Group items tagged

This brief article by Tom Robb outlines a great new Moodle application that is free if your school already uses Moodle, or accessible online where you can have your own page for quiz access. The add-on offers a short quiz of 10 randomized questions for almost 2,000 commonly read books used for extensive reading programs with the major graded reader series. See the http://MoodleReader.org site.

"Sites is Google's free tool to create custom websites. Similar to a wiki, you can develop the site by yourself or choose to collaborate with others on the creation and content of the pages. Then, you can decide on the level of sharing you would like to permit. You can determine who the owners are, whom you would like to give permission to edit and revise the site, and whom you would like to give permission to view the site. You can limit viewing your site to a small, private group or you can choose to publish it so that it is accessible to anyone in the world."

SimplyBox is a great way to add some Web 2.0 to your research. This would be esp. useful with group objects where students can then look at what each other group member has found. Use SimplyBox for Education, and get the free app (also has fee-based district or school-wide application that can be hosted and access controlled safely, and boxing from any application). The teacher could start the ball rolling, and have students join in, boxing their own sites and info. Esp. good for visual learners. This page has three good help videos: Overview, Sharing, and Twittering with SimplyBox. Fairly easy to use, once you get used to it.

Karenne Sylvester's blog for teachers of Business English is a huge respository of good Web. Articles are also attractively laid out and easy to access.

"Many people don't realize that The New York Times can be quite accessible for English Language Learners. Due to its focus on current events and news, using The Times to learn vocabulary and practice reading can be much more inviting and rewarding than a textbook. And NYTimes.com has some extra tools and features that are particularly useful for language learning. Here are 10 ideas for using The Times to teach and learn the English language." Includes lookup dictionary, multimedia archive, K/W/L Chart, short activities, culture experiences, lesson plans, this day in history, etc.

100s of guides to learning and studying in dozens of languages. Especially good for writing, reading, and critical thinking skills. Also has some materials for students with learning disabilities, e.g., ADHD. Mainly native-speaker oriented.