|
Web Site of the Month |
|
|
|
January 2010 - by Gay Rawson
Website of the month / Just for Fun
Evernote:
http://www.evernote.com/about/learn_more/
Evernote is a site
designed to help you organize and
control information such as texts, audio
files, photos, handwritten notes,
images, and more. This site is similar
to OneNote from Microsoft but is stored
online, not on a personal device, and is
free for the basic (and limited)
version. It’s very cool and infinitely
useful ! You can load and save anything
to a site you create (very easy to do,
took less than 5 minutes). Evernote
will allow you to search your “notes” by
the tags you add AND it recognizes the
text in the photos / documents and will
let you search by that too! Dr. Orlando
Kelm, professor at UT-Austin, has a site
he shares in Evernote:
http://www.evernote.com/pub/orkelm/CultureTextPictures
. He is not a French teacher but has
photos he has stored here from his many
travel destinations. The site itself
explains some uses: scan business cards,
receipts, plane tickets, maps, to-do
lists, photos, notes from meetings,
websites, favorite recipes, etc.
Anything you want to remember and be
able to find, you can type, scan, or
load into Evernote and have it available
from any computer. The information is
private by default but you can share
portions with the public as you choose.
Remember, the program will “read” the
text in your messages, photos, tickets,
business cards, etc. and let you search
for it without you having to type a
thing.
I made a sample
public page to demonstrate how one might
use this resource with photos. Here’s
my site:
http://www.evernote.com/pub/rawson/francephotos.
If you click on that link, three photos
will appear. I created a notebook
called “France photos” and then added
each photo as a note. I wrote in a
“tag” for each photo and you see those
listed on the left. But, here’s the
cool feature. Go to the search box in
the top right window and type in “Perou”.
The site will display the photo of me in
Paris. The word “Perou” is a word in
the background of the photo! It’s not a
tag, not content that I entered:
Evernote can search all words in a
photo!
The possible
classroom applications for this site are
great. One may have to consider the
premium version, which costs $5 a month,
to make maximum usage of it. However, I
would love to load more photos here from
my travels and from my students. We
could then have them stored in one place
to use in class (which many sites can
do) but also to have students search and
find things for homework (feature unique
to Evernote as I understand it). I
could scan menus, TGV tickets, metro
passes, and more to show them authentic
documents that the computer can “read”.
Dr. Kelm also does cross-cultural
comparison work with his photos: ask
students to send you photos in the US
displaying a certain cultural situation
(mealtime, how close people stand to one
another, greetings, etc.) and then find
a photo of the same situation abroad and
analyze / compare. Our “digital native”
or “Millennial” students prefer photos
to texts and would love an assignment
requiring them to take photos, load
them, and tag them. This medium really
speaks to many different learning styles
and lends itself well for classroom
applications, in addition to helping the
teacher organize his / her realia. Try
it today! It truly is easy to get
started and they even have a video
showing you more:
http://www.evernote.com/about/video/
. Enjoy!
|
|
|
|
December 2009 -
http://www.portaportal.com
Portaportal.com is a book marking site,
similar in some respects to Delicious or
Diigo. While these two sites use tags
to organize bookmarks, Portaportal
allows the user to create folders and
subfolders for bookmarks. This site can
be very useful to the teacher, who can
easily store bookmarks needed for class
activities and organize them in a clear
manner. This saves a lot of time from
mistakenly typing URLs during class
time!
Here is a link to the
Portaportal page
(by Denise Hamwey Wagstaff):
http://guest.portaportal.com/dewagstaff
|
|
|
|
November 2009 -
Prof.INet:
http://prof-inet.cslaval.qc.ca
C'est un site qui est dédié à la
télécommunication entre profs. |
|
|
October 2009 -
http://fr.skyrock.com/
Check out one of the hottest social
networks in France! This site is a
great authentic resource that can be
used for all levels! If you are
studying physical descriptions,
preferences, opinions on social issues,
or even French Internet slang or
abbreviations, skyrock is a great
resource! Students might even enjoy
creating their own account to
interact with native speakers! If you
plan on using the site in class,
you will want to preview profiles for
content that may not be acceptable
at school.
|
|
|
|
March 2009 -
Paris Daily Photo
If you can't get
to France regularly, check out this cool
photo blog. There is a new photo posted
every day and photo blogs can be used at
any level of French -- from beginning to
advanced. |
|
|
|
February
2009 - Want a great way to incorporate
current popular music into your classes?
