An Interactive Video tool- Vialogue

Here comes another exciting tool - Vialogue! From its name, it is not difficult to guess that it has something to do with "video" and "dialogue". In fact, as a great platform for launching discussions around a specific video, this tool is brilliant for ELT teachers to design listening exercises.

From my own experience as a language learner, authentic materials are always more appealing to learners than the 'designed' materials in the textbook as a learning resource. They are more interesting and useful. For example, online videos, which include news reports, movie clips, celebrities' speeches, documentaries, advertisements and so on, tend to be up-to-date, close to life and  more likely to help learners to adapt to the normal speed of native speakers'. However, one problem related to using these videos as listening exercises is: when learners are not clear about the important information (which can happen often for learners with relatively weak listening skills), they need to rewind to those points and this action can sometimes be quite troublesome and time-consuming. BUT now with the help of Vialogue, this can be easily achieved and saves time for not only students but the teacher. To design a listening exercise using a video, the teacher can first create a Vialogue like picture A: (tutorial of Vialogue can be found on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX8oFxFGGAg )

Pic. A

and then add some questions based on the video content. The question can be a fill in the blanks one (like picture B), a multiple choice one (the template is provided, see picture C), an open ended one, etc. Better still, whenever a question is created, it will be automatically matched to the relevant point of time (alternatively, teachers can put it a bit earlier to increase the difficulty) so that students don't need to do the 'rewind' action manually to catch these points which can be important information of the whole video.

Pic. B

Pic. C

Pic. D

Apart from turning the video into a 'formal' listening exercise, the teacher or any student can put comments on it any time (instead of after finishing the whole watching) and this is time stamped, which allows other people to relate to the original content. Sometimes watching a 'long' video can be boring and is likely to demotivate students at some point. Adding comments or replying to the comments makes the watching process interactive. The comment can be anything related to the video, for example, questions, background knowledge, personal feelings, language points, etc.

Having said all of these, I just can't wait to begin my journey with this super smart tool. If you are also a big fan of using videos in your teaching - have a go with Vialogue!

Bibliography
Vialogues-Make Videotaped Lectures Interactive
http://languageteku.over-blog.com/vialogues-make-videotaped-lecturers-interactive