Instagram - the most popular ELT tool for teens and tweens

Lately, all the teenagers seem to be highly active and addicted to the social networking app called Instagram. It is so popular that it tops the app store most popular chat all the time. In view of the prevalent photos and videos sharing community, teachers can integrate Instagram in ELT and interact with students' updates to get them interested in English and practice more with the unique format of Instagram. So English teachers who are interested in bringing a refreshing experience to their students by using Instagram in ELT, I will tell you more about how to make good use of the "InstaFever" as an ELT tool.

What is Instagram?

It is a social networking app for sharing videos and photos from a smartphone. Users have their own profile and will receive news feed of the users they have followed. They can set their account to be public or private which means only the approved subscribers can see their new posts.

Users have to upload either a photo or a video together with some texts in order to create a new post. The limit of each video is 15 seconds whereas there is no word limit. 

Voicethread - An Authentic Listening and Speaking Tool

Whenever I use those listening exercise books to practise listening with my students, both the students and I will feel meh. 

"Again? These are brainless exercises!" 

"It always slows down and emphasizes the answers for a few times! Nothing is challenging!" 

"I don't want to just sit here and listen to the tape for the whole lesson..."

Students feel the exercises are tedious and easy, but there are really no better listening exercises I can find in the market for them. Yet, they know that they have to drill their listening skills in order to excel in the public exams. Therefore, they just force themselves to concentrate in class until they eventually doze off. This vicious cycle really bothers me a lot until I was introduced this tool, VoiceThread.

What is VoiceThread?

VoiceThread is a cloud application (i.e. no software needed to be installed) which allows group conversations from anywhere in the world in a central place. It basically is a collaborative, multimedia slideshow that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to browse the slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (by a microphone, phone or web camera), texts or by uploading an audio file. Users can share the slideshow by sending others the link or embedding it on your own social media page.

The above video can give you a brief introduction of VoiceThread.