This method is involved the first couple
of times you try it, but once you get
the hang of it, you’ll have your
students singing along to the most
current French hits!
1. Visit
this website for the current top 40
songs in France.
http://top40-charts.com/chart.php?cid=11
2. Find
the lyrics to the song by clicking on
the song. There will be a lyrics button.
Attention: Pop-ups are common with this
site. Now you can print the lyrics for
cloze activities or other lyrical
analyses or discussion.
3. Use
YouTube
www.youtube.com to get the music
video for the song.
4. Most
schools block YouTube, so this step must
be done at home. You can use the site
Keep Vid
http://keepvid.com/ to convert the
YouTube video into an FLV format.
5. You’ll
need to download an FLV player. There
are many free choices. I use the free
downloadable VLC player. You can get it
at
http://files.uberdownloads.com/software/video-player/VLC.html
|
|
|
|
January
2009 - Ideas for introducing students to
reading
http://www.polarfle.com/
This is an
excellent website for introducing
students to reading while at the same
time practicing their listening skills
and using technology. The site includes
a graduated reading text by level
(beginner, intermediate, advanced) with
relative online activities which are
also divided by level. As teachers are
pressed for time, the fact that the
activities are ready to be used is a
plus. In addition, since nowadays many
teachers are also lacking the resources
due to cutback, having an online reader
is excellent. Furthermore, since the
activities are online, technology can
easily be applied to the classroom.
The site
is called "Apprendre le Français avec
l'inspecteur Roger Duflair" and it has
also been cited on other French links.
Return to top |
|
|
|
December 2008 - Ideas for French
Language & Culture Advocacy in the US
Is your French program in danger?
French teachers who need support for
their school or district's French
program should visit
Tennessee Bob Peckham's collection of
materials for the advocacy of French
programs all across our country.
There are many state-specific resources
as well.
http://www.utm.edu/staff/globeg/advofr.shtml
Return to top |
|
|
|
November 2008 -
Want to show your students what French
people really think?
Send them to TNS Sofres, France's
leading opinion and marketing research
company:
http://www.tns-sofres.com/.
Students can search the site,
which offers detailed answers to
questions concerning political,
economic, and socio-cultural issues .
Recent sondages reveal
French attitudes about a variety of
topics, from US elections to parental
leave to the housing crunch.
Concise graphs and discursive
analysis make this site accessible to a
variety of L2 learners.
Submitted
by
Deb Reisinger
Return to top |
|
|
|
October 2008 -Wikipedia-style
language portal. bab.la offers a free
collaborative dictionary, language
quizzes and a language forum. Users
participate and interact with one
another rather than just presenting
information and material. There are
thousands of word translation
suggestions, comments and ratings of the
language quizzes from the users. The
responses and comments to what bab.la
offers have been overwhelmingly
positive. The dictionaries contain
thousands of colloquial expressions as
well as very specific words and terms.
User can also generate their own quizzes
on our website, making language studies
an interactive experience.
Here is an example link for the
English-French dictionary :
http://en.bab.la/dictionary/english-french/.
Return to top |
|
|
|
May 2008 -Jean-Marc
B. [J.-M. Bassetti],
À la découverte de Jean de La Fontaine,
<http://www.lafontaine.net/nouveau-site/index.php>
À la
découverte de Jean de La Fontaine is
more than just a transcription of the
most famous of the French fabulist’s
works. This site is a mine of resources
one can use to introduce students from
elementary school to college to the
pleasures of reading La Fontaine. First,
the home page opens every day to a
different illustration by Willy
Aractingi, the website’s featured
artist. Then, if you sign up, you will
receive a fable by e-mail every morning.
