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A free Windows text-to-speech plugin for Microsoft Word It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary and a text-to-mp3 converter. WordTalk: A CALL Scotland website.  Can be used with languages other than English

ThingLink is a web tool that allows groups to comment on with text, audio, video, and to share and/or embed them. This resource has multiple applications in the FL classroom, including visual literacy, information literacy, enhancing communication and collaborative skills. One example activity: upload a map and have students describe various locations on map orally, in video, or text, and then have them comment on/expand upon each others' posts.

Teacher and author Larry Ferlazzo shares some great resources for creating visuals to accompany short texts.  This could be used by both teachers and students at all levels of instruction to address differentiated learning and to offer students options for demonstrating their learning.

Barbara - Thanks for sharing this blog article and the teaching tip. What a great idea for differentiation and integration of digital literacy. This provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate their digital literacy skills with respect to appropriate use of images, citation, etc.

The pros for including more visual texts and infographics in our teaching 

A free tool that lets you embed an audio message into your website - an appropriate tool for the 610 course!  You can record a message by phone or mic, use the text-to-speech feature, or upload your own mp3 audio files.   You can even choose from 25 languages and 100+ voices.  Very cool indeed. 

An interesting blog by a teacher of languages and technology.  Three entries, "improving pronunciation using Speech-to-Text Apps", "Using Thinglink to prepare for the AP cultural comparison", and "using google drawing in language classes" have direct correlations to what we do and can use in our classrooms.  Google draw (found in Chrome's Google Drive) would be particularly helpful to practice writing Arabic or Chinese.  

Contact us with comments and questions about this collection. Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction web site for educational and research purposes only. Any other use of these materials, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication, or transmission, is strictly prohibited without written permission.

Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction is a free gallery of images hosted by the University of Pittsburgh's Digital Research Library. The gallery contains nearly 500 drawings of people conversing, scenes in houses and buildings, and objects commonly found in houses. You'll also find drawings scenes in cities, in stores, and in nature. The visuals are all drawn cartoon style without any text or speech bubbles. Applications for Education If you're looking for some visual prompts to use in your language lessons, take a look at the gallery at Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction. You can search the gallery by keyword or simple browse through the collection. 

Are you inspired to create amazing interactive courses, but don't know how to code? Versal is a simple publishing platform with everything you need. Add text, videos, images, quizzes and interactive learning gadgets and bring your expertise to life.  I could see using this as a means for differentiating instruction within my class, as a means to support learning, and more. 

Storybird is a visual storytelling community. A global hub of readers, writers, and artists of all ages. Students and teachers can make, read, and share short, visual stories with an easy-to-use tool. Teachers and students can select artwork, drag and organize photos, and add your own text to create beautiful digital stories. These creations can then be published on the web with adjustable privacy settings and with the option to allow comments, which is perfect for teachers to encourage student collaboration. In addition, there is the option to create a classroom account. You can sign up for free or consider an upgrade to a paid account. World Language teachers can create stories for their students to read and share online. Students can also read or create short visual stories to share with their teacher and their peers.

Engage your students with text messages for realtime polling, and send reminders that they'll read instantly. Learn more here.

Easy way to make infographics for showing your data. Create the infographic and add photos, text, shapes, data and once you save it download your finished product or share it in social media.

You must create an account in order to use their free (but limited) themes.  Create your own infographics 

Explain Everything is a screencasting app for the iPad. It costs $2.99 in the App Store and no account is needed to use it. This iPad app is designed for educational professionals and students alike, to create projects and record them as screencasts. It is a powerful tool and flexible app that is easy to use. Students use Explain Everything to make collaborative projects using multiple mediums. The recording feature allows foreign language students to create speaking samples with their projects, which can be used to measure progress with language proficiency in a digital portfolio. Teachers can use the recording feature to create a lecture capture. Projects can be designed directly in Explain Everything or files such as presentations, photos, notes, and videos can be imported into the app to create a project that can be annotated with pencil or text, narrated, recorded, and shared in a variety of ways, uploading to Photo Roll, You Tube, Email, Drop Box, and Evernote. Explain Everything can be used by both teachers and students as an interactive whiteboard tool for presentational purposes, when connected to an Apple TV or projector.

Account is free; find collaborative projects with students around the world. Has a limited number of free student epals account too.

ePals is a free web 2.0 resource that provides language classes the opportunity to connect with target language speakers around the globe. Communication can range from simple email messages to wiki and blog collaboration to multimedia presentations and even Skype video chat. Teachers can monitor all activity, for the sake of student security. A potential project would be for both groups - advanced level students in the local L2 group - to read the same story or poem and then use the ePals blog tool to share opinions (targeting writing skills) and later the Skype video chat to discuss (or perhaps debate) the text (targeting oral skills).

Duolingo is a free language-learning website and crowd-sourced text translation platform. The service is designed so that, as users progress through the lessons, they simultaneously help to translate websites and other documents. It is a way that teachers can provide an additional language learning source to their students, and once each lesson is completed, students read authentic sources and complete activities on the Internet from authentic web-based sources.

A great collection of francophone stories from countries like Mali, Senegal, Maroc.  You can download the text and a teacher's guide.  It's also read aloud by a native speaker.  

Through this website, teachers can have their students vote or submit short text answers or questions using computers or SMS messages from their cell phones without needing to purchase clickers.

Digital stories push students to become creators of content, rather than just consumers. Weaving together images, music, text, and voice, digital stories can be created in all content areas and at all grade levels while incorporating the 21st century skills of creating, communicating, and collaborating

Best online gradebooks to keep a record of students' progress and achievement.

Another gradebook you might be interested in is located at http://gradebookportal.com/ It is free and includes the following: --Free Online GradeBook for teachers to easily customize. Build customized weighted grading from anywhere at anytime 24/7. Grade anytime & anywhere with auto calculation term and final grades --Instant Progress Reports are intuitive and keep Students and Parents up to date --Track attendance and alert parents on absentees --Class Calendar keeps students, parents and teachers current on upcoming exams, meetings, events. Attach assignments, post homework and attach documents. --Build user logic to send email and text messages based on grades and attendance parameters --Communicate with all of your students and parents and build custom contact lists --100% secure and safe environment with several layers of encryption

What I like about it is the instant progress report! I use the gradebook of BlackBoard and I don't think that they have this feature.

This website allows students to share projects and comment on others' projects.

VoiceThread allows you to upload different media to create a project and then share it with others. Those that you share it with can collaborate with you on it by communicating through a type of discussion board.

Transforming media into collaborative spaces with video, voice, and text commenting.

This resource from el Centro Virtual Cervantes provides video interviews with individuals from a number of regions or cities in Latin America and Spain. Each interview is accompanied by a description of the linguistic characteristics of a particular way of speaking, a text transcript, and information on where the region is located geographically. I personally find this fascinating! I also think it could serve as a resource for students who might not be aware of how many variations there are when Spanish is spoken.