Website evaluation #4
I have chosen to evaluate the website Oggi e domani (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/modlang/carasi/site/pageone.html). Although it doesn't seem to be recently updated, I have used this website for ideas in designing class activities or I sometimes took students to the computer lab and had them practice using this website. This is a very easy to use free of charge website, divided into 20 lessons with a clear although rich layout and content, which addresses beginners and intermediate levels and I think it could be an accessible and attractive website for anyone who wants to learn Italian.
Each lesson has two or three pages which contain dialogues or texts that will ellicit the new vocabulary or grammar topic introduced. Students have also the possibility to listen to the dialogue and/or record their own voice in order to compare with the original, for pronunciation practice. The website provides clear and colorful charts for grammar and vocabulary, as well as plenty of practice through interactive exercises in which, in many cases, students can get instant feedback. The vocabulary is introduced in context, but also supported by nice images. There are external pages that would usually support, through authentic material, the vocabulary or the culture topic introduced. As I said, there is evidence that this site is not currently updated or appropriatedly maintained: many links are broken, especially those of the external links, the forum is not active, or is not very clear how it works, at least. I think this is such a pitty, because I realy think this is/could be such a neat website: it has good graphics with plenty of images and sound files for pronunciation practice, the grammar charts are complete and very well structured and clear, it has numerous interactive exercises or others where students have space to provide their answer, without receiving though automatic feedback (this is usually the case where students need to provide personal answers and/or write short compositions).
2 Comments:
Hi Ioana,
My name is Sara Bernard from Edutopia Magazine. I noticed your comments on the IU Computer Assisted Language Learning blog (http://iucall.blogspot.com/2006/09/new-face-of-learning.html) about Will Richardson's recent Edutopia article, "The New Face of Learning." I was wondering if you would mind if we printed those comments on our Letters page in the November/December issue of the magazine (they may be edited a tiny bit for clarity). Please drop me a line at sara@edutopia.org as soon as possible to let me know whether or not that would be all right with you. Thanks so much!
Sara
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Sara Bernard
Edutopia Magazine
The George Lucas Educational Foundation
P.O. Box 3494
San Rafael, California 94912
www.edutopia.org
phone: 415-662-1777
fax: 415-662-1605
I really like that the Italian learning website has a way for students to record their voices and compare it to a model. This is a nice site. I am always keeping my eyes out for good sites in Spanish, and although I haven't taught French for 3 years now, I know that there are also a lot of recently developed sites for French, so even though this one is not being updated, someone is probably working on some good materials somewhere. You could volunteer to help maintain the site (?) :-)
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