# data[].attributes.headline
13 Free Web Tools Students and Teachers Should Know About | MindShift | KQED News

# data[].attributes.subject
13 Free Web Tools Students and Teachers Should Know About | MindShift | KQED News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Web-based tools continue to proliferate, giving teachers more to add to their arsenal, but it can be hard to determine which resources are worth spending time exploring. At the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) conference this year, Adam Bellow, founder of EduClipper, and Steve Dembo, Online Community Manager for Discovery Education offered a quick run through of some favorite apps. The two educators are early adopters of ed-tech classroom strategies and have a lot of experience with tech integration.

1. Padlet used to be called Wallwisher, but it got a makeover and a name change recently. It's essentially a virtual board with sticky notes that can be easily moved, shared and embedded. There are several views, including something that looks more like a scrollable blog and it's easy to both personalize the experience and organize notes. The privacy and moderation settings make it easy for students to become members of a board where a teacher can post resources and encourage them to do the same. "It's a great way to quickly share resources with your kids and moderate what they post," said Bellow.

2. Ipiccy is like free Photoshop, but less complicated. It has intuitive editing control panels that allow for the simple things like filters, effects, cropping and resizing. It's also easy to undo anything that didn't turn out as imagined. But if the project requires a more sophisticated treatment, Ipiccy has layers that like Photoshop allow a user to make very professional final products. Best of all, it's easy to upload projects to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that a class might be using to house finished work.

3. Thinglink allows a user to add content to images. For example, a student could display a map of Washington, D.C. and add a video explaining how a bill becomes a law over the Capitol building. And it's easy. The user just clicks a spot on the image and adds text, a link to a website, or an embed code for video. It's a quick and easy way to make a project more dynamic and interactive.

4. Easel.ly is a fairly easy way to create an infographic, a visual depiction of information. The tool offers set themes that can be dragged onto a blank canvas to give students somewhere to start. A good example is a map of the United States with bubbles highlighting statistics about specific areas. Then icons can be added, sized, and edited to visually represent information. It's good for those uncertain of their tech skills, but who want to begin integrating some digital tools into the classroom. It won't do the work for you, and it forces students to represent what they know at the end of a research project, while giving some creative license. "Instead of giving a paper or project, this is a great way for them to break down concepts visually," Bellow said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
13 Free Web Tools Students and Teachers Should Know About | KQED

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Web-based tools continue to proliferate, giving teachers more to add to their arsenal, but it can be hard to determine which resources are worth spending time exploring. At the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) conference this year, two early adopters of ed-tech tools offered a quick run through of some favorite apps.

# data[].attributes.headline
Free Technology for Teachers: Monday, February 16, 2015

# data[].attributes.subject
Free Technology for Teachers: Monday, February 16, 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In a few weeks I will be flying to Australia to speak at the Future Schools Expo in Sydney. This will be the first time I have flown to Australia. Since Sydney is just about as far away from Portland, Maine as I could go and stay in the planet, I did a bit of research to find the most comfortable (by relative airline standards) plane and seat to choose to fly to Australia. (Yes, I realize that is the definition of first world problem).

To do my research I turned to the message board community on FlyerTalk.com (it's kind of like Consumer Reports meets Trip Advisor for airlines). Once it was determined that I would be flying Qantas (I didn't have much choice on that matter) from Dallas to Sydney I set out to see what people were saying about seats on the A380 that flies on that route. I started out using the name Dallas in my search, but I didn't see nearly as many posts on the topic as I had hoped. Further, the posts that I did find were written by people who had made relatively few contributions to the community. After reading some not-so-helpful post I realized that most frequent contributors to the community don't actually spell out full city names. Instead, they use airport abbreviation codes like DFW when writing about Dallas. As soon as I switched out Dallas and for DFW in my search I found a lot more posts from frequent contributors to the FlyerTalk community.

