New Website: Babbel.com

Check out this new language learning web 2.0 site called Babbel! Here, you can learn languages (French, German, Spanish, Italian, English), practice what you've learned, find people from around the world who speak the language you are learning (or your native language!). This seems to be a great tool for students AND teachers of world languages. Teachers can use the vocabulary lessons with students, refer students to this site for extra practice, or brush up on their own language with the upper-level activities and discussion forums.

Check it out!

http://www.babbel.com

New Language Learning Website!

Check out Mango, a new language teaching tool. There are 100 lessons for the French course and many language courses, including English for ESL learners. Just sign up for a free account and you can view the courses. The lessons are in the form of slideshows with audio. It would be a great tool for the beginning levels to embed into lessons, but also a good review for the upper levels as supplementary activities. I am going to link it off of my Moodle pages for extra practice, and I may use some of the later lessons as I teach Units in my textbooks.

Here's the URL: http://www.trymango.com/

Here's a picture of a slide in the French course:

New Tool - Animoto!

You can make cool slideshows with music, with Animoto!

Check out the one I did for my Back to School night intro..

2007-2008 School Year, Here we come!!!!

Hello again all! I've just spent a few minutes inviting those department members from the middle school who have not yet set up their accounts here to be authors of the blog. If you have already responded and become authors of the blog, you can post too! This blog is meant to be a space in which we ALL share ideas, activities, thoughts, etc. If we get this going it can be a great resource for us as we collaborate and communicate amongst ourselves.

Got a great game idea? What about a lesson that went really well? Did you find a great podcast or video for languages? Have you always wanted to try something and weren't sure if it would 'fly' with the students? Have a few questions about how to implement something? This is the place to post and share!

I encourage all of you to put this blog in your bookmarks and visit often to see what others are up to, lend a helping hand, or ask a question yourself.

Good luck to all this year!!!

Language Learning & Web 2.0 Video

Check out this video for some cool ideas....

Que savez-vous? What do you know?

Check out this new video I made! I made it as a practice of 2 new applications for me: Keynote and iMovie (they both come on the macbook you'll be getting). Finding the images took the longest. It was a cinch to put together and figure out. I will play the video for my students as they enter the first day. I will also have it playing at Back-to-school night for the parents. Check out the bottom of my Wikispaces page for the answer key.. http://diannekrause.wikispaces.com/languages

Another cool tool - Voki

Here's another cool tool that I learned about at the summit... http://www.voki.com/
It is a service that allows you to make an animated version of yourself, with your own voice recorded. You can be realistic looking, a cartoon, an animal, whatever you want.

Here is a sample one I just made...



Get a Voki now!


I made 2 of them for my websites this morning. Check them out on ...

Madame Krause Wiki: http://madamespace.wikispaces.com/
Soleil's Smile Blog: http://soleilsmile.blogspot.com/

I'm thinking about having my French 5 students each create one for an introduction to their French epal. It may be the very first project I do with them.

Does anyone else have any ideas how this modern tool could be used in our language classes?

The Macbooks are here!

I just got an email from Debbie Cline-Eck that the Mac laptops have arrived! Check out this video she made...

Make a Web Page!

At the summit I learned about Google's web page creation tool. It is very cool and it is very easy to use. Just follow the steps, add your content, and voila! You have a web page. Check out the one I just made really quickly:

http://diannekrause.googlepages.com/home

Give it a try if you have an hour to spare.. it could be a great tool for you and your students. You could change it anytime you want and add pretty much anything. Wouldn't it be great if we all had web pages for our students next year?

Contact me if you want any help on organization and/or ideas.

Happy Summer

I hope everyone is enjoying your summer and your trips near and far. I've just spent some time at a conference learning all about technology and education and would love to share what I've learned with all of you. Here are a few links that you should check out to start embracing the use of technology and the need to change the way we teach...

http://theconnectedclassroom.wikispace.com - tools needed to help connect your classroom

http://classroom20.ning.com/ - a social network for educators interested in web 2.0 and the future of education.

http://diannekrause.wikispace.com - my wikispace that I am creating to share the things I learned with all of you... including information for our new macs and smartboards! Please let me know what else I can add!

http://kti.wikispace.com - the wikispace created for the summit I attended.. chocked full of useful info!

Also, please be in touch with me so we can continue this conversation of the classrooms of the 21st century.