I’ve been using this site for years and it’s one of the best sites for French teachers I’ve ever seen. There are hot potatoes activities, links to French music videos, links to java games, an interactive novel, webzines, and much more. I highly recommend all French teachers check out this site as I’m sure there’s something you’d find that would work in your class. Happy surfing!
I know, I know, online animation sites have been around for a while now. But I wanted to share this one with you because out of all the ones I’ve used (and I’ve used quite a few) this one is by far my favorite.
Go!Animate is a free online animation creation site. You simply register for your free account and start creating your own custom animations. I like this site because it’s easy to use (students have no problems with it) and it still has enough neat little features to keep the students’ interest. You can make the animated characters move around, put the heads of people you have pictures of and put them on the Go!Animate figures, and use your own backgrounds.
I’ve found that animations work well with TPRS, for those of you who might be fans of that. It’s also fun to let students create their own animations, and their easy to grade because you can access them online at your leisure.
If you’d like to see one of my examples, follow the link below:
GoAnimate.com: Une eleve francaise a MHS by mmesilvestri
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com.
I absolutely LOVE using online educational games with my students because, if they’re fun enough, the kids end up learning something without even realizing it. I’ve talked about quizlet and scatter, but my new favorite site for online educational games is called classtools.net.
This site was created by Russel Tarr, the head of history at the International School of Toulouse in France. It’s completely free, you don’t even have to create an account! And he’ll let you store your games on his site as well as save them as html files. As long as you access the site at least every 12 months, your games will never be deleted.
With this site you create your own set list and then five different games are created for the students to review vocabulary or grammar points. What makes this so fantastic is the games are really fun and addictive. There’s a space invaders type of game and there’s another game that looks like an old nintendo game (like a Donkey Kong or Mario Bros).
There are only two bad things about this site:
1. My students now want to play these games all the time.
2. I can’t get past level 7 on the space invaders game but my students can and boy is that frustrating 
Yo yo yo we’re kickin’ it old school today. This rad application has been around for a long time but that doesn’t mean educators should toss it aside because it’s still h-o-t. Hot Potatoes actually…
Hot Potatoes is freeware that educators can use to create games and other review tools. Just visit their site and download the free software right onto your computer and start using the 6 applications that come with it. As it says on the site, Hot Potatoes “enables you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises”.
My personal favorite thing to do with Hot Potatoes is creating cloze activities with the gap-fill option. I’ve used this to create basic grammar drills and I’ve also used it for cloze song activities. I take lyrics from French songs and then create blanks with drop-down menus for students to complete. Once again, this is a fun tool that becomes even better when you throw in an interactive whiteboard.
Here’s a link to another teacher who has used this tool in a very impressive way, mostly with music.
For my first real post I knew I had to share my current favorite tool. It’s fun, useful, and so easy to use. It’s a site called Quizlet and it’s a great resource for teachers and students to review vocabulary from any subject. It allows you to create online flashcards, practice tests, and two different games students can use to review the material.
All you have to do is sign up for a free account and then you can start uploading vocabulary lists that you’ve already created right onto the site. Quizlet will create 5 different applications with your lists and you can share them with your students. Your students have the option to set up a free account or they can use your materials as a guest. If they set up an account, Quizlet will keep track of what words they still need help with based on their performance on the tests and games on the site.
I’m not going to go through all 5 applications, you can browse that for yourself, but I do want to talk about my two favorites.
First the online flashcards. These work really well for those of you who like to play the game, ‘around the world’. If you have an interactive whiteboard it’s especially fun because you can tap the flashcards to reveal the answers. There’s also an option to print out the flashcards, so students can practice on their own at home if they don’t have access to a computer.
There’s also a game called Scatter. Quizlet puts some of the words and translations (or definitions) on a screen, then students have to drag the words over their translations. Once the word is on top of the correct translations, they both disappear. It’s a timed race so the faster you make the matches the higher your score is. Once again, this is a great game to play with an interactive whiteboard, that way the whole class is playing together.
My students absolutely love this. And I noticed that their vocabulary quiz grade went up whenever we used this site in class. I highly recommend you give it a try. And if you use the texbook series ‘Bon Voyage’ feel free to search for my sets and use them in your class.
http://ccmixter.org/
ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.
Remixers If youre into sampling, remixing and mash-ups grab the sample packs and a cappellas for download and you can upload your version back into ccMixter, for others to enjoy and re-sample. All legal.
Video makers, podcasters and music lovers If youre into music, browse this site to hear some of the great remixes people have built from sampling music on this site, all licensed for use under Creative Commons license.