How this applies to students:
A few years ago I heard my friend Tom Daccord at EdTechTeacher.org (an advertiser on this blog) give an example of social studies students researching films of the early 20th Century. In his example Tom mentioned that the students who insisted on using the term "movies" in their searches didn't get nearly as far as those who used terms like "talkies," "moving pictures," and "cinema." This was due to the fact that "movies" wasn't a part of the common dialect of film critics in the early 20th Century.

For students to understand the dialect of the topics that they are researching, they will have to do some prior reading and learning on the topic. One thing that I've asked students to do when reading primary sources that I've distributed to them is to highlight or write down the terms and phrases that are new to them. Often those highlighted terms and phrases often end up being a huge asset to them when they are trying to choose the best terms to use in Google searches.

By the way, if you copy and paste a primary document into Google Docs then share it with students, it is very easy for them to highlight new-to-them phrases and for you to see what they've highlighted. That is one of the activities that I model in my online course Getting Going With GAFE.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a few weeks I will be flying to Australia to speak at the Future Schools Expo in Sydney. This will be the first time I have flown to Australia.

# data[].attributes.headline
Free Technology for Teachers: Dozens of Examples of VoiceThread in Education

# data[].attributes.subject
Free Technology for Teachers: Dozens of Examples of VoiceThread in Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Earlier today, in a post about the California Gold Rush, I mentioned using VoiceThread in a lesson. In writing that post I neglected to mention what a VoiceThread is. Rather than reading my explanation, the best thing to do is to watch the VoiceThread explanation of VoiceThread that I have embedded below.

Applications for Education
Hopefully, after watching the VoiceThread above you will have some ideas for how you can use VoiceThread in your classroom. To get give you even more ideas and examples VoiceThread has a digital library of more than five dozen examples of VoiceThread being used in a wide variety of content areas taught in K-12 classrooms.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Dozens of Examples of VoiceThread in Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Earlier today, in a post about the California Gold Rush, I mentioned using VoiceThread in a lesson. In writing that post I neglected to mention what a VoiceThread is. Rather than reading my explanation, the best thing to do is to watch the VoiceThread explanation of VoiceThread that I have embedded below.

# data[].attributes.headline
Free Technology for Teachers: Palabea - Social Networking Meets Foreign Language Virtual Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
Free Technology for Teachers: Palabea - Social Networking Meets Foreign Language Virtual Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Palabea is a website for learning a foreign language through a variety of methods and media. Palabea is a free service that users can create a profile on in order to meet native speakers of the language they're trying to learn. Users essentially become peer teachers of the language through audio or video conferencing. Palabea also hosts language classrooms where users can find instruction, take quizzes, or practice different elements of learning a language. Palabea users can also find videos and podcasts designed to help student learn a foreign language.

Applications for EducationMuch of the content on
Palabea is user generated and therefore may contain commonly used slang rather than formal language. A good use of Palabea could be to use it as method of exposing high school students (terms of use require 14 or older) to conversational language that they might experience when meeting a native speaker.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Palabea - Social Networking Meets Foreign Language Virtual Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Palabea is a website for learning a foreign language through a variety of methods and media. Palabea is a free service that users can create a profile on in order to meet native speakers of the language they're trying to learn. Users essentially become peer teachers of the language through audio or video conferencing.

# data[].attributes.headline
Free Technology for Teachers: The New Google Drive Empowers Language Learners

# data[].attributes.subject
Free Technology for Teachers: The New Google Drive Empowers Language Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is a guest post from Jennifer Carey (@TeacherJenCarey) of EdTechTeacher - an advertiser on this site.

Recently, while demonstrating to a Spanish class how to use Google Drive, I also showed them how to change the overall text to Spanish. By doing this, autocorrect would stop trying to change their text, and they would no longer have that annoying red line appearing under their writing. I then reminded them to switch the language back to English when they returned to working on other classes. A student (7th grader) quickly shot up his hand and taught me something new today about Google Docs.

