Novice
Animoto is a web application that, with the click of a button, produces videos using images and music that a user selects. Language teachers and students can choose culturally-appropriate images and audio to produce short movies that can be used in language presentations. These can be looked at on the web or embedded in blogs to be shared with classmates. Some NOVASTARTALK products have included videos on Chinese food and Arabic scripts.
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Bamboo Paper - Note taking with iPad
Bamboo Paper is a free app for iPad, which turns your iPad into a notebook. You can use it to sketch your thoughts and ideas in an authentic paper-like digital notebook and your notes can be shared visually and easily. You can also use it to practice your penmanship of writing in non-western language characters such as Chinese, Arabic, etc.
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How to Create Your Own Blog Using Blogger
Blogger allows you to create your own personalized blog where you can post content (text, audio, video, images, etc.) that can be viewed and commented upon by your user community.
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Beginner
Woices is a free program that allows you to combine photographs, custom maps and voice recordings to create beautiful, interactive virtual tours. Tours can then be watched on the web, embedded on personal sites, or viewed on mobile devices.
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Using Word Cloud in the World Languages Classroom
What’s a word cloud? It is a form of information graphic of infographic! It is an application that turns text into a visual representation. The words from the original text are arranged in collage fashion in the graphic. Word clouds visually highlight the most often used words in the passage.
You can use this type of tool to facilitate world language teaching. You can use it for activities such as topic introduction, vocabulary development, word association, practice writing, word matching, pre-reading, brainstorming, defining main ideas, assessment and reflection. For example, in a word-matching activity, you can write a list of words both in your target language and in English, and then using the resulting word cloud as a vocab quiz/worksheet. In a pre-reading activity, you can engage students’ discussion by using key words created in a word cloud and make predictions about the content before reading the actual text. In the defining main idea activity, you can create a word cloud out of an article in the target language and ask students to discover and highlight the main ideas in the article. Take a look at this article written by a Spanish instructor to see how she used the word cloud tool in her classroom.
There are a number of applications available that will allow you to generate word cloud: Wordle, Tagxedo, Wordsift, Worditout, Word Mosaic, Tagcrowd etc. Click on each of the link to find out how you can use it to create a word cloud.
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Creating a Blog with WordPress
WordPress is a free program that allows you to create and edit your own blog where you can post custom content, audio, video and approved user comments.
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Intermediate
Woices is a free program that allows you to combine photographs, custom maps and voice recordings to create beautiful, interactive virtual tours. Tours can then be watched on the web, embedded on personal sites, or viewed on mobile devices.
Using Word Cloud in the World Languages Classroom
What’s a word cloud? It is a form of information graphic of infographic! It is an application that turns text into a visual representation. The words from the original text are arranged in collage fashion in the graphic. Word clouds visually highlight the most often used words in the passage.
You can use this type of tool to facilitate world language teaching. You can use it for activities such as topic introduction, vocabulary development, word association, practice writing, word matching, pre-reading, brainstorming, defining main ideas, assessment and reflection. For example, in a word-matching activity, you can write a list of words both in your target language and in English, and then using the resulting word cloud as a vocab quiz/worksheet. In a pre-reading activity, you can engage students’ discussion by using key words created in a word cloud and make predictions about the content before reading the actual text. In the defining main idea activity, you can create a word cloud out of an article in the target language and ask students to discover and highlight the main ideas in the article. Take a look at this article written by a Spanish instructor to see how she used the word cloud tool in her classroom.
There are a number of applications available that will allow you to generate word cloud: Wordle, Tagxedo, Wordsift, Worditout, Word Mosaic, Tagcrowd etc. Click on each of the link to find out how you can use it to create a word cloud.
Creating a Blog with WordPress
WordPress is a free program that allows you to create and edit your own blog where you can post custom content, audio, video and approved user comments.
Advanced
A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too, all with no software to install.
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Voxopop: Using Asynchronous Voice Tools in the World Language Classroom
Voxopop is an asynchronous voice tool that can be used for conversations or storytelling.
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Wikispaces in the Language Classroom
Wikis are an effective collaboration and organizational tool to archive student and instructor coursework, lessons, videos and other instructional materials. Wikispaces is a free and easy to use wiki resource currently used by faculty members, instructional technologists and students in a variety of fields.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY&w=640&h=480]
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