EDU120-FA13

A New Role for Avatars: Learning Languages

with  more sophisticated technology, another theory around language learning is being tested: the use of avatars to practice speaking.

Companies like Second Life and Middlebury Interactive Languages both offer digital avatar programs to give language learners a chance to practice their skills in virtual environments.

Digital Storytelling in the Spanish Language Classroom

We started with the students writing an autobiographical essay describing themselves and where they are in their lives right now

Photo Story 3 makes movies by stringing together still photographs with music or narration.

60 Educational Game Sites That You’ve Probably Never Seen

the site is an amazing resource,

These aren’t in order of greatness – they all have their own specific applications for education

eQuizShow Makes It Easy to Create Jeopardy-style Games

To build your quiz just enter a title, an administrative password, and your question categories. eQuizShow will then generate a grid on which you can enter questions and answers.

If you don't have time to build a quiz or you just need some inspiration, browse the eQuizShow gallery.

When you’re viewing or working on something in Google Drive and somebody else opens the same file, you’ll see his or her Google+ profile picture appear in the top-right corner of your browser window. (If the person doesn't have a Google+ profile picture, you'll see their first initial. If the person's viewing the item anonymously, they'll be assigned an animal name and image.) As more people open the document, more profile images appear. If you hover over a profile image, you’ll see information about the viewer pulled from his or her Google+ profile, and you can add the person to one of your Google+ circles with a click.

For the last year, I have been using my iPad to teach. I wanted to mirror the iPad to the projector wirelessly. I thought about Apple TV, but it would cost at least $150 after buying adapters. Then I found the “Reflector” application/program and it has changed my life. Visit Reflector to download the program and details.

List of Websites Where You Can Watch Spanish Videos with Spanish Subtitles or Transcripts Online for Free

News in Slow (Latin American) Spanish

There are six sections: 1) Flashcards 2) News Stories 3) Grammar 4) Expressions 5) Pronunciations 6) Quizzes

Digital Citizenship Week: 6 Resources for Educators

Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum for K-12 (4):

Understanding YouTube and Digital Citizenship (6):

ABCya Animate from ABCya (disclosure, an advertiser here)allows students to create animated GIFs containing up to 100 frames.

Stop Frame Animator from Culture Street is a neat tool for creating animated stop motion movies.

Draw Island is a free online tool for creating drawings and simple GIF animations. Draw Island offers you your choice of four canvas sizes on which you can draw.

5 Online Tools That Help You Align Lessons to Common Core Standards

Teaching Objects is an online lesson planner that enables you to pull materials from your Google Drive and YouTube accounts into your lesson plans.

Alchemy SmartBinder is a free service for creating, organizing, and sharing lessons. With an Alchemy SmartBinder account teachers can create lessons that include text, images, videos, audio files, and web links.

Digital Storytelling with Glogster EDU A part of teaching is storytelling. As a teacher, you tell the story of the world around you. The history, the mechanics, the reasoning behind everything that your students observe and wonder about.

Great digital storytelling gives more than the facts: it gives a bit of atmosphere as well.

Classtools.net provides free, customisable flash templates to embed into blogs, wikis and websites. There is no signup, no passwords, no charges...This is very cool for anyone who teaches online or has a class website.

40+ Ways to Innovative Teaching Using Glogster EDU in the Classroom

Keep Organized w/ Awesome Planners from

Finding the Perfect Planner:

reached out to Erin Condren through her site asking if I could review a planner in exchange for one to trial.  They gifted me a certificate so that I could build my own planner through their site.  I went all out.  I added extra pages, more checklists, additional clear sleeves, an extra notepad and more.