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Nice tutorials for using PBworks!  If you haven't tried a wiki yet, this is a good one.

Great source of information, examples and ideas about using Voicethread for digital conversations.

thanks for sharing Roxana. I really like how this blog discusses the language and cultural uses of using voicethread to create learning communities. It provided me many practical examples I can use in my classroom to help students focus on langauge development while using the technology. This post puts the focus on learning not on the technology. The handouts are great supports that help students stay on the learning track and because of this, the coummunity of learning is built. I was a little concerned by the deficit language used on the scoring rubric for asynchronous content. I will probably use something similar by change the wording to be a little more constructive, as meaning can be lost online and harsh wording can be misinterpreted.

Useful for students (or teachers) who want to do some extra practice at home.

re-posted here from Connected Principals.] Steven B. Johnson writes in Where Good Ideas Come From about the revolutionary power of social media such as Twitter to advance ideas and innovation in a myriad of fields, and it has been fascinating to see this concept in action in the swift spread over the past six months of the practice of flipping classrooms, which is also known as reverse instruction or learning, and is closely related to (or often synonymous with) teacher vodcasting.

Great ideas for using Wallwisher with language students. To name just a few, you could use it for collaborative homework, vocab practice or daily sentences.

How to use Voxopop

Seems like an interesting tool for getting students to practice oral skills outside of the classroom as well. I might like to use this idea at the beginning of the school year to have students introduce themselves to one another.

This is a comprehensive compendium for teachers and learners seeking practice activities to complement the set curriculum.

A free study site for English as a Second Language (ESL) students with games, quizzes, puzzles, MP3 files with transcripts, listening practice, pronunciation practive, etc.

Hitosugi, C. I. (2011). Using a social networking site in Japanese class. In E. Forsythe, T. Gorham, M. Grogan, D. Jarrell, R. Chartrand, & P. Lewis (Eds.), In CALL: What's your motivation? Collected papers on the cutting edge of language learning practice (pp. 72-83). Tokyo, Japan: JALT CALL SIG. This is my article that I wrote a couple of years ago on NIng use. This is much shorter than the original one, but still conveys what I wanted; SNS has a place in classroom, students concern privacy.

Tex's French Grammar is the integral grammar component of Français Interactif, an online French course from the University of Texas at Austin. Various sections of the website are entertaining (the dialogues are not always appropriate for middle school!) and others provide rote grammar practice.

I like to share this blog with teachers who are teaching Chinese.  It has many great apps and creative tools to help students learning Pinyin, which can be the most difficult initial hurdle to get over in learning Chinese.

Awesome website, thanks for sharing. :D

Discussion on how technology is being used and why we're still struggling to give more control of learning to students. A good read!

"A 2014 paper by researchers at Michigan State University, in East Lansing, provides a tangible example: Teachers and students in the small-scale study were found to be making extensive use of the online word-processing tool Google Docs. The application's power to support collaborative writing and in-depth feedback, however, was not being realized. Teachers were not encouraging group-writing assignments and their feedback focused overwhelmingly on issues such as spelling and grammar, rather than content and organization." This really gets to the heart of the idea of combining education and technology: the technology has to serve the goal and it doesn't sound like the teachers' goals were the same as the stated goals of the assignment. So obviously Google Docs is a fantastic tool, but it has to be utilized appropriately for it to be effective.

I must say I have sat through many workshops in my tenure at my university that included the modification of some practices and even included, to my frustration, the basic structure of a lesson from stating outcomes to assessment. The problem with our particular situation is that usually it is directed to a "one-size-fits-all" use of a given technology that may not apply to many disciplines. I have found them somewhat useful for upper-level courses at times, but the language classes often pose the need for a kind of collaboration and interpersonal technology that isn't presented. Hence my desire to take this course. Another difficulty is the overwhelming number of technological applications presented--I can't tell you how many--and the students really become overwhelmed, since they often have to learn new technologies in almost many courses. Some work and some don't, and since they are the guinea pigs and there are no guarantees that everything will work as planned, and given the astounding changes in tech, the newness never seems to end, neither for the student nor the teacher. So focusing on just 1 or 2 to begin with seems like the only way to deal with it. Finally, I think that, at least in our university, the huge courses found often in the sciences reflect the slowness to adopt meaningful change. Many in these disciplines have simply used the tech to deliver more lectures on topics students must memorize, perhaps adding clickers for comprehension checks. There seems to be a great disconnect between what happens in the classroom and the amazing advances in tech they have made for their hands-on work--labs, collaborative work, etc.

I like this blog because of the activities and strategies that she suggests

Best practice lesson plans, activities, and strategies for World Language courses (by Martina Bex)

MindShift explores the future of learning in all its dimensions. We examine how learning is being impacted by technology, discoveries about how the brain works, poverty and inequities, social and emotional practices, assessments, digital games, design thinking and music, among many other topics.