That’s only the appetizer to this
gourmet menu. La Fontaine’s entire work
is present here: the fables, the tales,
his correspondence, theatre, opera, and
prose writings. It is easy to search and
find fables, either by entering keywords
(e.g. cigale, corbeau) in the search box
conveniently located in the upper right
of the home page, or by navigating the
menu buttons: click on “Oeuvre intégrale”
(second button) , then choose “Fables”
and select one of the search options:
volumes, alphabetical order, length of
the fables, characters, animals,
morality and sayings. Each fable comes
with a brief presentation of the story,
explanatory footnotes, and links to
other fables or external resources. The
third button, “Vie, Époque”, is devoted
to information on La Fontaine’s personal
life and his relationships to famous
17th century figures. The fourth button,
“Illustrateurs” is a dossier on the
artists who illustrated the fables –
Doré, Grandville, Loukine, and Aractingi
of course. Also included are textbooks
and postcards published in the 19th and
20th centuries. The fifth menu, “A
l’ombre de La Fontaine” is devoted to
activities and games designed around the
fables, as well as to La Fontaine’s
followers, links, books, etc. Finally,
for those who teach in elementary
schools, the last menu is especially
designed for children. The quality of
the transcription is excellent, which
makes this site ideal for school use.
The print format allows high quality
projection on a screen or a whiteboard.
Some fables come with a translation in
English, Italian, or Spanish. The
author, who discretely signs Jean-Marc
B., invites collectors, teachers,
students, performers, and ordinary
readers to contribute to enriching the
site. This is definitely the most
complete, user-friendly, and elegant La
Fontaine website available for French
teachers. by
D. Trudeau
Return to top |
|
|
|
April 2008 - Looking for that extra
something to drive a grammar point home
to each of your students? Try
Tex’s French Grammar! This
interesting site uses creative means to
explain virtually every aspect of
grammar, even articles! You will find
audio for students to listen to,
cartoons, MP3 files, and podcasts that
highlight each grammar point.
Return to top |
|
|
|
March 2008 -
Always looking for a song to illustrate
a grammar point? Go to this website
where you can search songs by
grammatical point. Lyrics and audio
files are ready to be used, thus there
is no need to go find them or bring them
to class. The lyrics are included with
blank spaces that students have to fill
out—usually multiple choices are
offered. The songs are not the most
recent ones, but they are perfect to
bring a wide variety in your daily
teaching.
http://platea.pntic.mec.es/7Ecvera/hotpot/chansons/index.htm
Return to top |
|
|
|
February 2008 - Useful
Website To Teach Directions
The Official Website for
the City of Paris,
http://www.parisinfo.com, includes
several useful and user-friendly links
that can help you design real-world
activities around the themes of finding
your way around Paris, asking for
directions, or getting from point A to
point B. From the homepage, click on
Transports & Plans. There, you
will find all the information needed to
plan an excursion around the city, using
all the means of transportation
available. In particular, check out
the link Se repérer sur un plan.
Click on the map. Enter a location or a
street address in the finder tool. A
secondary map opens along with a list of
shops, restaurants, and other businesses
in and around that location. You have
the option to see the map, find out how
to get there or how to come back from
there. When you want to find out how to
get to a specific landmark and/or street
address, from another location, a
complete itinerary appears, detailing
every turn on every street, and of
course, using the useful vocabulary that
your students can practice.
Return to top |
|
|
December
2007 -
http://abu.cnam.fr
If you are
looking for public domain versions of
French literature the site ABU: La
Bibliothèque Universelle sponsored by
the Association des Bibliophiles
Universels and the Conservatoire
Nationale des Arts et Métiers (http://abu.cnam.fr
) provides full versions of text that
may be downloaded free of charge with no
copyright infringement provided that the
conditions of use are respected. In
existence since 1993 the site contains
approximately 288 works by 101 authors.
The works are catalogued by author or by
text. The corpus of texts can also be
searched according to key words. The
conditions of use documents the accepted
uses and specifies how the abu source
must be cited in all photocopies and
other print versions used in educational
settings. This license or conditions of
use form may be printed to keep on file
for accreditation and other
institutional compliance committees. The
home page is clearly organized and
includes a contact email:
abu@cnam.fr. Note: The version of
Cyrano de Bergerac is particularly
useful for those teachers who show the
film starring Gerard Depardieu as it can
be used as a support for viewing the
film.
Return to top |
|
|
|
November 2007 -
http://www.lepointdufle.net/
Looking for grammar-based Internet
activities for your students to complete
in the language lab or at home? This
easy-to-navigate site has indexed
hundreds of other sites from around the
globe that you and your students will
find useful. Interactive grammar
exercises and explanations of grammar
topics are categorized by topic. You can
also find many sites related to skills
practice, vocabulary and culture.
Return to top |
|
|
|
October
2007 -
www.francparler.org/dossiers
Branch out of the US to discover this
communauté mondiale des professeurs de
français! These dossiers provide
both theoretical and practical ideas for
injecting new energy into the classroom,
from bandes dessinées to blogs.
