Group items tagged

A good review of both LMS tools. Winning for me is Schoology's iPad connections and, especially, it's good was to create and thread discussions (with embedded media). Teachers can also see which students participate by using a filter, and share discussions across classes/courses.

Offers songs in multiple European languages with text lyrics which you can manipulate as cloze activities. Lots of student control to repeat lines of a song, click on tab to show an answer to a missing lyric, etc. Students ign-up to keep a record of songs and the tasks completed. Provides 3 different levels of activity; e.g., "expert" is total cloze. R. Stannard has a training video on using this site at

"Instantly record & publish digital voice recordings" online, using phone, Skype, or mic. Saves and stores audio files in MP3 that you can post to website, blog, Facebook or Twitter, and playback with browser, tablet, or smartphone. Voice comments can be recorded, making it possible to use for language lessons. Great potential. Anyone who has used this with students, please comment!

This is a smart little app to create and edit your own apps for Apple and Android, and both Mac and Windows PCs and tablets. Be forewarned that it has to leave cookies on your machine, but you can supposedly develop and run your edits in your own web browser. Clever students will figure out ways to use it constructively.

A terrifically useful article by R. Byrne on making and using QR codes. He describes the tools that can be used and gives good examples of what to do with them, including QR Voice, which allow you to create a short audio message that will come up when the QR is scanned. Links to other useful articles on using QR.

While the article by R. Byrne talks about various tools, it often gives great tips for lessons using the QR code makers in ingenious ways.

"A movie trailer is a perfect summarizing activity. It can also act as a "teaser" as an introduction to a presentation or student paper. A movie trailer can readily showcase the acquisition of knowledge of a lesson or unit." A good description of how to use iMovie on the iPad/tablet.

"Discover, purchase, and share educational apps, books, and videos easily with Google Play for Education - a new online destination just for schools." Browse content by grade, subject, or standard; purchase with school PO (no credit card required); distribute apps via cloud. This page also shows how to set up tables to allow use of content and to find approved apps.

This article has a nice video that shows a teacher in class explaining copyright and fair use to students using a document linked from the article. I tend to disagree that teachers making multiple copies for classroom use is a "fair use," however. Always check what the author says, and use Creative Commons if you don't want your ideas ripped off without permission.

This article has tons of information. Just pick the way that works best for you. Towards the bottom of the screen is a charge with features and pricing (some are free - there's an app for that).

Conversation English is an iPhone/iTunes app where people can view a short video of a dialogue and do exercises. If your students are crazy about their smart phones, this would be a good way to get them to practice. It's about $5 US.

A screencaster on the Internet--nothing to download. For Mac or PC, you can record anything within a limited frame for 5 min., so this would be nice to help students start running a program or to create their own short presentations. Easy to upload to YouTube, embed on a Website, send to a smart phone, share by email, tweet, or download as mp4. See R. Stannard's instructional video

MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. The MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) is a peer-reviewed, open access, online publication addressing the scholarly use of multimedia resources in online education

"The U.S. Library of Congress offers a wealth of fantastic online resources for teachers and students. A quick jump into the teachers resource page will lead you to things like these primary source analysis guides that I have used with students in the past. The LOC also offers a couple of good iOS apps that are worth noting." Shows how various apps can be used with the teachers' resource pages at the U.S. Library of Congress. Great authentic materials for research papers and projects. H/T to R. Byrne