My Old Blog

Le chat colla... par Cordell Barker , Office national du film du Canada Écrire un court résumé de ce film avec le passé composé et l'imparfait .   Qu'est-ce que tu changerais au sujet du film ?

As Christmas is fast approaching, I was reminded of this gem of a website that I blogged about last year.  If you have little ones or are teaching young children in a French language program, you may want to share this website with parents. You can customize a message from Santa to a child by answering some of the questions and sharing some images of family/friends. Please don't select that the child was "vilain" (naughty)! French Immersion teachers, consider drawing a name out of a hat once/twice a week and creating a personalized message for that child to share with the class.  This would undoubtedly rekindle the magic of Christmas among the children.  You can then introduce some of the vocabulary and expressions from the video message with the children in the classroom. Last year, my 4-year old daughter was listening with total rapture while listening to her personalized message from Père Noël himself. Visit perenoelmagique.ca to create your message! ...

I have begun creating podcasts for students in my French course. Although they have access to our class recordings, I thought they might appreciate having podcasts which briefly re-cap key vocabulary we have learned. I am using Podomatic to host my podcasts. It is a free service that gives you up to 500 MB of storage for podcasts. You can upload files from your desktop, publish podcasts from your Podomatic media library, or create podcasts using a webcam or microphone which Podomatic will access with your permission. If you want more features and storage space, you can choose the "Pro" option. For information, you can visit this link. There are language education podcasts at Podomatic at this link. They are also ranked within the category of languages. I am liking Juan France's Chansons podcast for French language learning. I think it would be really suitable for Intermediate and Advanced learners.

I found this link thanks to @Alice Ayel who re-tweeted José Picardo's update on this Teachers TV video. I particularly like the segment where José's students demonstrate how they use ICT to improve their spoken language skills. What is taking place in Mr. Picardo's class is a prime example of disruptive innovation in teaching. I have just completed reading "Disrupting Class" by Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn, and Curtis Johnson. In this book, the author speaks to the need for public schools to engage in disruptive innovation, whereby they begin using ICT to support personalized learning environments; furthermore, the teacher's role becomes a facilitator and coach, providing more one-on-one assistance to students. Rather than batching students together during instruction, students could work individually at laptops or desktops using software that helps them strengthen their skill level in a subject area whilst utilizing their strongest "intellige...