With the New Drive, not only can you now set your overall language, but you can also include a subset of languages that you understand. This is a great tool for students taking foreign language classes. A first year Spanish student, for example, can easily get confused when their menus switch to Spanish as a result of changing the primary language in Drive. That's no longer an issue if Spanish is added as an additional language rather than the primary one!

The addition of more languages is easy. While in the New Drive, click on Settings (the gear shaped icon in the top right corner) and then select "Settings:"

Under "General" select Change language settings next to "Language:"

Next, click on Select languages next to "Other languages you understand."

Once the pop-up window appears, check the box(es) next to all language(s) that you understand.

By doing this, you enable the features of the other languages without changing the overall language of Google Drive. It's a great new feature to support language students in Drive!

Looking to learn more great Google and language tricks? EdTechTeacher ran a great Back to School with Google webinar in September and has a full set of app recommendations for language classrooms.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The New Google Drive Empowers Language Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is a guest post from Jennifer Carey (@TeacherJenCarey) of EdTechTeacher - an advertiser on this site. Recently, while demonstrating to a Spanish class how to use Google Drive, I also showed them how to change the overall text to Spanish.

# data[].attributes.headline
Free Technology for Teachers: 10 Resources for ESL & Foreign Language Students

# data[].attributes.subject
Free Technology for Teachers: 10 Resources for ESL & Foreign Language Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
While writing about LangMedia yesterday I realized that I've reviewed a lot of resources for foreign language and ESL/EFL students and teachers over the last couple of years. Here are ten of the better free resources for foreign language and ESL/EFL students.

Smart.fm is a free service designed to help you learn languages, mathematics, and history independently. At it's most basic, Smart.fm provides a flashcard-like service for learning languages, learning formulas, and learning facts. You can hear the flashcards read to you, read the flashcards, and play games based upon the flashcards you're studying. Smart.fm takes the flashcard concept a step farther by offering a personalized repetition schedule based upon what you've learned and what you haven't yet learned. The schedule adjusts each time you revisit your account.

Vocabulix provides numerous free tools for learning Spanish, German, or English. Vocabulix can be used to create quizzes or take quizzes online. Vocabulix provides dozens of drills and activities designed to help students learn Spanish, German, or English. The verb conjugation chart can be used on the Vocabulix website. The verb conjugator code is freely available for use in third party blogs, wikis, or websites. As most new language learning websites do, Vocabulix has a social networking option that helps match native speakers with learners.

Forvo can best be described as an audio wiki for word pronunciations. One of the problems with learning to speak a language that is not phonetic is trying to figure out how to pronounce the words. Forvo hosts hundreds of recordings of word pronunciations by native speakers. Currently there are nearly 200 languages supported on Forvo. Along with word pronunciations, Forvo provides some basic demographic information about each language. Forvo's content is user supported and user generated so new pronunciations are added every day.

CAPL, Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon, is a project developed by Dr. Michael Shaughnessy at Washington & Jefferson College. The purpose of CAPL is to provide images that demonstrate the true meaning and intention of the words in a language. CAPL currently has collections of images for teaching and learning English (North American), German, French, Chinese, and Spanish. CAPL also has images for Japanese, Russian, and Ukranian. All of the images in the collection are licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows for re-use and manipulation for non-commercial purposes.

The Story Place is a children's digital library produced by the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg counties in North Carolina. The Story Place features digital stories in English and Spanish for students of pre-school age through elementary school. The digital stories are arranged by age group and by theme. I looked at the pre-school story about firefighters and thought it that it is the type of story I would share with my pre-school aged child, if I had kids. Along with the digital stories are activity guides for parents.

Verbs Online provides foreign language students with a good selection of activities for practicing verb conjugations. Practice activities are available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese. The practice activities deal with the past, present, and future tenses of regular and irregular verbs. Students can choose to do the activities in sets of ten through fifty practice items.

