This post features an embedded exercise based on a short beginner's French dialogue.
The exercise is an example of the "Initials" exercise, which is accessed via this button on the textivate menu screen:
An example of the "Space" activity, which is accessed via this button on the textivate menu screen:
Separate the words in the text below by clicking between them.
Some information about the 4 different text types available to textivate users. In a nutshell they work as follows:
- Public = accessible by all and searchable via the textivate browser.
- Shareable = shareable via url or embed code. NOT searchable via the textivate browser.
- Private = only accessible by the text contributor, when logged in, via the "My online texts" browser.
- MySite = only accessible when embedded on the site specified by the contributor.
The exercises below give a bit more information about the text types.
(The text used for the exercises below is a public text.)
"MySite" texts = texts which can only be accessed via a particular website or domain, allowing users / webmasters / content providers to create interactive text-based exercises that can only be accessed via their own website.
See the exercise below, as an example.
A new button has been added to the textivate front page / editor screen: "Extra gap-fill" (see image below):
This allows you to create an extra gap-fill exercise (funnily enough) based on your own gaps, in addition to the automatically generated one. If you click this button you are presented with a screen on which you can toggle gapped words simply by clicking them.
I'm pretty pleased with the response since textivate was launched. (Updated 19th Sep 2012)
Notable mentions include:
Create Instant Interactive Text Based Activities from Nik Peachey's QuickShout blog. Some nice comments here beneath Nik's very positive review. This review in particular was widely reproduced and re-blogged, scooped etc...
Top Technologies for Language Learning - the Tools section of the Speechy Project website. (Gold medal / 1st position last time I looked). You can see the full review by clicking on the image, or click here.
Using textivate.com for simple interactive tasks from Baiba Svenca's EFL blog "B's Life with English" - a great example of one way of approaching the teaching of a text using textivate.
"textivate" has potential, BUT... in which Larry Ferlazzo says that the downside of textivate is that it doesn't allow teachers control over things such as gapped words. I've replied to him on the blog post, if you're interested.
Textivate - a review by Steve Smith of frenchteacher.net - this was the first review to appear, just one day after textivate was launched, and I think Steve's assessment of what textivate does and how it compares with TaskMagic is pretty good.
Have you tried it yet?
:0)
Fill the gaps in order to read the message of this blog post:
The content of this blog post is below. It starts with "Ok, ..."
This blog post features a video from RTVE showing some footage from today's "Tomatina" festival in Buñol (Comunidad Valenciana). The video has no commentary, but sets the scene nicely for the text / exercise which follows, which is a gapfill exercise based on a text about the history of "La tomatina" taken from the official tomatina website at http://www.latomatina.es/historia/
The Tomatina festival takes place each year on the last Wednesday in August. Watch the video below of this year's Tomatina, which took place on Wednesday 29th of August, and then have a look at the exercise beneath it based on a text describing the origins of "La Tomatina".
The embedded activity below is based on a short Spanish text about sports, practising basic introductions, "me gusta(n)", "practico", "juego a" etc.
This is an example of the "Initials" activity, which can be accessed via this button on the textivate menu screen:
The exercise below can completed by typing in the missing letters, or you might simply use it as an oral stimulus.