Week 3_Reflection on Aural/oral skill-building website and creating a social bookmarking page

Hello everyone!

Today is the first day of the week, and though busy, it is full of energy. It's the perfect time to share my thoughts about my first session as a moderator for a group discussion.

To prepare for the discussion, I researched the content and created a slide presentation to share some knowledge with the group. Our teachers provided many useful materials. However, there was too much information, so I selected three main topics to ensure we had enough time to discuss them within an hour.

First, we discussed some websites that aid in teaching listening skills. Everyone in the class has access to many resources, but most had not encountered the two websites introduced by the teacher: Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab (https://www.esl-lab.com/) and Elllo (https://elllo.org/). All group members agreed that these websites are useful. We also shared some feedback about both sites. The website offers a variety of listening quizzes categorized into different levels such as easy, medium, and difficult, making it suitable for learners ranging from beginners to advanced.

However, Randall's interface is less user-friendly compared to Elllo’s. Elllo arranges information such as scripts, quizzes, and exercises horizontally, allowing users to switch between sections easily. In contrast, Randall arranges information vertically, making it more time-consuming to navigate. Improving this aspect of Randall’s site would be beneficial. Moreover, Elllo provides both audio and video content, making listening more engaging, which Randall currently lacks.

In the second part of the session, I introduced the group to the top five social bookmarking services: Furl, Netvouz, Del.icio.us, Mister Wong, and Diigo. I shared the pros and cons of each service with everyone.

Ms. Khanh Linh and I found that Diigo stood out as a user-friendly bookmarking tool with many advantages. It allows users to add sticky notes and highlight text directly on web pages, similar to interacting with paper. Highlights and sticky notes are private by default but can be shared with Diigo friends in various ways. Additionally, the teacher recommended Diigo, so after exploring the bookmarking services, we shared the bookmarks we added to our Diigo accounts.

I'm quite interested in Diigo's interface, but since I'm not yet used to it, some functions like tagging or adding notes were challenging for the group members. After the lesson, we researched these features to facilitate long-term use. To find more useful websites to add to Diigo, the whole group participated in the weekly class discussion on Thursday. We discovered some new websites, such as Kizphonics, recommended by Khanh Huyen, which seems unsuitable for our needs as it is geared toward younger students. Hai Duong suggested PodOmatic (https://www.podomatic.com/), which is suitable for all levels. Many class members mentioned Ellsa for practicing speaking skills, but we noted that it only has a mobile version, limiting its use.

These are the bookmarks I have saved on Diigo. I will continue to update it with more useful websites I find:

https://www.diigo.com/user/bookmark_ntmay

I am very willing to share information and hope everyone shares useful resources so we can build a strong teaching community.

Thank you!