CALL_IS_VSL

VOA news is a great resource for listening, speaking, writing assignments, reading, et al. Very up-to-the-minute, and live streaming allows for instant listening. Good for teachers' listening practice as well.

"Watch live broadcasts watch * Live video broadcast * TV, HD quality * Run by users like you * Free for everyone broadcast * Broadcast any video instantly * From any broadband connection * Files, DVD, Webcam and TV * Free for everyone A small download, but requires broad bandwidth to operate. ESL Lesson (q.v.) is using this app to broadcast classroom documentaries on the Teacher's TV channel.

"Shawnee High School Language Arts Literacy teacher Kristin Giles came to the ETTC recently to seek out websites to support her research paper unit. Here are some of the places she visited on the World Wide Web:" A list of links to info/advice/help with research skills. Nice way for a teacher to get herself prepped for teaching the research paper.

This site is going EFL/ESL in a big way, using video: "We recently found out that 22frames.com is becoming a popular site for learning English as a second language (ESL). It turns out that watching captioned videos provides a way to not only learn formal English but also idioms and other cultural concepts. To find videos, you can browse through categories or make caption-only video searches on your interests. Even more, we have been devoting significant time and resources to developing ESL-specific features that are motivated by our users' feedback." "Recently, we found out that many of our users are using the site to supplement their English learning (see: http://www.22frames.com/esl.aspx ). They also began to pitch ideas we could implement to make the site even more useful for this activity. With so many requests, we decided to seriously consider these ideas and devote significant time and resources into realizing them. Now, we are turning our site into a substantial and FREE English learning resource. We are aware of a couple sites out there that are also focused on using captioned videos for English learning, so we've been focusing on the unique user-motivated features. Therefore, my goal here is to let you know about our free resource and that we are opening the door to requests for anyone who might desire features that have not been implemented elsewhere. Perhaps, you can share this with your colleagues/readers/etc as it will help us better gauge which features to prioritize and to increase the rate with which we will release new features. Please note that we are really serious about considering whatever feedback we get. I'm also pleased to announce our first feature, which we expect will help in learning/teaching popular English idioms. Idioms are a big deal in learning English, and it is clear that watching them used in real situations will increase the rate with which they are learned. We therefore processed a large group of YouTube videos in o

Has lists of online activities, categorized by "pre-intermediate," "intermediate," and "advanced" levels of learners, as well as links to a dozen or so chat groups for English learners, an online dictionary, and a variety of tests and exercises.

This blog has 18 lessons using technology created by teachers. A media version of the Carnival of Lessons is illustrated on Prezi.

An interesting Prezi presentation using a wide variety of social media. By Vince Everts.

Test/practice conjugating English verbs. You can write in a verb and the program will give you all the forms.

This might be a great tool for an extended project, e.g., have your students create an infospot audio guide to their local community. Lots of examples are linked on the front page, and there is an iPhone app to scan, listen, and record wherever you happen to be. There are currently over 1300 guides created by users, and more coming.

"Storybird is a free online service for families, friends, teachers, and students to collaborate in creating short, visual stories together that can easily be shared, embedded or printed. The website provides fun and simple tools to make short, visual stories in a user-friendly and kid-friendly environment. You can search by artwork or theme to begin. Stories can be written by one person or two or more people in a round robin fashion and can be shared privately or publicly. Publishing with Storybird is "global, viral, and instantaneous" which provides extra motivation for young authors and artists."

This is an example of what would be a great project for students using the rich capabilities of Diigo. Here the author used the slideshow of sites feature of Diigo to create a show with pictures of graffiti. This project could be done internationally, as here in the example, or with students taking pictures of local graffiti and writing comments about them in their blogs to eventually produce a team-made project about their local surroundings.

" Creative collaboration for teachers globally. "If you are a teacher looking for international partners for your school and would like a safe, secure, easy-to-use space to share your partnership work online, then you've come to the right place. "You can find new partner schools and projects to work with or get support to develop a school partnership you already have." Sponsored by British Council and Dept. for Education in the UK.

This moviemaker site is still around, and looking for help. The cartoons used look more appropriate for younger students.

This is a place for teachers to set up their own online courses. EC provides all the tools needed for online teaching: blogs, Skype and DimDim meetings, etc.

A screen recorder that comes in a free edition, as well as two more professional levels. Windows 7 only. Screen recordings are great for showing students how to use applications, open specific files/folders, etc. Students can also use a screencast to put together their project presentations on their own computer and then upload them as videos to YouTube or a wiki.

A blog, My Languages, describing apps for the iPod/iPhone specifically for language teaching and learning.

"Download Ustream's broadcasting application for your mobile phone, go live from anywhere." UStream looks like a handy app for the perfectly mobile. The video tagged here does evntually have audio. It's fun to see the Webheads drift by and to watch Vance on tagging.

"In the site, you will find a variety of review games, classroom management software, and other miscellaneous tools for educators." Students and/or teachers can make and share learning games on this, site, for example, a customized Jeopardy review of vocabulary or a board game where players must answer questions about a reading to advance. Also contains teacher tools such as a seating chart maker, a group maker to randomly assign students to groups, etc. And also lots of links to population counters, hangman, random fact generator, etc.

Proposes you use these tips for just 15 minutes a day. They are organized into 8 categories (lots on Microsoft Office tools), and there is a search site to help out. Some stuff is very basic, so it might be quite useful for students--and they can start by learning how to organize a search.

Has some comments for each tool about how it is used wth students, if it requires a download, etc. Linked from http://ddeubel.edublogs.org/2010/07/14/best-web-2-0-tools-for-learning-teaching-languages/ If you download the spreadsheet from Google Docs, you can keep your own record, or you can add to the sheet here.

Add your favorites to this Google Doc list!