WordSteps is a resource for learning the vocabulary of your choice of nine languages. To start learning vocabulary with WordSteps select the language you are trying to learn then choose a set of vocabulary words in that language. WordSteps provides six types of practice activities for each set of vocabulary words. The sets of vocabulary words are called dictionaries by WordSteps. You can use the dictionaries made by other WordSteps users or create your own dictionary. WordSteps can be used without creating an account, but in order to create your own dictionary you must create an account.

Kindersay is designed for use by pre-K students. The user interface is easy to navigate using clear, kid-friendly icons. There are more than 500 activities that students can use. There is not any distracting advertising on Kindersay.

ESL Basics is a site that provides short video vocabulary lessons for beginning and advanced ESL students. For teachers, ESL Basics has a small collection of suggestions and ideas for teaching ESL. ESL Basics is adding new content on a regular basis.

Make Beliefs is a free comic strip creation tool that provides students with a variety of templates, characters, and prompts for building their own comic strips. Make Beliefs provides students with a pre-drawn characters and dialogue boxes which they can insert into each box of their comic strip. The editing options allow users the flexibility to alter the size of each character and dialogue bubble, bring elements forward within each box, and alter the sequence of each box in the comic strip. Students that have trouble starting a story can access writing prompts through make beliefs. Most impressively, Make Beliefs allows users to write their comic strip's dialogue in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portugese, or Latin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Resources for ESL & Foreign Language Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While writing about LangMedia yesterday I realized that I've reviewed a lot of resources for foreign language and ESL/EFL students and teachers over the last couple of years. Here are ten of the better free resources for foreign language and ESL/EFL students. Smart.fm is a free service designed to help you learn languages, mathematics, and history independently.

# data[].attributes.headline
Free Technology for Teachers: Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction Offers Hundreds of Drawings

# data[].attributes.subject
Free Technology for Teachers: Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction Offers Hundreds of Drawings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Visuals for Foreign Language Instruction Offers Hundreds of Drawings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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.

# data[].attributes.headline
Free Technology for Teachers: 11 Foreign Language Resources to Try in 2011

# data[].attributes.subject
Free Technology for Teachers: 11 Foreign Language Resources to Try in 2011

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Yesterday's list of 11 good resources to try in 2011 featured health and physical education resources. Last week I featured 55 other good resources to try in 2011. Today, I have 11 good foreign language resources to try in 2011 (I've included a couple of ESL/EFL resources in this list).

Forvo can best be described as an audio wiki for word pronunciations. One of the problems with learning to speak a language that is not phonetic is trying to figure out how to pronounce the words. Forvo hosts hundreds of recordings of word pronunciations by native speakers. Along with word pronunciations, Forvo provides some basic demographic information about each language. Forvo's content is user-supported and user-generated. New pronunciations are added on a regular basis.

WordSteps is a resource for learning the vocabulary of your choice of nine languages. To start learning vocabulary with WordSteps select the language you are trying to learn then choose a set of vocabulary words in that language. WordSteps provides six types of practice activities for each set of vocabulary words. The sets of vocabulary words are called dictionaries by WordSteps. You can use the dictionaries made by other WordSteps users or create your own dictionary. WordSteps can be used without creating an account, but in order to create your own dictionary you must create an account. The languages supported by WordSteps are English, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, German, Japanese, Italian, and Portuguese. The vocabulary practice activities are Flash Cards, Translation Variations, Words Variants, Alphabet Soup, Write Translation by Word, and Write Word by Translation.

LangMedia, produced by Five Colleges Incorporated, provides resources for learning languages less-commonly offered by high schools and colleges in the US. Some of the languages for which LangMedia offers educational resources are Arabic, Bulgarian, Persian, Thai, and Urdu. For these languages LangMedia provides course outlines, practice dialogues, and lists of resources necessary for completing the requirements of each course. In addition to resources for learning languages, LangMedia offers a section called Culture Talk. LangMedia Culture Talk is a collection of video clips of interviews and discussions with people from many different countries, of different ages and from different walks of life. The videos are intended to give viewers insight into the cultures of peoples around the globe. Some of the videos feature English speakers while other videos do not. Those videos that are not in English are accompanied by a written English transcript.

