Nik Peachey | Learning Technology Consultant, Writer, Trainer

Teacher Development: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/

Task 9: Create a video dictation activity for your

students
In this task you will use a free video communication tool to create a video dictation activity for
your students. The activity will help your students to develop both their reading and listening
skills, as well as giving them the opportunity to develop some confidence using English in
front of a webcam.

You will use a free tool called http://mailvu.com/ and you will need to have a computer with a
Webcam attached.

Procedure
The first step is to go to the MailVU website at: http://mailvu.com/. You don’t need to register
or pay anything, the service is free.

Now you are almost ready to create your first video message. What you may see when you
use the service is a small message asking you to allow access to your camera and
microphone. This is a simple message from the ‘Flash’ plugin that the application uses to
record your voice and video, so don’t worry, just click on ‘Allow’.

© Nik Peachey Contact: NikPeachey@mac.com

 Nik Peachey | Learning Technology Consultant, Writer, Trainer
Teacher Development: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/

Once you click on allow you will see your self in the video window. If you don’t, click on the
small webcam image below the video and select your webcam from the drop down list. You
may have to do the same thing with your microphone.

© Nik Peachey Contact: NikPeachey@mac.com

 Nik Peachey | Learning Technology Consultant, Writer, Trainer
Teacher Development: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/

Next simply click on the ‘Record’ button above the video image and start talking. Use this
first attempt as a practice so just say anything so you can check that everything is working.
Once you have finished speaking press the Record button again to stop the recording. Then
press the Play button to watch and listen to your video.

If both the sound and the image are okay, you are ready to record your dictation. If there is
any problem, check again that you have the correct camera and microphone selected.

© Nik Peachey Contact: NikPeachey@mac.com

 Nik Peachey | Learning Technology Consultant, Writer, Trainer
Teacher Development: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/

You should now be ready to record your dictation. I suggest for the first one you could use
the text below as it has most of the sounds of English in it. (This text was taken from ‘The
Speech Accent Archive’)

Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons
of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother
Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can
scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the
train station.

Practice saying it a few times before you record it or if you prefer, use a text of your own.
When you are ready, click on the green record button and start speaking.

Don’t worry too much if you make mistakes, you can review your work and try again as many
times as you like to get it right.

Click the ‘Play’ button to watch your recording. If you are not happy with it you can record it
again by clicking on the green record button again.

If you like your recording then you are ready to share it with your students. Before you do this
select the number of days you want the video to be available. If you are setting this as a
homework task you can set the limit quite short so that the students have to do the task on
time. You also need to set the number of times the video can be seen. Be sure to set enough
times so that all your students can watch it a few times. (Multiply the number of students by
the number of time you want them to watch.)

© Nik Peachey Contact: NikPeachey@mac.com

 Nik Peachey | Learning Technology Consultant, Writer, Trainer
Teacher Development: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/
Next click on ‘Send Video Mail’. You can then add the email addresses of your students
and ask to be notified each time the video is viewed.

You should also add a message with your instructions in. Here are the instructions: “Watch
this video and write down what you hear. Then reply to the video and read out the
text that you wrote. Send the video back to me.”

So the students will get listening practice as they listen to your recording of the text and
speaking practice when they reply.

You will then be able to listen to their videos and assess their pronunciation.

Follow up
• Now think about the process, look at the follow up tasks and write about them in the Penzu
journal that you created in Task 1.
• Think about other video messages you could send to your students or other activities you
could use this for.
• Here you can find an article with 20 Webcam activities for students: 20 WebCam Activities
for EFL ESL Students. Have a look at them and think about how they could be used with
MailVU http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2009/07/20-webcam-activities-for-efl-esl.html

© Nik Peachey Contact: NikPeachey@mac.com