【MyBrainshark】: Video Presentations at Anytime, Anywhere

What is MyBrainshark?

Homepage of myBrainshark

MyBrainshark (http://my.brainshark.com/Home.aspx) is an application that provides the opportunity to make instant creating, sharing and tracking online and mobile video presentations. With MyBrainshark, users can quickly turn an ordinary voiceless file into a voice-enriched presentation which can be accessed any time and anywhere. Additional features such as polls and quizzes can also be added. The final work can then be delivered via a Web link or can be embedded in a Web page, and users can track various statistics, including who viewed the presentations and time spent viewing it, and receive reports and alerts of viewing activity.

In brief, these are basically the five contents that you can upload to myBrainshark. They are PPT slides, Words Documents, Videos, Photos and Podcast (MP3/Voice Recording).

How to use MyBrainshark?

Generally, people can use myBrainshark to:

• present tutorials, 
• narrate products demo,
• share experience, 
• tell stories, 
• describe a biography 

and many things more that you can actually think of. 

Besides, this webpage is free of charge and generally require only 20-30 minutes to create it depending on the length of content you would like to present. ALL you need is access to the internet and the sound enabled on your computer. That's it! However, do bear in mind that you actually would need to sign up before using it.

So, in fact, there are just few simple steps to create a myBrainshark presentation, as you can see from the chart below. You can also click here to view the step-by-step tutorial presented by myBrainshark or here for the tutorial by my lecturer, Russell Stannard. 

Easy peasy steps of using myBrainshark

After you have finished producing your presentation, these are the things which you can do:

• Editing your presentation by adding /deleting slides 
• Add in some questions (polls/survey) at the end & have the viewers respond to you. 
• Download the whole presentation to your computer/phone for free. :)

The following is an example of MyBrainshark final outcome:

WHY IS MYBRAINSHARK USEFUL FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS?

 1. Motivating and engaging (Autonomous learning)

Students get the chance to decide on the content and the organisation of their own presentation. Then they are also encouraged to speak in target language at their own pace without feeling as tension as presenting a PPT presentation by standing in front of the classroom. In fact, using myBrainshark may be a better idea for students who just started practising doing oral presentation because they might not be able to use language so spontaneously and myBrainshark allows editing and it provides students opportunity to draft their speech first before presenting!

2. Students acquire Organising and Speaking skills

Since students need to upload files into myBrainshark and use voices to narrate it, students would have more room to practise using their voice to convey messages, such as they need to speak clearly and at a favourable speed and intonation. Moreover, they can learn how to organise the sequence of their points so that the viewers can make better sense of their speech by linking it to the slides shown.

How to use myBrainshark in an ELT context?

Individual work:  

Teacher can suggest students some topics to be discussed (eg: About me, the book I love the most, the nicest place that I have been to & etc.) and have them vote for their favourite one. Then teacher can monitor students' progression and give them a hand throughout the preparation stage of the presentation.

Pair work:

Teacher can post a couple of images on the class blog and have students download them and create a story themselves by arranging the images based on their own will. Teacher can let the students to create the drafts of their story lines in the class first, then they upload the images and do the recording at home by themselves.

Group work:

A video can be used to replace the images, and have students record their own videos (perhaps record during role playing in the class) as the continuation of the first video. This activity might be time consuming, but it actually depends on what are the aims & the learning outcomes the teacher opts for. 

SOME LIMITATIONS OF MYBRAINSHARK

I couldn't actually find out the exact limitations of myBrainshark. However, I have seen some of my colleagues' pages comment on these following points:

• MyBrainshark only allows for voiced-based presentation, so students may have the script prepared and they just read it aloud. Therefore, its activities are kind of unsuitable to be used for language speaking skills assessment. 

• Making a voiced presentation is a time consuming process and it often creates lots of noises, hence it is not suitable to be carried out in class.

However, in overall I do not feel that those have been mentioned are big problems because I believe that the effort which have been put in and the frequent practices which have been carried out by the students are far more valuable than the final result. And, I think it is very worth while for teachers to spare more time on students in scaffolding and guiding them to solve problems patiently. In fact, students' creativity cannot be forced as well, it is similar to what the saying has said- Rome wasn't built in a day~ :)