Voxy is an interesting approach to helping ESL students learn English. Voxy uses current articles from world news, pop culture, and sports to to help students acquire language. As students read an article they can click on highlighted words and hear them pronounced. Highlighted words when clicked reveal the Spanish translation. Clicking on highlighted words also adds them to a study list. The study lists can be used for quizzes and games. Voxy is available in English and Spanish.

Repeat After Us is an online library of copyright-free English texts and audio recordings. The purpose of Repeat After Us is to provide ESL students with a place to read and hear proper pronunciations of English words. The texts on Repeat After Us are arranged into eight genre categories including children's stories, prose fiction, and prose non-fiction. Recordings can be listened to online and or downloaded from Repeat After Us. All of the recordings match the texts. Texts range in length from one paragraph to multiple pages.

iMendi is a new site, parts of it are still in development, for learning the basic vocabulary of English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Czech. To use iMendi just select the language you speak and select the language you want to learn. iMendi then gives you the choice of choosing a lesson (level 1, level 2, etc) or trying a randomly chosen lesson. The "lessons" are really just simple vocabulary matching exercises with a score and the correct answers revealed at the end.

CAPL, Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon, is a project developed by Dr. Michael Shaughnessy at Washington & Jefferson College. The purpose of CAPL is to provide images that demonstrate the true meaning and intention of the words in a language. CAPL currently has collections of images for teaching and learning English (North American), German, French, Chinese, and Spanish. CAPL also has images for Japanese, Russian, and Ukranian. All of the images in the collection are licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows for re-use and manipulation for non-commercial purposes.

Open Culture is devoted to the idea of sharing learning opportunities. Open Culture has an extensive list of free resources for learning thirty-seven different languages. All of the resources in the list can be downloaded to your computer or iPod. When available, Open Culture has linked to the iTunes feed for the learning resources.

Lingus TV is a website featuring videos to help viewers learn conversational Spanish. The collection of videos includes lessons for beginning, intermediate, and advanced learners. The short videos feature actors having brief, realistic looking and sounding conversations. Each video is accompanied by the Spanish transcript and the English translation of the transcripts. The concept is great, but unfortunately the content of a couple of videos makes me question whether or not I would use them with students younger than high school age.

Hello World provides games and activities for students to develop their knowledge of foreign languages. Hello World has games and activities in nine languages including Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese. Not all of the games and activities are free, but enough of them are free to warrant listing as a good place for free learning activities.

22 Frames is a service that provides a central location for locating captioned videos for learning English and for Internet users who have hearing impairments. 22 Frames provides more than just captioned videos. For each video 22 Frames provides a list of idioms, slang words, and commonly mispronounced words in each video. 22 Frames tells viewers where each use of idioms, slang, and commonly mispronounced words appears in each video. Viewers can click on any of the words in the lists provided by 22 Frames to find a definition for each word and to find pronunciation tips. See 22 Frames in action in this video about a passenger plane crash in Iran.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
11 Foreign Language Resources to Try in 2011

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Yesterday's list of 11 good resources to try in 2011 featured health and physical education resources. Last week I featured 55 other good resources to try in 2011. Today, I have 11 good foreign language resources to try in 2011 (I've included a couple of ESL/EFL resources in this list).

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Outstanding Technology Tools for a World Language Classroom - EDUSPIRE

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Outstanding Technology Tools for a World Language Classroom - EDUSPIRE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Integrate Technology into your 21st Century World Language Classroom

¡Hola! I'm Katie Bordner, and I'm one of the Spanish teachers at City High in Pittsburgh, PA. If you've seen my last post , you'll know that I'm teaching the World Language Tech Integration class with Eduspire this October.

