Comments!

Thank you to everyone who attended our workshop on Saturday and also for your kind comments! We really appreciate hearing from you. If you have other sites or tips that you would like to share with us and the rest of our blog readers, please leave a comment here.

Thanks!
Valerie and Bonnie

Señor Wooly

http://www.senorwooly.com/
Fun music, videos, and games to liven up any Spanish classroom!

Discovery Education Puzzle-Maker

http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/

This site allows you to make crossword puzzles (and other games) especially tailored to the unit or chapter you are covering.

www.wordreference.com

www.wordreference.com is an online dictionary (NOT a translator) that is an excellent resource for teaching students how to look up foreign words in a dictionary. There are also forums at the bottom of each entry in which you can ask questions about idiomatic expressions and, within minutes, native speakers from all over the world will respond to your question.

Zamzar.com

www.zamzar.com
Do you want to show a Youtube video in class but Youtube is blocked in your school district? Thanks to a conference participate for sharing about zamzar.com, a low-cost website that allows you to download Youtube videos directly to your computer. It's not free, but a basic subscription is $7 a month.

Tex's French Grammar

This site, posted by the University of Texas at Austin, is a valuable source for grammar teaching points and practice.

http://www.laits.utexas.edu/tex/index.html

Wordle

http://www.wordle.net/

Colby.edu

Great site for in-depth, well-planned, Spanish grammar exercises.

http://www.colby.edu/~bknelson/SLC/index.php

Student-made wikis

www.pbworks.com

Google Sites

Meet Tante Loulou!

Big Huge Labs

http://www.bighugelabs.com/

VoiceThread

www.voicethread.com

Destinos

You can find the old Destinos soap opera that accompanies the textbook at this site with accompanying worksheets.

http://www.free-ed.net/free-ed/Humanities/ModernLanguages/destinos03.asp

Las Voces de Las Mujeres de Xelajú

Las Voces de las Mujeres de Xelajú is an ethnographic project conduced by a researcher at the university of Hawaii. She travelled to Guatemala and interviewed several Guatemalan women at different stages in life, asking them all the same seven questions about their lives. The entire series is available online at http://larc.sdsu.edu/voces/VocesGuatemala/Historia.html. I have students view the answers to one question by several women at one time, and then answer the question themselves as a comment on my blog.

Youtube Resources

1. El Cocinero Fiel: A Spanish chef who makes his own cooking videos. It's a great way to teach kitchen vocabulary and commands. http://www.youtube.com/user/elcocinerofiel

2. Señor Jordan: A young Spanish teacher who makes entertaining and informative videos for lower-level Spanish classes. http://www.youtube.com/user/tontitofrito

3. Profesor Jason: Good grammatical explanations for upper-level classes. http://www.youtube.com/user/languagenow?feature=chclk

4. Karaoke: Do a youtube search for your favorite Spanish (or French) song and the word "Karaoke" and see what's out there! Here is the site for the Shakira song I shared in the presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz8_RYstOcs





Some youtube sites that I subsribe to are

Jeopardy Labs

www.jeopardylabs.com
This site is great for easily making your own Jeopardy-style games to play in class with your students.

Using A Blog in Class

Benefits of using a blog in class.
You can simplify assignments and decrease the amount of paperwork you have to handle.
They’re FREE.
You can set a due date and time and monitor students’ submissions.
Since responses will be visible to the rest of the class, students are more motivated to perform well.

Go to www.blogger.com to set up a free account.

Skype

www.skype.com

You can use Skype to beam native speakers directly into your classroom. All you need is a webcam (available usually starting at $25).

It takes about 1 minute to download to your computer.
Check out the follwoing website for some great tips on using Skype in the classrom:
http://www.teachingdegree.org/2009/06/30/50-awesome-ways-to-use-skype-in-the-classroom/