MFL website recommendations

[elsiegee40]

I have been asked by our French Teacher if I know of any good (preferably free!) websites that would be good for teaching, either by providing resources or for use by the children.

I thought I'd save myself some Google time, by asking you lot!

We take children up to age 11. She reckons she's teaching our Year 6 Year 7/8 material. She also teaches at a private secondary school; so website suggestions for all year groups would be gratefully received.

thanks for your help

[heybatesy]

Have a looksie here:

accueil: Universalis Junior

If it looks of interest to the MFL dept let me know and i'll arrange trial logins for a month or so.

No idea of price unfortunately as our French cousins have only just chose to inform us of its existence, one company and all that..

Adam

[elsiegee40]

I'll take a look, thanks

[kmount]

Our team swear by Linguascope.com, not free, but they get their money worth I reckon given they speak so highly of it!

[Sylv3r]

Homepage - Zut! - Language Skills
LINGUASCOPE.com >>> The Award Winning Language Learning Website
Quia

Are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. We are a language college so they seem to use quite a few. If I can remember to check tomorrow i'll get you a bigger list.

[Sylv3r]

Oh forgot to mention, its not a website but a relatively cheap peice of software:

TaskMagic2 - Home Page

They love it here...

[kmount]

We have Task Magic 2, Hot Potatoes, ACTIF, Vektor Expressions amongst other stuff but I think they prefer Linguascope above them all.

[elsiegee40]

Thanks for both posts Sylv3r... I'll get the teachers to take a look at TaskMagic... I can see it being popular.

[User3204]

Our Lang College use Quia a lot, I think the teachers have to create the "games", but I also think, that the stuff that is loaded there, is available to everyone... Just be careful how you say it, as it always draws a few laughs in year 10.

[WithoutMotive]

We also use A tantôt ! MFL resources for the interactive whiteboard.

[CyberNerd]

Originally Posted by Sylv3r

TaskMagic2 - Home Page

They love it here...

Noooo

I've just converted 300 of these damn taskmagic drag and drop files to VLE compatible hot potatoes drag and drop files.

The problem we have is that our languages dept are heavy VLE users, and they put their drag and drop taskmagic files on the VLE. problem is that kids at home cannot open them, some don't have permission to install taskmagic, some don't want to, some have macs etc.

Hotpotatoes is much better, it produces files that the VLE automatically accepts (moodle) so we can get the VLE to automatically mark the work. without any unnecessary installer. the hotpot gui is intuitive enough to.
If you have the choice of using hotpot over taskmagic then do so. if not then use this script to convert drag and drop to hotpot format:

#!/usr/bin/python
import optparse
import string
  
def main():
	p = optparse.OptionParser()
	p.add_option('--filename', '-f', default="filename.MDL")
	options, arguments = p.parse_args()
	file = open(options.filename, 'r')	
	data = file.readlines() #read lines in file and put
	file.close()
	questions= data[0] # number of questions, the first line of the file
	questions=questions.strip()
	try:
  		questions = int(questions)
	except ValueError:
  		questions = 0

	i = 1
	print '''<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>



<hotpot-jmatch-file>

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">

  <rdf:Description rdf:about="">'''


	print "<dc:title>"+options.filename+"</dc:title>"
	print '''

  </rdf:Description>

</rdf:RDF><version>6</version>



<data>
'''
	print "<title> "+ options.filename + "</title>"
	print '''

<timer><seconds>60</seconds><include-timer>0</include-timer></timer>



<reading>

<include-reading>0</include-reading>

<reading-title></reading-title>

<reading-text></reading-text>



</reading>



<matching-exercise>

<default-right-item>???

</default-right-item>'''


	while i<=questions:
		question= data[i+1]
		awnser = data[questions+i+1]
		print "<pair>"
		print "<left-item><text>"+question+"</text>"
		print "<fixed>1</fixed>"
		print "</left-item>"
		print "<right-item><text>"+awnser+"</text>"
		print "<fixed>0</fixed>"
		print "</right-item></pair>"
		i=i+1
            
	print '''</matching-exercise>

</data>



<hotpot-config-file>

<jmatch>

<exercise-subtitle>Matching exercise</exercise-subtitle>

<instructions>Match the items on the right to the items on the left.</instructions>

<next-ex-url>nextpage.htm</next-ex-url>

<send-email>0</send-email>

<show-limited-questions>0</show-limited-questions>

<questions-to-show>1</questions-to-show>

<shuffle-questions>0</shuffle-questions>

<separate-javascript-file>0</separate-javascript-file>

<next-caption>Next</next-caption>

<delete-caption>Delete</delete-caption>

<guess-correct>Correct! Well done.</guess-correct>

<guess-incorrect>Sorry! Try again. Incorrect matches have been removed.</guess-incorrect>

</jmatch>



<global>

<your-score-is>Your score is </your-score-is>

<correct-indicator>:-)</correct-indicator>

<incorrect-indicator>X</incorrect-indicator>

<process-for-rtl>0</process-for-rtl>

<include-scorm-12>0</include-scorm-12>

<times-up>Your time is over!</times-up>

<check-caption>Check</check-caption>

<ok-caption>OK</ok-caption>

<next-ex-caption>=&amp;#x003E;</next-ex-caption>

<back-caption>&amp;#x003C;=</back-caption>

<contents-caption>Index</contents-caption>

<include-next-ex>1</include-next-ex>

<include-contents>1</include-contents>

<include-back>0</include-back>

<contents-url>contents.htm</contents-url>

<graphic-url></graphic-url>

<font-face>Geneva,Arial,sans-serif</font-face>

<font-size>small</font-size>

<page-bg-color>#C0C0C0</page-bg-color>

<title-color>#000000</title-color>

<ex-bg-color>#FFFFFF</ex-bg-color>

<text-color>#000000</text-color>

<link-color>#0000FF</link-color>

<vlink-color>#0000CC</vlink-color>

<nav-bar-color>#000000</nav-bar-color>

<formmail-url>http://yourserver.com/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl</formmail-url>

<email>you@yourserver.com</email>

<name-please>Please enter your name:</name-please>

<user-string-1>one</user-string-1>

<user-string-2>two</user-string-2>

<user-string-3>three</user-string-3>

<header-code></header-code>

</global>

</hotpot-config-file>

</hotpot-jmatch-file>
'''
         
if __name__ == '__main__':
	main()

you can call it like this:

#!/bin/bash
find . -name "*.mdl" | while read FILE
do
	~/path_to/mdl_script.py -f $FILE > ../path_to_output/$FILE.jmt
done

edit:
did i mention hotpot is a free download:
http://hotpot.uvic.ca/