I've been building up a portfolio of resources to use in the classroom to complement my teaching, and I'm very excited to share some of these with course participants. To give you an idea of some things we'll be focusing on in the World Language Tech Integration class, here is a sneak peek at five free tools I use on a regular basis:

1. Duolingo

Duolingo is the best language learning application I've come across. It's adaptable to individual learners in that students can test out of topics they have previously mastered. Students can play it on a computer on a mobile device. It now has a teacher dashboard so you can track students' progress and get weekly reports. Students enjoy the gamification aspect of it as well. It's a great replacement for drill and kill worksheets and also serves as a good warm-up.

2. Google Translate

Obviously, World Language teachers know all too well the inaccuracies and pitfalls of Google Translate, so I recognize that you have to be very careful in how you encourage students to use it. I preface the condoning of Google Translate by watching a few videos like and . I do find, however, that having students type short phrases they are working on saying and then clicking the speaker button to see hear how they're pronounced can help students fill in some gaps. This also helps them be more independent learners in addition to the repetitions they hear from me. I'm also starting to move this practice over to because its pronunciation is more accurate.

3. Speech Recognition Add-on for Google Docs

I try to connect the listening practice on to students speaking as much as possible, so I was very happy to find a Google Translate and Speech Recognition Add-on for Google Docs that allows the user to speak into the microphone of the computer, and the add-on will type what it hears. Like other speech recognition software, it's a bit finicky at the start and it doesn't always pick up what students are trying to say in the second language. But it does get students to repeat phrases for clarity and understanding, and they are so proud when they see an accurate phrase!

4. Slowing down YouTube videos

One of the top struggles beginning language learners have is developing an ear for the second language in authentic settings. Many of my students complain that the audio provided as an ancillary for a textbook is too fast, let alone a native Spanish speaker speaking at their normal pace. Enter: slowing down YouTube videos to help students process what they are hearing and repeat. This allows students to understand and engage with authentic materials without being overwhelmed.

5. Following the #langchat hashtag on Twitter

The #langchat hashtag is full of great ideas and inspiring teachers. I have learned so much and gotten so many great tools from #langchat. It has been a great professional development tool, encouraging and inspiring each other to try new things and new ways of thinking about language learning.

If you want to learn more about a specific tool or want to know others that I use, I hope you sign up for my World Language Tech Integration class through Eduspire!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Outstanding Technology Tools for a World Language Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
¡Hola! I'm Katie Bordner, and I'm one of the Spanish teachers at City High in Pittsburgh, PA. If you've seen my last post , you'll know that I'm teaching the World Language Tech Integration class with Eduspire this October.

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Terrific Technology-Based Tools for the Foreign Language Classroom | General Educator Blog

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Terrific Technology-Based Tools for the Foreign Language Classroom | General Educator Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Don't let your classroom end up behind the times.

Modern blogs for ancient Greek? Why not!
We all know technology can be a powerful teaching tool.
I mean, we pretty much use it in every facet of our lives these days.

But what are the best ways to maximize the effectiveness of technology in the language classroom?

In a classroom setting, technology can help or hinder, focus or distract, depending on its application.

There's a fine line we have to be careful not to cross.

Doing individual exercises on personal devices can isolate students and rob them of the interactive experience that language learning should be. However, collaborative tools such as Google Docs and blogs can help fuel interaction and keep students focused on a specific learning goal.

Makes sense, right? In this post, we're going to continue exploring technology-based tools for teaching any language, along with their best applications.

5 Most Powerful Tech-based Tools for the Foreign Language Classroom

1. Music and Videos

If you're not using this one already, you're really missing out! Remember the first rule of language learning: Input, input, input!

Students can't sustain their skills on textbook explanations alone - they need the constant reinforcement that authentic sources provide. An important part of the language learning process for your students will be simply listening to native speakers and picking up new phrases, grammar patterns and more. When they hear their language lessons brought to life, they will better understand how to employ their knowledge.

