My focus: EasiSpeak Mikes

Finally – I have finished the EasiSpeak microphone/Voki  lesson, and wanted to let you know how it went.

Wednesday’s 35 minute lesson went down a treat, and pupils used the time to create their own songs or poems in small groups. They made use of the ICT room by typing up their text and some pupils managed to record their songs on the microphones before the lesson ended.  As we needed a bit more time, I booked the ICT room for our next lesson (this time a double lesson) and after a quick starter on ¿Qué vamos a hacer hoy? (what are we going to do today), pupils got down to business and started recording their songs and uploading them to Voki.com. You can see the fruits of their labour here. At the end of the activity I set their homework, which is to access the group blog and to leave feedback on their two favourite Vokis, leaving a positive comment. As I am writing this post I keep getting notifications of comments to moderate, and it is great to see how supportive they are of each other and I can’t wait to give merits out to the best ones.

I did encounter one or two issues with the lessons – nothing major, just a few things worth mentioning:

1. The microphones need recharging occasionally;
2. If pupils are missing for the second lesson then it can cause problems;
3. If pupils finish earlier than others they need to have an extension task to do (mine practised vocabulary games at www.languagesonline.org.uk);
4. Pupils must follow the instructions! Two of my groups clicked on the ‘send this voki to a friend’ link, rather than sending me the HTML code, and they closed down the screen with their voki on, so all their hard work was lost as the send to a friend link did not send me what I needed.

Overall, I was pleased with the lesson, and some of the songs are very good, and very detailed. I look forward to more ‘experiments’ with this group!

This is the starter – instruction – homework PowerPoint I used with the group:

Recording with EasiSpeak and class instructions