If you are a true glutton for punishment and persist in writing your own
HTML code, you will certainly want to take a look at the wonderful list
of tutorials prepared by George Mitrevski (Auburn University) at his Knowledge
Design website. At the advanced level his tutorials include
Embedding
Audio in Web Pages, Form
Mail Exercises, and Audio-based
Web Exercises.
Images
You have probably already included images on your website. But would
you like to know more about image
scanning, image
formats, or image manipulation? You're probably ready now to
get spritzy with your pictures, adding text, cropping, touching up, etc.
The tutorials linked above should help.
Some new software to help you with your images is PaintShop
Pro. This is NOT freeware; it is shareware. However,
it is much less expensive than its commercial counterpart, Adobe
Photoshop. With PaintShop Pro you will quickly become expert
at cropping, rotating, adding text, creating banners, doing screen captures,
etc. Sheryl Coleman has prepared a set of basic
tutorials that will get you up to speed in no time.
Ready to try an image map? You can do it the hard way with PaintShop
Pro or you can do it the easy way with Map
Edit. Try it, you'll like it! A demo and a tutorial
can be found at the web site.
Finally, if you've struggled with ways to get your slides and pictures
from you last trip to France, Spain or Germany up on the web for your classes,
you've probably used all the old saws: you've made a web page loaded
with images that take forever to download, put them into a PowerPoint presentation
that quickly became too large to fit onto a diskette and transport from
one machine/room to another, etc. Why not wow your students with
a professional slide presentation complete with background music and narration
using Real
Slideshow, a piece of freeware that no teacher should be without.
Extraordinarily easy to learn and use, Real Slideshow will quickly find
its way into your bag of tricks.
Sound
You will certainly want to learn how to record and edit sound files for
your language classes. A good place to begin learning how to record
sound is Bob Ponterio's tutorial on Digitizing
Sound. You will also want to acquire another piece of software
called Cool Edit (freeware
version can be downloaded from the web; if you register and pay a fee,
you can have the full version). Again, turn to Bob Ponterio's excellent
advice for sound
editing.
To get your students into the sound scene, try using the SCOLA
Insta-Classes. To quote SCOLA: "The combined use of SCOLA
programs, which you record according to the Insta-Class Schedule (now also
available via Real Audio clips on the individual Insta-Class language pages),
and instructional materials enhances language training through the use
of current events. It is ideal as a textbook supplement. It is suitable
for use by an individual or class to extend vocabulary, grammar, reading
and comprehension skills.Insta-Class is prepared each week, ready to use,
as a convenient addition to your current study program." To listen
to the RealAudio clips, you will need the RealAudio
Player (G2 - which also comes with Real Jukebox) - free software you
can download. The transcripts of the audio files come in .pdf format,
which means you will also need Acrobat Reader
to open them. I know of some instructors who create online study
guides for this listening comprehension activity by using the Hot Potatoes
Cloze exercise (see the Intermediate
page). They cut and paste text from the SCOLA Insta-Class transcripts
into Hot Potatoes, then create the cloze gaps they want. Neat!
Video
Most elementary, middle school and high school teachers I know do not have
access to the high tech equipment required to do significant work with
video capture, editing and processing for distribution over the internet.
At the post-secondary level, if you're lucky (as I am!), such equipment
will be available to you, making the use of video not only possible but
probable. Without going into too much detail here, you will need:
Video capture card installed on your computer with appropriate software
Video editing software, such as Adobe
Premier (expensive commercial package)
RealProducer,
a freeware program for compressing video files. See Bob Ponterio's
wonderful tutorial
on "how to." Note that in the tutorials he refers to "Real Encoder."
This program is now called "Real Producer G2." In addition to the
freeware version, two other versions of Real Producer are available at
a fee: Real Producer Plus ($149) and Real Producer Pro ($499).
Just for a moment, let's assume that you do have access to what you need
to produce digitized video. Where do you start? I suggest you
begin with Claire Bradin Siskin's wonderful web site entitled QuickTime
101, a web page developed in conjunction with a QuickTime Workshop
presented at Calico in 1999. Claire has everything you ever wanted
to know about QuickTime and more! Her topics include:
Okay, so you have neither the time nor the inclination to "do it yourself"
when it comes to video. Too time consuming, too labor intensive.
Agreed. But why not use video sources already available on the Internet?
Combined with listening comprehension activities created with Hot Pototaoes,
Matchmakers, or Funbrain (see previous pages), these video sources will
unleash your creativity:
News and current events. There's nothing quite like a video broadcast
for keeping up with current events. As a starting point, take
a look at this page of online
media sources for live audio and video for English, French, German
and Spanish.
Broadcast.com has available
20-30 minute films delivered online covering all sorts of content (entertainment,
history, art, culture, etc.) in many languages. Check out the offerings
for your language. You must register to use this service, but it
is free. Once you're registered, click on "Education," then "Videos"
then "Languages and Cultures" to get to the foreign films.