Audio listening exercises can be good for testing what students can distinguish on their own. That being said, when it comes to music and videos, the video is the pedagogical powerhouse of the two. The combination of pictures, intonations and gestures gives students context clues that they can't get from classroom interactions alone. So, the next time you think about teaching the German subjunctive, consider something like Die Prinzen 's "Ich wäre so gerne Millionär" for catchy input.

2. Educational Websites

After your students have been getting good input from authentic sources, have them try some guided practice activities provided by useful websites. Here are some of my favorites from the (digital) vaults:
Quizlet
Quizlet is a powerful and flexible online learning platform based on a tried-and-true memorization tool: the flash card. The "sets" of digital cards can be used to drill vocabulary, but also work well for grammar topics like gender or verb conjugation. Teachers can create and organize sets for their classes and monitor students' activity and progress on a given set. Students in turn have access to a huge archive of sets and can easily search for topics like " Konjunktiv I German" or browse by language. The activities are fun, with plenty of opportunities for working in pairs. All in all, a great tool for homework and in-class playfulness. Try it on for size.
Foreign Language News Sources
What could be more authentic and relevant than current events? News in the target language affords the student a fascinating glimpse into the everyday life and attitudes of people who speak it. These are also topics that your students should be somewhat familiar with, giving them a clear context to build from. A photograph of houses lying in rubble with the headline " Erdbeben!" will be enough to communicate the idea "Earthquake!" If they're familiar with the story from NPR (...or Facebook), the word " China" will be enough of a hint. In addition, many national news sources, such as BBC and Deutsche Welle, offer slowly-spoken news and supplementary activities specifically for language learners.
FluentU
FluentU teaches language using strictly authentic materials such as news, music videos and movie trailers. This has the major advantage of ensuring that all material is up-to-date and culturally relevant. In a word: meaningful. This is just the thing students have been missing during hours of regurgitating fabricated textbook conversations about what they like to buy in the supermarket.

It's designed to get students familiar with foreign vocabulary in a fun, friendly, totally approachable way. FluentU makes it possible to learn languages from music videos, commercials, news, inspiring talks, cartoons and more.

With FluentU, your students will learn the real language-the same way that natives speak it. They'll hear their new vocabulary words in context, spoken naturally and casually. Every student is guaranteed to find videos they love to watch, and you're guaranteed to find videos that meet your teaching needs. FluentU has a very wide variety of videos, as you can see here:

FluentU has interactive captions that let you tap on any word to see an image, definition, audio and useful examples. Now native language content is easily within the reach of any student, at any skill level, thanks to the interactive transcripts.

Didn't catch something? Go back and listen again. Missed a word? Hover your mouse over the subtitles to instantly view definitions.

You can learn all the vocabulary in any video with FluentU's "learn mode." Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you're learning.

And FluentU always keeps track of vocabulary that your students are learning. It uses that vocab to give students a 100% personalized experience by recommending videos and examples.

You can organize chosen videos into "courses," name your courses and assign them to your students for homework or in-class activities. They can each sign in using nothing but a secret password that we bestow to you, the teacher. Then you can track their progress individually and as a group. How many videos and activities have they progressed through? What percentage of the exercise questions are they getting right? You'll be able to see all this information and more.

Start using FluentU on the website with your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the FluentU app from the iTunes store.

3. Collaborative Tools

The second rule of language learning? Output, output, output! Living languages are living for a reason. They need to be produced in spoken and written form. Here are some tools to get students to work together!
Google Documents
For those of us teaching without Smartboards, Google Docs can be a useful tool when collaborating on a single assignment. You can load up your Google Drive with tons of in-class activities or start a new document on the fly. With the click of a mouse, any of your students can edit the document. It's perfect for doing writing activities in pairs!
Facebook
I know what you're thinking: "wait a minute...isn't this what we try to get students to avoid doing during class?"

