Textivate with an interactive whiteboard - Part 1 - Text activities

Textivate works best when used in the one-to-one / one student to one device environment, where each student has access to a computer, laptop or tablet. Unfortunately, however, classes that have access to this sort of set-up are definitely in the minority.

That said, there's plenty that you can do with textivate with the whole class if you have access to an interactive whiteboard. (Not to mention the worksheets, the homework setting, the extra practice and support that can be provided for students outside of regular class time, etc. -- all of those things that do not depend on access to technology within the class.)

This blog post concentrates on using textivate with an interactive whiteboard with the whole class.

Textivate can add all sorts to the languages classroom in terms of starters, fillers, reading practice, memorization, writing focus, simultaneous focus on form and meaning etc.

BUT... as with any tool, so much depends on HOW the teacher decides to use it. 

The teacher knows his or her students and what they are capable of, so should select the most appropriate exercise types depending on...: the context; the level of text input; the type of information being presented; the point they are at in the learning sequence; whether it’s for a starter, a plenary, a presentation or the main element of a lesson; the time available etc. (Also behaviour, age, discipline, hands up or shouting out, etc.)

The sections below provide a few ideas for textivate in a whole-class IWB environment. I'm sure you can think of some more...

Adding video / audio / an image / parallel text to a textivate resource

This post is a summary of recent additions to textivate and explains how you can now combine textivate resources with a video, audio file, image and/or parallel text to add all sorts of extra functionality.

This blog post explains how to add video.

This post deals with adding an audio file.

This one deals with adding an image.

And this one tells you how to add a parallel text.

You can add one of each of the above to a textivate resource, if you like. The student can then click on the relevant icon to view the resource along with the video, audio, image or parallel text.

What does all this add to textivate?

Angleterre 1 - 2 Italie (a match report in simple French)

Here is the French text. (This can be used along with the Find the French pdf below):

Angleterre 1-2 Italie

Le samedi 14 juin l'Angleterre a joué contre l'Italie. L'Italie est une équipe très forte et on attendait un match difficile. Les deux équipes ont très bien joué mais c'est l'Italie qui a remporté la victoire.

On a commencé le match très fort et Raheem Sterling a très bien joué. Il a presque marqué un but après trois minutes! Puis deux minutes plus tard une frappe puissante d'Henderson a été repoussée par le gardien italien, Sirigu.

Mais c'est l'Italie qui a marqué le premier but à la 35e minute - Andrea Pirlo a laissé passer le ballon pour Claudio Marchisio qui a marqué d'un tir superbe des 20 mètres.

L'Angleterre a répondu tout de suite: moins de deux minutes plus tard Sturridge a marqué l'égaliseur sur un excellent centre de Wayne Rooney, et à la mi-temps le score était de 1-1.

Pendant la deuxième mi-temps l'Angleterre a très bien joué. On avait beaucoup d'occasions de buts, et on aurait dû marquer plus de buts. Mais Balotelli a marqué le seul but de la deuxième mi-temps à la 50e minute grâce à un centre de Candreva. Andrea Pirlo a presque marqué un troisième pour l'Italie dans le temps additionnel, quand son coup franc a trouvé la barre transversale de Joe Hart.

C'est un résultat décevant parce qu'on a très bien joué. Ce qui est sûr, c'est que le match contre l'Uruguay sera très difficile parce qu'ils ont perdu eux aussi leur premier match. Pour l'équipe qui perd ce prochain match, c'est fini!

And here is the English translation. (Can be used as support for any of the text-based pdfs below):

Guided / scaffolded translation activities

There's a renewed focus on translation in Modern Languages teaching in the UK. The GCSE exam will soon include some form of translation to and from the target language. 

Exactly what form that will take remains to be seen, but I thought I'd put together a post on the ways textivate can be used to help create scaffolded translation activities -- with varying levels of support provided to the student.

This post focuses on translation into the target language, which is where I think textivate can be more useful.

Parallel texts

The parallel text feature of textivate allows you to specify an additional text to appear alongside the textivate exercises. (See this blog post for more details.)

If this parallel text is in English, it's a great way of providing structured translation practice.

And you can provide translation-type activities at various levels, ranging from putting chunks together to putting words together to filling in letters etc. See the examples below. The ones toward the end of the list are more like true translation activities.

Making text-based resources in textivate.

Textivate takes any text that you type (or paste) into the textivate textbox and turns it into multiple interactive activities (and worksheets).

Here's what you do.

1. Go to the textivate home pagewww.textivate.com

Follow the above link or type the url into a web browser.

You can get to the home page from any of the textivate screens by clicking on the "textivate" icon that appears at the top left of the screen. From the menu screen you can also click on the "Back to textivate home page" button.

2. Empty the text box.

When you arrive on the homepage, you may see a default "Welcome to textivate..." text, or another text (depending on whether or not you've been there before). To make your own resource, you need to clear this text first. 

User guides

User guides for many of the features of the textivate site... (N.B. All links open in a new tab or window.)

Getting started

For students

    Overview - What can I do with textivate?

    Reference...

    Making your own resources

    Challenges

    Submitting homework / classwork / assessment -- Sequences

    Adding more: TTS / video / audio / big picture / parallel text / exclusions

    Assigning, sharing & embedding

    Text-to-speech (TTS)

    Textivate Plus

    • Textivate Plus is a growing section of the textivate site containing ready-made textivate resources which can only be accessed by textivate subscribers: https://www.textivate.com/plus.php

    Worksheets

    • There are several blog posts which deal with printing worksheets, but this one is the most comprehensive and includes video tutorials as well as links to example worksheets.

    User-defined gap-fill

    Textivate resource types: Public / Shareable / Private / MySite

    Miscellaneous

    A-Z index

    Parallel texts / extra texts along with a textivate resource

    You may be aware that we've recently added the facility to embed an image or a video to appear alongside textivate activities?

    (No? Here's some info about embedding videos. And this post is about embedding an image.)

    Well, it occurred to us that you could add a parallel text to a textivate resource and have this appear alongside your activities. This would allow for all sorts of possibilities. e.g. guided translation & find the French / Spanish / German etc

    We've now incorporated all of these extra features into a new "Extras" tab.