Foreign Language & ESOL Technology Integration

Lesson Writer

LessonWriter allows teachers to create comprehensive literacy lesson plans and student materials from any content in minutes. Teachers just need to register with the site. The tools are FREE!

Basically, this tool will allow you to create a lesson from any electronic text, identify and define key vocabulary and grammar as well as allow you to create comprehension questions!

Visual Dictionary

Shahi is a cool internet resource for teachers and students that combines definitions with visual images. Type in the word and hit enter and you will receive a list of definitions by part of speech and various images. Check it out!

Bloom's Taxonomy with a Digital Twist

Bloom's has gone digital!
Andrew Churches, a Curriculum Manager in Auckland, NZ has updated Bloom's Taxonomy to reflect technology integration. Check out this article from Tech & Learning: Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally  and then check out more about Bloom's Digital Taxonomy on Andrew's site at http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy

Use cartoons online to motivate student writing

 Use cartoons to motivate student writing. http://goanimate.com/

Animoto

Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music. Fast, free and shockingly easy. To see an example of how it is used in a Spanish classroom, visit Ms. DeSantis' Blog.

Create a visual book using images from Flickr

 Bookr is a tool to create photobooks using Flickr images. Students and teachers can create visual representations of stories. http://www.pimpampum.net/en/content/bookr

Speaking activities online

 "A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holdsimages, 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." 

Block Posters

Block Posters allows you to create any size wall poster from any size image. Upload an image from your computer and choose how many sheets wide you would like the poster to be once it is printed.

Finding the Right Web 2.0 Tools for Classroom Use

How do you keep up with all of those cool Web 2.0 tools for classroom use and which one should you use? Check out this wiki WebTools4U2Use: http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/Finding+the+Right+Tool

Word Sift

Word Sift is a tool created by Stanford University. It was designed to assist teachers in managing the demands of vocabulary and academic language. The site allows the teacher to paste in a text to create a word cloud, provides a visual thesaurus and a function called "squish" that will create a word thesaurus relationship map. Pretty cool! Check it out! The website also provides teachers with ideas for using this tool for Lesson Prep, Previewing Text, Group Activities, Literacy Support and Assessment. Click here to find out more About Word Sift.

Here is an example of the tool. Text from one of the blog postings was pasted and "sifted."

Voki - Get your students to speak!

Voki is a free service that allows you (or your students) to create a personalized, speaking avatar. The avatar can be embedded into your Blog or webpage, emailed or just shared with the class. This is a great tool for formatively assessing individual student's speaking.

Wayne Craven: Cool Tools for the ESOL Classroom FLAG 2010

Symbaloo

Symbaloo: bookmarking in a great way. Access and share your bookmarks. Organize them differently.

diigo

diigo: collect and highlight all the stuff that you will use in the CLOUD. Coolest feature: add a sticky note to the stuff that you save. Available via app as well.

 

SpicyNodes

SpicyNodes: concept mapping tool