen on tools that can develop discussion and oral work outside the classroom. I am especially interested in those that allow students to record themselves speaking and to share their recordings, either as emails or embedded in blogs and wikis. One problem with many of the tools I have focused on so far is that they are not very good if you want to do a threaded discussion (a chain of submissions, linked in sequence). However, I have recently been working with Intervue (http://intervue.me/), which offers some real opportunities for threaded discussions and collaborative stories. It is free, very easy to use and has a nice interface.
What is Intervue?
Intervue allows you to create an account on its website (this is very simple to do) and you can then post questions for your students to log in and answer. You write the questions up as text, but the students’ answers are videoed using a webcam (nearly all laptops have webcams these days). Of course, you don’t need all the students to have their own webcam; for the activity described below, I only needed three computers in the classroom for my nine students.
Getting started
Once you have set up your Intervue account, decide on a topic and write some questions for the students to answer. I decided to do a trial run with a group of Japanese students living with host families in the UK. My topic was ‘Differences between Japanese and English culture’. The questions that I wanted the students to think about included the following, which I put on the site:
- What differences have you found between the way people live in Japan and in the UK?
- What places have you enjoyed visiting in the UK, and why?
- What have you missed about Japan?
- What has been the best thing about your experience so far?
I decided that I would tackle the first question in class. I wanted the students to work in groups, brainstorm and discuss ideas, prepare a basic framework for recording their answers and then actually do the recordings in lesson time. I wanted to see how easy or difficult it would be to get them to make their recordings in the lesson – and also whether doing so would change the class dynamic. It took well over an hour in the end, but I was really pleased with the results.
Getting the students started
First, I got the students to log onto the Intervue site and I showed them the four questions I had posted, explaining that I wanted them to record their answers to the first question in the lesson. To stimulate interest, I began by talking about my own experience of living in Spain. I wrote some key areas on the board (background to my life in Spain, friends, family, timetables, priorities) and then spoke about them for about ten minutes. I tried to provide lots of concrete examples and anecdotes about life in Spain and the UK.
Getting ideas
I then asked the students to think about the differences they had noticed between life in the UK and in Japan. We first brainstormed some areas they might like to consider. They came up with transport, food, nightlife, dress, relationships (neighbours, friends, family), timetables, cleanliness, noise and pace of life. Next, I put them into groups of three and allowed them to share their experiences and opinions. At first, they kept wanting to break into Japanese, but once they got talking, I think they were quite surprised about just how much there was to discuss and how much they could say in English.
Getting ready to record
I asked the students to take notes on the things they wanted to talk about and to plan and structure their thoughts. I moved around the class, giving help where needed. I then explained that they should rehearse making their recordings. I re-grouped them, and each student in turn practised by telling the rest of their group what they were planning to talk about. Again, I moved around the class, took notes and then gave feedback.
Getting on with it
Finally, the students made their recordings. There were three computers, one for each group. The students took turns to record their answers while the other two members of their group listened. The recordings were better than I had expected – and quite clear, despite the background noise. However, not all the students managed to finish their recordings in class time, so some did them afterwards.
What were the results?
This was a surprisingly good lesson, and some students told interesting stories. One student, for example, was surprised to discover one day that her next-door neighbour had a key to her host’s house and had come in unexpectedly to leave some milk and bread. Another talked about how calm life was in Warwick compared to her home town. For feedback purposes, I simply listened to their recordings, took notes and provided general comments. I could have set up a peer-feedback situation, with each student listening to another student and then leaving their own comment.
Sadly, I didn’t teach this class again, so I never got the chance to do more recordings. I would love to have done a threaded story, for example. Since the videos are added to the screen in order, one student could start a story and the next student could then continue it. Alternatively, you could make the first video, getting the students to watch and add their comments, with each student responding to your video and also to the previous student’s post.
I have made some help videos for using Intervue, which will show you step by step how to use it. You can find these at: www.teachertrainingvideos.com/intervue/index.html
Russell Stannard is a Principal Lecturer in ICT at the University of Warwick, UK, where he teaches on the MA in ELT. He won the Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Initiatives in Information and Communications Technology in 2008, TEFLnet Site of the Year in 2009 and a 2010 British Council ELTon award, all for his popular website www.teachertrainingvideos.com.
This article first appeared in English Teaching professional, Issue 84, January 2013