The Internet Movie Database has
many trailers available for recent films (fewer for older films).
It's worth taking a look to see what's available.
COLLABORATION TOOLS
Netmeeting
is one of the best kept secrets on the Internet. This piece of free
software from Microsoft is a powerful collaboration tool that is simple
and easy to learn. Using Netmeeting, two or more students/instructors
can send and receive video transmissions (assuming both have quickcams
hooked up), talk online (using headsets with microphones), chat (by typing
in messages to one another), share a whiteboard, share documents and collaborate
on the same document (meaning two people can work on the same document
at the same time). Even if you only use a few of the functions, NetMeeting
is well worth the few minutes it takes to download and install.
For group collaboration on projects, you might also want to take a look
at eGroups.com.
According to this site, "eGroups.com provides a gathering place on the
Internet for your group to send and receive emails, schedule meetings,
share files and photos, or have private group chats. Any kind of group
- fan clubs, alumni groups, sports teams, families, or friends - can use
eGroups.com." The four main areas include Group Mail (for sending
mail to the entire group, viewing threaded discussions, etc.), Group Calendar
(which includes a polling feature for scheduling events), the Group Document
Vault (for storing and sharing text and image files), and Group Chat and
Talk (using the Talk feature is like using the internet telephone).
JAVASCRIPT EXERCISES
Are you crazy?
We've just about come to the end of our Teachers' Aides. I promised
you sites that would take the technical out of technology and now I'm talking
about Javascript. No, I have not lost my mind. And no, I do
not "do" JavaScript. A long time ago, I drew a line in the sand beyond
which I would not go. I am not a computer programmer and do not want
to become one. I am a teacher. So why am I even mentioning
JavaScript? To me, JavaScript smacks of programming and I don't want
to go there. Neither do you. BUT, the interactive
potential of JavaScript exercises is just too good to pass up for a dedicated
language teacher. So, you have two choices: either you can
bite the bullet and actually learn JavaScript (not an option for me!) OR
you can use JavaScript templates already created by someone else to take
the pain and sting out of what I consider to be a very tedious exercise
in futility!!
Let's assume that you have indeed lost your mind and decided to learn JavaScript.
Netscape offers a JavaScript
Guide that promises to send you into delerium. Take a look at
it, if you insist. There are hundreds, if not thousands of JavaScript
tutorials on the web. I have not bothered to look at them.
You shouldn't either.
JavaScript for Teachers, not Computer Programmers
A good place to start is with the Cut
& Paste JavaScript website. You will find JavaScripts already
written which will accomplish a good number of fancy tasks. In particular,
take a look at the JavaScripts
for Teachers page which contains javascripts for multiple choice
exercises, a coloring book, a configurable crossword puzzle, automatic
bar graphing, and matching exercises.
JavaScripting
for the Rest of Us by Kathryn Murphy-Judy provides a combination
of tutorials and sample scripts for doing some of the fancy-dancy web stuff
commercial developers like to do, such as creating status bar messages,
dialogue boxes, alert boxes, and fill-in forms. Written by a language
teacher for other teachers, these pages will allow you to dress up your
web page without too much pain and agony
AUTHORING ENVIRONMENTS
The purpose of these pages has been to showcase web-deployable technologies
that are easily accessible online to the average teacher. I do not
intend to venture very far into the realm of free-standing authoring environments,
believing as I do that accessibility is the cornerstone of learning activities.
Nonetheless, if you wish to go beyond web-deployable technologies, you
would do well to explore the following four:
The X-Media Engine Classic
templates by David Herren at the Center for Educational Technology in Middlebury,
Vermont provide a rich environment "for creating hypermedia based
cloze and dictation lessons based on audio CDs, video disks,or QuickTime
movies, annotations of text, video, images and sound." These
templates may be downloaded from the Internet. There is no charge.
There is, however, a kicker: they are only available for the Mac.
The author has been promising a cross-platform version (for both PCs and
Macs) for years, but it has yet to materialize.
Hyperstudio is well-known
to teachers for its relatively short learning curve and ease of use.
Often used by students themselves to create multimedia projects, Hyperstudio
is hard to beat for simplicity. Never tried it? You can order
a free demo disk from the publisher at the Hyperstudio web site.
The two most well-known commercial software packages for multimedia authoring
are Authorware and Director by Macromedia.
These two are truly not for the faint of heart. Authorware is the
easier of the two, but still has a fairly steep learning curve. If
you'd like to become an animator with the Disney Studios, you'll need to
learn Director. Both are expensive packages and certainly beyond
the budgets of most individuals or school districts.
Teachers' Aides
This page was created by Pat
Pecoy for MFL
195 Last updated February 1, 2000