A useful site that allows users to dictate and generate text. A great resource for children with writing difficulties to get their ideas written quickly. It works with a range of languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and more. For mistakes, the site offers alternative words with similar pronunciation. Only works with Chrome.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools
"This is a fab HTML5 language learning site which tests your language skills through a series of games with 1500 words. The site collects stats on your performance. The current 21 languages include English, Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Japan, Italian, Russian, Polish and many more."
I have been using Duolingo since November and is it fantastic. Not only is it free, but the system works. I am studying German and Spanish and I am amazed at not only how much I have learned, but how much I have retained.
"Italian psychologist Geatano Kanizsa first described this optical illusion in 1955 as a subjective or illusory contour illusion. The study of such optical illusions has led to an understanding of how the brain and eyes perceive optical information and has been used considerably by artists and designers alike. They show the power of human imagination in filling in the gaps to make implied constructions in our own minds.
Kanizsa figures and similar illusions are a really useful way to encourage learners to 'say what they see' and to explain how they see it. It offers a chance for others to become aware of the different views available in a diagram and share their own thoughts without the 'danger' of being wrong; many people see different things."
A Web 3.0 teaching tool for a wide variety of languages includes student progress achievements and pratice drills. The free trial is definately worth checking out with your students if you teach languages.
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What prompted Edward III to pay ransom for Chaucer's release? Did someone have the King's ear or was he a valued servant of the court?
In the grant of his pension Chaucer is called "dilectus vallectus noster," our beloved yeoman; before the end of 1368 he had risen to be one of the king's esquires.
Michaelmas = the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel.
In the second quarter of 1374 Chaucer lived in a whirl of prosperity.
During the next twelve or fifteen years there is no question that Chaucer was constantly engaged in literary work,
bundant f
In October 1385 Chaucer was made a justice of the peace for Kent.
Philippa Chaucer
In August 1386 he was elected one of the two knights of the shire for Kent, and with this dignity, though it was one not much appreciated in those days, his good fortune reached its climax.
While on the king's business, in September 1390, Chaucer was twice robbed by highwaymen,
In 1397 he received from King Richard a grant of a butt of wine yearly. For this he appears to have asked in terms that suggest poverty, and in May 1398 he o
btained letters of protection against his creditors, a step perhaps rendered necessary by an action for debt taken against him earlier in the year.
he died, on the 25th of the following October. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his tomb became the nucleus of what is now known as Poets' Corner.
The development of his genius has been attractively summed up as comprised in three stages, French, Italian and English,
Boccaccio's
Petrarch's sonnets,
occaccio's Decamerone, a book which there is no proof of his having seen.
avour was shown him by the new king
On the 8th of June he was appointed Comptroller of the Custom and Subsidy of Wools, Hides and Woodfells and also of the Petty Customs of Wine in the Port of London.
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a committee of the “greatest minds in Britain” would decide what children were taught. The Prince of Wales’ Teaching Institute would also be involved in drawing up a new curriculum.
“I’m an unashamed traditionalist when it comes to the curriculum,” Mr Gove said. “Most parents would rather their children had a traditional education, with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England, the great works of literature, proper mental arithmetic, algebra by the age of 11, modern foreign languages. That’s the best training of the mind and that’s how children will be able to compete.”
“The invitation is there for all the great minds of our time to help reshape the national curriculum — both primary and secondary,” Mr Gove said. “We want to rewrite the whole thing and we are going to start as soon as we get in. We need the experts to tell us what is needed. The critical thing is to find people who want the intellectual life of the nation to be revived.”
He’s absolutely right in saying that what draws people into teaching is that they love history or physics, and they want to communicate that love. They don’t love abstract thinking skills; they love the thrill of discovery in their own special field.
“I was amazed to discover that science is not divided into physics, chemistry and biology. It has these hybrid headings about the chemical and material whatever and the Earth, the environment and this and that.”
Because, you know, hybridity is evil - EVIL! Interdisciplinary, inquiry-driven education is clearly a plot to weaken the moral fibre of the nation. Any increase in actual learning or interest on the part of students that it may produce must be an aberration.
Lessons should celebrate rather than denigrate Britain’s role through the ages, including the Empire. “Guilt about Britain’s past is misplaced.”
More state funding for Shakespeare in schools I could get behind
Modern languages will also be revived. “One of the biggest tragedies in state education over the last ten years has been this huge drop in French and German, Italian and Spanish,”