myBrainshark - making video presentation

LINK: http://www.brainshark.com/mybrainshark

WHAT

myBrainshark is another fantastic tool for teachers and students to be used as one of classroom activities. myBrainshark is an online mobile video presentation, where you can transform any document, for example Power Point presentation into video presentation. Our voice for each slide is recorded by using this online software.

It is benefecial in language teaching especially for speaking activities where students could create and share their own presentation online, making it assessible to everybody, anywhere.

The key concept of this idea is getting people to communicate through video presentation  that could be accessed anytime by target audience. The idea is useful in classroom activities and save teaching time where a student could make a presentation without having a face-to-face interaction. Instead, the presentation is accessible at home, by students, and also by teacher for evaluation.

It could also lower the anxiety and make student focus more on speaking fluently and carefully pronounce the word. It will also help students in discourse to make the presentation flow nicely. They are all important skills in language learning 

EXAMPLE

Topic: A video presentation about myself

Presenter: Myself

HOW

1. Sign up - It is free
2. Upload - upload your content (power point, document, PDF file, videos etc)
3. Add audio - to your presentation (through telephone or recorded via microphone)
4. Create - Create  the video presentation and save it to your profile

ADVANTAGES

• Free and easy to use. 
• Save time - What I mean here is, teachers do not necesserily did the presentation in class where it can be time consuming, but speaking can still be evaluated. Besides, it is possible to play few video in class and have the students to talk about it.
• Lower the anxiety of the presenters - What I like most about this website is it could lower the anxiety of having to speak the target language in front of others. Students will be more confidence to record their presentation, rather than presenting it directly to their peers.
• Reviewable - Since it is recorded, it can be reviewed by the teachers. Teachers could make a thorough evaluation of students' speaking ability by reviewing the video presentation. Unlike the live presentation, teachers may miss out important points.

DISADVANTAGES

• Technical problem - Student may not have an internet access or computer at home.
• Audience participation - It is a one-way communication where the presenters may not be able to respond directly to the audience for any unclear points or imformation. 
• Tendency to read from a script rather than giving a presentation - Students may have high tendency of writing the script in advance and read from it. It may be useful for beginners to lower their anxiety but not for communicating practice.

CONCLUSION

Regardless, myBrainshark is a useful website that is anticipated by teachers for their language activities. It could save time and might be of high interest among students because they could overcome the direct presentation which could affect their speaking. I would strongly suggest this as one of the classroom activity and teacher would provide more oppurtunity for students to practise speaking.