This French website created for native French speakers is full of dictées - dictations. This site is divided into grade levels based on the French school system. (For a brief run-down of the grade levels in France visit the blog from Transparent Language entitled À l'École!: French and American Grade Levels Compared at http://blogs.transparent.com/french/a-lecole/) Since the ladictee.fr website is targeted toward elementary aged children, the language level works well for beginner and intermediate French L2 learners. Even though a dictée isn't what people would call a "communicative" activity, it does serve the purpose of helping students make connections between spoken language and written language, especially since French spelling is not phonemic. The site includes various dictées for each level, along with a PDF of the written text so student's can check their work. Doing dictées can help students improve their spelling, recognize spelling patterns, and learn to listen for cues in spoken speech that indicate whether the person is speaking in the plural or singular (often tricky in the French language). Note: When doing a dictée, students are focused on writing down what is said word for word, and NOT on comprehension. It would NOT be effective to give a student a dictée and then immediately ask them specific comprehension questions about what they just heard.
A collection of rubrics for assessing portfolios, cooperative learning, research process/ report, PowerPoint, podcast, oral presentation, web page, blog, wiki, and other web 2.0 projects.
Four classrooms are connected in a "quad" and comment on each other's blogs.
Limitations: To sign up, the instructor includes his/her name and email address in a public Google doc.
Paideia's Living Latin and Living Greek blogs provide interesting, intermediate content in Latin and ancient Greek to help bridge the gap between textbook Latin and classical authors. With the conviction that in language learning an appeal must be made first and foremost to the ears, every post is accompanied by an audio recording. The reader is advised first to make use of our Chromium browser-based dictionary to read each post, then to listen and reread until the audio can be understood without the text.
A browser extension that gives you an enhanced video player for YouTube videos. It allows you to slow the video and zoom in.
Limitations: You will need a blog or webpage to embed the video.
Create an "AnswerGarden" using a question. Responses to the question appear in wordcloud format. Question and responses can be embedded in a website or blog.
Create lessons based on TED talks and YouTube videos. Add multiple-choice and fill-in questions, discussion. The instructor can review student responses and send feedback.
See also http://dev.celta.msu.edu/technology-blog/?p=289
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