Forget NPR and BBC! Most of what your students know about the world? Yeah, they get it from Facebook. But this is precisely what makes it such a juicy source of information that you can be sure will reach them! Encourage your students to "like" a page about something of particular interest to them in their target language. Alternatively, start a Facebook group for your class! Make it a place where they can have casual conversations with each other and native speakers of the target language.
Blogs
Facebook interaction not enough? Start a class blog! Platforms like and WordPress are great places to encourage more advanced students to strut their stuff in a blog post.

In fact, if you want to go all out, there are many benefits to designing your own class website, which you may be able to achieve more easily and quickly than you think with ed2go's Creating a Classroom Website. This is an affordable online course that gets you set up with all the basics in just six weeks-and your own blog is only one of the perks. In addition, you'll be able to organize assignments on your website and create WebQuests for your students, using technology to the max.

In addition to a class blog, blogs about the target language - such as the ones provided by FluentU - are a great resource for students and teachers looking for more material.

4. Skype

Speaking of output: Give your students the opportunity to interact with a native speaker in their native environment!

Language and culture are intimately connected, making it essential that your students get a good feel for the target language in a cultural context and not just in the classroom. For more reluctant learners, the appeal of an exotic culture might be just the motivation they need to finally master the genders of common toiletries. This kind of cultural exposure can be difficult to get, especially if you're not a native speaker of the target language yourself. Never fear, modern technology is here!

The free online video chat program Skype provides a useful way to connect with people, groups and places across the globe. Explaining cultural differences and nuances is one thing, but transporting your students to an environment where they can witness them is another! Aside from its use as a transportation device, Skype is also a good way to get your students to interact with a speaker other than, say, you.

Activity idea: Plan a Skype date with a native speaker in another country. As a homework assignment, have your students each come up with three questions they want to ask the visitor. After the Skype call, ask your students to recall the answers to their and others' questions.

5. Apps for Smartphones and Tablets

Highly motivated learners will always be on the lookout for supplementary materials that will help flesh out and diversify their language-learning experience. Here are three of my favorite (free!) apps that you can recommend for practice at home or on the run.

The FluentU website is an outstanding learning and teaching tool on its own. But for the hungry student it also serves as a great source of meaningful and interesting supplementary materials. Thankfully, the scores of videos, trailers, quizzes and other authentic language learning materials are available as an app to take with you on the go!

For those students who just can't get enough practice: there's an app for that. DuoLingo is a free language-learning platform for beginning learners who want to really nail the basics, but it also works well as an after-class review of important grammar and vocab topics.

The magic of Quizlet in an optimized portable app! Memrise includes "courses" (similar to "sets" in Quizlet) composed of hundreds of meticulously selected words and phrases in the target language. Perfect for getting in a little vocabulary expansion on the weekend!

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach languages with real-world videos.
Sign up for free!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Terrific Technology-based Tools for the Foreign Language Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Don't let your classroom end up behind the times.Modern blogs for ancient Greek? Why not!We all know technology can be a powerful teaching tool.I mean, we pretty much use it in every facet of our lives these days.But what are the best ways to maximize the effectiveness of technology

# data[].attributes.headline
World Language Resources - WL Tech Tools

# data[].attributes.subject
World Language Resources - WL Tech Tools

# data[].attributes.headline
Technology tools to use in the foreign language classroom | Foreign language begins with T

# data[].attributes.subject
Technology tools to use in the foreign language classroom | Foreign language begins with T

# data[].attributes.headline
39 Digital Tools Your World Language Classroom Should Have - Calico Spanish

# data[].attributes.subject
39 Digital Tools Your World Language Classroom Should Have - Calico Spanish

# data[].attributes.headline
Technology | World Language Classroom Resources

# data[].attributes.subject
Technology | World Language Classroom Resources