Wallwisher Brainstorm Tool in the Foreign Language Classroom | Foreign language begins with T Many of my lessons start out with a brainstorming session. Why? Because this accurately engages students with the topic that will be introduced. For instance, it is much easier to explain feminine/masculine endings after students have brainstormed and have defined similarities and differences, have divided words in groups according to their ending, and drawn preliminary conclusions. So, why not use a super simple online tool to brainstorm instead of the usual pen and paper or the board? Wallwisher is a super easy to use notice board that is excellent as an online brainstorming tool. Below is a wall that I recently used with my Spanish beginner class. How I use Wallwisher in my Spanish classrooms Brainstorm: as I mentioned above, I use brainstorming activities in my classroom often. Other Wallwisher uses in the foreign language classroom Sentence structure and vocab: write a very short sentence and ask students to expand it. How to use Wallwisher tutorial Further reading Some Related Posts:
7 Tools Students Can Use to Manage Group Projects Any teacher who has assigned group projects to students has at some point had to help those students organize and equitably distribute work. (Or has had to listen to students complaints about other group members not pulling their weight). Here are some tools that you can have students use to manage their responsibilities when working on group projects. Pegby is a good website for organizing the tasks that you and or your team need to get done. Teambox is a free service that allows you to create and manage a collaborative workspace for team projects. Enter the Group is a new free service offering collaborative project management for groups. Todoist and its sister service Wedoist are easy-to-use task management services for individuals and groups. Trello is a free service designed to help individuals and groups manage tasks. Wiggio is a collaboration tool designed to make scheduling group meetings easier. Ta-da List is a simple to-do list creation tool built by 37 Signals.
The Best Tech for Communicative Projects | | Calico SpanishCalico Spanish Welcome back to #langchat, everyone! We hope you were able to join us for our Thursday night chat on communicative projects that also help students acquire tech skills, but if you were unable to, we’ve included a summary of the night’s discussion below. As always, thank you to all the participants, and especially to our moderators for the night: Kristy (@placido), Don (@dr_dmd) and Diego (@DiegoOjeda66). Like last week, this week’s summary is stuffed to the gills with resources and activities. If your “Bookmark” tag couldn’t keep up last night, be sure to save this page, as we’ve listed dozens of participant-suggested and approved tools and websites. Our chat focus was on communication and communicative projects, but participants shared a great deal of their favorite tech tools, especially Web 2.0 tools, that can be used in the world languages classroom to increase communication. The Three Modes of Communication Advantages to Tech in the World Language Classroom Assigning tech Projects
Edmodo: Online Learning Last week the Wall Street Journal had an article announcing that Edmodo had received a $15 million venture capital investment from the founder of LinkedIn and a former VP of Facebook. That article gave me the idea for this post of fifteen things teachers and students can do with Edmodo. For those not familiar with Edmodo, in a nutshell it is a microblogging system designed specifically for teachers and students. Using Edmodo teachers can create a microblogging network for their classes. Edmodo allows teachers to create a group specifically for their students and exclude those not invited to the group. Edmodo provides teachers with a place to post assignment reminders, build an event calendar, and post messages to the group. Here are fifteen things teachers and students can do with Edmodo. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Do you use Edmodo?
Sharing Files In some of my side projects I occasionally find myself needing to share files that are larger than my email service or my recipient's email service can handle. In the past I would use Drop.io or File Dropper to share those large files. This afternoon I learned about a new file sharing service called Let's Crate that I'll try in the future. Let's Crate is very easy to use. To use Let's Crate just drag a file from your desktop to the Let's Crate page. Applications for EducationLet's Crate is a nice alternative to sending mass emailings of large files. Now of course you could much of the same thing by hosting your files on Google Docs and posting them online.