Return to top |
|
|
September 2007 -
http://www.mangerbouger.fr/index2.php
Check out this great site, if you’re
studying food, health or nutrition! It’s
a national program in France to promote
healthier food habits. The site has
excellent materials that can be used in
class, including advertising used in
different media formats.
Return to top |
|
|
|
May
2007
- www.langwitches.org – Created by
Sylvia Tolisano, a foreign language
teacher and instructional technologist,
this site is an excellent resource for
those interested in using technology in
language instruction. You’ll find
project ideas, tutorials to learn skills
like podcasting and digital moviemaking,
useful links and more. There are also
links to the Langwitches blog, wiki and
podcast.
Return to top
|
|
|
|
April 2007 - TV5 Monde: Musique
This site is a wonderful resource for fans of French and Francophone music! Each week they feature 3 songs with accompanying video, lyrics, and lesson plans. There is a large selection of archived songs to search from as well.
For students: http://www.tv5.fr/TV5Site/musique/paroles.php
For teachers: http://www.tv5.fr/TV5Site/enseignants/musique.php
Be sure to also check out the home page for the video jukebox, clips from top 10 songs, and l’invité de la semaine: http://www.tv5.fr/TV5Site/musique/francophone.php
Return to top
|
|
|
|
March 2007 -
http://www.bonjourdefrance.com
This
website’s description states, “Bonjour
de France
est un « cyber-magazine » éducatif gratuit. il contient des
exercices, des tests et des jeux pour apprendre le français ainsi
que des fiches pédagogiques à l’attention des enseignants de
français langue étrangère (FLE). ˝
It has a large collection of reading comprehension
samples for varying ability levels, with audio recordings and
grammar explanations,
overt grammar activities, thematic vocabulary lessons, pedagogical
tools, idiomatic explanations, collaborative exercises with another
school, world news, and games!
The site is a virtual treasure trove of wonderful ideas and tools
that will benefit students of all levels and their teachers!
Amusez-vous bien avec ce site merveilleux!
Return to top
|
|
|
|
February 2007
- Try listening to a podcast!
You can visit:
http://www.rfi.fr/communfr/dynamiques/podcasting.aspx?rubrique=lffr
And subscribe to
the Journal en français facile. You can even go back and
access the script:
http://www.rfi.fr/lffr/articles/001/script_journal_francais_facile.asp
Return to top
|
|
|
|
January 2007 -
Ma
France -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/mafrance/
This incredibly
rich interactive video site from the BBC languages web site is
completely free. Made for intermediate language learners, it
contains 24 theme-based units, each containing a video shot in
France, 2 quizzes based on the video, plus games and other
activities, vocabulary lists and grammar explanations.
Return to top
|
December 2006 - Solving
a Mystery
A neat website for students to
practice their language skills by being detectives and solving a
mystery.
http://www.polarfle.com/
Return to top
|
November 2006 - Looking for current, interesting, manageable,
and authentic reading material for your students? Then check out
this site that holds a host of challenging and interesting topics!
www.lesclesjunior.com is a site based on the popular news
magazine Les Clés de l’Actualité Junior. This site has a host
of articles that are of manageable length, are challenging, and most
of all, interesting for our students! The site is divided into
categories with new articles every day. There is even a search
feature that allows users to find articles that go back several
years. Teachers will even be happy to know that there is a photo of
the day, with French captioning, that can be the stimulus for a
class discussion or bell-ringer activity. This website is very
thorough and even includes a section for the teacher with many more
educational activities that are already created and easy to use!
Return to top
|
October 2006 - Looking for some links to helpful French
websites? Try:
T-Bob’s French links:
http://www.utm.edu/departments/french/french.html
Jim Becker’s French links:
http://www.uni.edu/becker/french31.html
Return to top
|
September 2006 -
Espace Francophone
www.espacefrancophone.org/
This website was
created and is maintained by the Cultural Service of the Consulate
General of France in New Orleans. One of the wonderful resources
provided by the site includes a variety of French videos and media
programming that can be downloaded free of charge [many come with
prepared exercises and activities]. You can even subscribe to a
podcast so that their programs can be downloaded automatically to
your computer. Information on France, Francophonie, Louisiana and
Immersion is also available.
Return to top |
|
|
|
