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Flocabulary
Flocabulary
A general description of the application/topic
A general description of the application/topic
Flocabulary is a website designed a teaching students through the medium of annotated videos with hip hop style lyrics and music.
This tool is specifically designed for students in elementary and secondary school in the US. The brains behind this operation is Blake Harrison. He wanted to provide a service which helped students learning information for school to be able to recall information as easily as their favourite songs they hear on the radio. The website is the result of an army of developers, recording artist and musicians under the name NearProd. What is the purpose of the tool? The tool is an educative tool which can be used by either students or teachers to help focus on key units of learning, build vocabulary and consolidate knowledge. This service is not free, and, after the 30-day free trial, there is no access allowed. The service seems relatively costly at $120 (USD) per year for the basic service, considering the amount of videos already available on YouTube. The service does, however, boast the additional features of student dashboards, mobile apps and Google Classroom integration, which I imagine is where this service tries to stand out from the crowd.
A Wide range of Subjects
A Wide range of Subjects
Plenty to chose from
Premium accounts
Premium accounts
Full-time users must pay for the service
An account of your personal experimentation
An account of your personal experimentation
The tool is very user friendly and easy to use. All of the content is well organised in to suitable and interesting categories and topics. The service is pretty straightforward and it didn’t take very long at all for me to feel at ease using the system.
I think the concept of this type of learning is new and refreshing. I had a good time listening to the content and seeing Which features are difficult to use? Setting up my account was difficult to use as my school wasn’t recognised in the system so I experienced issues with getting the free trial. Setting up the additional features such as quiz and discuss mode was relatively simple. The final product looked great and I’m sure it would be a very friendly layout for students using the service across all platforms (laptops, tablets, smartphones etc.) One major problem would be the grading of the language.
An analysis on the use of the technology in class for ESL
An analysis on the use of the technology in class for ESL
Applications to the ESL classroom are quite obvious. Using this alongside units of learning or using the videos as a starting point could both work. The website has received great reviews from teachers. My only concerns regarding this are that the target audience is a typical anglophone student in the USA. The grading and language used doesn’t take in to consideration this context. I would like to see an ESL unit launched which would majorly improve the website. Finally, as much fun as it may seem, after a few viewings the videos get tiresome. I’m not sure what the fun factor would be from start to finish. I imagine some students would over-react initially and then loos interest later on. I do think that regular use of this in the classroom would help bolster learning.
Further reading
Further reading
Lamb, M. (2017). The motivational dimension of language teaching. Language Teaching, 50(3), 301-346.
Tegge, F. A. G. (2015). Investigating song-based language teaching and its effect on lexical learning.
Review
Review
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