Monday, September 19, 2011

Wordle - Graphic Art




An old standby. I use Wordle at least once a semester in my French classes. Wordle allows you to create graphic art through text. I have only used it to reinforce vocabulary but welcome your suggestions. The only problem I have with the software is that I cannot save the file as a jpeg to my computer. I can, however, save it to their website gallery or print it out.

A trick I learned from a 4th grader - double click your black and white wordle and the wordle becomes hollow. Print and color it in!

command, shift, #3 = take a screenshot with a mac. It will save it as a .png file on your laptop.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Okay, A basic attempt at creating an avatar using Voki. I can see a lot of possibilities for my language classroom. The first thing I will do is have students describe "themselves" through the avatar - blue hair and all. :) I welcome your comments about how you would use this in your classroom.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Giant Puzzles!


Today, my class is working with www.blockposter.com. Well, they don't know they are, but that's where I created their puzzles. I chose a map of Europe, Paris, and the French speaking world. You upload a photo, they turn it into a printable PDF which is essentially a giant poster in pieces. You can use this to create art for your classroom or as giant puzzles like I did. How would you use this in your lessons?

www.blockposter.com

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Picnik - Altering Photos




A website for altering pictures. You can add text, clipart, and just generally manipulate photos. My students introduced it to me because I wanted to alter the title of my blog.

Voice Thread

You can upload video or images and other can comment on it.


I have been trying to create accounts for each student in my 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. I am really excited about this website and how it will affect my assessments of student progress. It will allow me to spend much more time analyzing pronunciation to make my students better French speakers. We have created a few voicethreads already and are having much sucess with them. Check some of them out at www.visitationfrench.blogspot.com

Talking Avatar






http://voki.com/

Creating A Survey


Urtak allows you to create an online survey with yes or no questions.

https://urtak.com/

Polyvore




Creating a collage online.

A very user friendly way for students to combine images around a particular topic. I used this site to reinforce clothing and season vocabulary. They created a collage using clothing from one of the four seasons. They then described their collage to the class.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Prezi




A unique alternative to Power Point. Instead of a linear format, Prezi presents information on a giant "map". Watch the tutorial to give you an idea of how it works. My students really enjoyed using it to present french food vocabulary. You can add pictures, Word files and video to your presentations. Once the information is inserted, you create a path from point to point.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Wordle - Graphic Art

I use Wordle in the classroom frequently. It is a great way to reinforce vocabulary from a particular theme. Since our students are not permitted to use the color printers, I struggled to find a way to give the students more freedom with their Wordle art. Create them in black and white and double click the page. Your words will become hollow. You can print them and students can color them in!