My Old Blog

French Flashcards is a nice app with flashcards that helps students learn grammar and vocabulary while tracking new words acquired.  Students can choose one of the files to study from: By swiping the card up or down, the translation (in English) of the expression or word will appear. By swiping it left or right, a new card appears.  But first, the student is prompted to indicate whether he/she got the correct or incorrect answer on the current flashcard. Students can also play a matching game with images or test themselves with the Quiz option: Please note that ads appear at the bottom of the screen. I would recommend this app for beginner and intermediate-level students. If used in the classroom, I would recommend the teacher implementing new vocabulary and expressions in writing or spoken activities in class to improve retention of newly acquired words. French Flashcards is available for Android tablets here.

Storybird is an amazing tool that I blogged about earlier this year when I was using it with my Grade 6 French Immersion students.  It is an art-inspired story-writing tool that can be great for students who have a difficult time getting started with writing. Recently, Storybird has made some changes to its site.  Now children under the age of 13 can create their own Storybird accounts.  The child would need to provide a parent's e-mail address to complete the sign-up process.  Please view my brief tutorial below for further details: IMPORTANT NOTE: Your child should not make their Storybirds public; otherwise, the stories are taken down from the site if they are in any language other than English. To keep it private, your child should select "Menu" once finished with writing his/her story and select "Publish this Storybird": When scrolling down the page, there is an option to make the Storybird public or private.  Select "Private".  Th...

I discovered Conjugate French Verbs, a great app for French language learners that allows students to conjugate and study verb conjugations of several different types of verbs in French.  It would be a great tool for students to use during the summer break, practicing their verb conjugations of "er", "ir", and "re" verbs while also learning new ones! Below are some screenshots of this app (courtesy of the Google Play Store): I tested it by making errors in my conjugations to see what would result.  The app shows your errors and what the correct answers are by either double-tapping your tablet screen or dragging your fingertip over the verb conjugations.   This app also lets students choose "Random", allowing them to randomly conjugate a verb using any given tense and persons (je, tu, il/elle, nous, vous, ils/elles).  It also tracks scores on verbs that students attempted to conjugate as well as verb tenses. I ...

Since my last post about using Storybird in the classroom, I must admit that the excitement among students in using this site has begun to wane.  What is interesting to note is that it seems the male students in my class are the ones expressing dissatisfaction.  My female students, on the other hand, seem to generally still show enthusiasm about it all. When asking some of the girls in the class why they like Storybird, the common response is the illustrations.  They love the colorful, cute images.  This got me thinking about what it is the boys would find appealing.  I have boys in my class who love to draw in class.  One of my students has even gone to the lengths of drawing a character representing every boy in my class! So after some searching, I stumbled upon Story Jumper.  This site allows students to design their own illustrations and write stories.  The boys were all over this new site!  Everything from wizards to robots appea...