The page contains an assortment of quotes from textivate users. Please feel free to contact textivate if you'd like to know the source of any of these quotes.
"Your site is the only one I know that reflects my ideas about language learning / acquisition."
"In an era when there are probably too many gimmicky uses of ICT in MFL, this is a package which will stand the test of time, provide a good mental challenge and support any language course you can imagine. It appeals to the teacher who values analysis in language learning, but also provides good comprehension material which you can grade to the needs of your class. Crucially, it is a super time saver, being quick and easy to use, even for any technophobe teachers. You can probably guess that I recommend it highly."
"What I like most about textivate is that you can add vocab alongside the texts so students can play in a wide of range of activities and games with a format such as a booking letter / email or an account of a holiday and then separately deal with say the key verbs in a specific tense. The vocab / verbs or whatever are highlighted in the text. Personally I think that is a pretty devastating combination."
"Creating computer based materials can be incredibly time consuming and also very frustrating as websites and web based content can change so quickly, that's why it is always so nice to discover tools like Textivate which can enable you to create instant interactivity using almost any text you find from around the web."
"This is a remarkable find, not only because it is indeed a useful tool, but in that it recapitulates a bygone era in CALL, that of text manipulation. [...] I think text manipulation is a venerable technique, and it's nice that virtually unlimited home-grown materials can now be only as far away as your browser."
"I LOVE Textivate! Textivate is a website that allows students to manipulate texts in various ways. And it’s SO easy to use. You paste in your text, hit “textivate” and you have 20+ activities ready made to give your students repetition in reading, but in interesting ways."
"Textivate is great tool when you would like students to review a story. This is obviously very relevant for my students learning a foreign language as repetition is key. Whenever we read or create a story, it is important to follow up on it with more practice and more repetition of the vocabulary structures that I want them to learn."
"Textivate is an amazing tool. If you have a story, all you need to do is copy and paste it into your textivate account and it automatically creates online games for students. They can put the story in order, fill in the blanks, matching, etc. It's a wonderful tool for review and a great time filler if you have a few extra minutes at the end of your lesson. Or, it can also be used to review a story from the day before or as a formative assessment. All around, its a great tool!"
"This is the best 2.0 tool for comprehensible input classrooms. I only say that because I can’t think of one that I like better. This is EASY for teachers and easy for students. It takes less than a minute to “Textivate” a text, and there are twenty-seven different activities that your students can complete while interacting with the text and getting reps and reps and reps and…."
"I LOVE textivate, and can't imagine teaching without it."
"I can whip up a new textivate in class while we are telling the story and have it ready to go as soon as we wrap up the story, now that I've been using it for a while. A HUGE time saver when you need sub plans in a crunch (assigned on google classroom, or printed out and ready to go!) or you finish early and suddenly have 10 minutes you didn't anticipate (whole class game projected on the smart board!)"
"Textivate is my favorite favorite favorite thing ever."
"I like the way it gets students thinking about sentence structure, parts of speech, and grammar without it being explicit."
"It really helps my students to write for mandated department testing."
"Textivate is the best, 100%"
"Textivate is amazing - it's hard to explain why, without writing paragraphs worth of things, but you should check out the blog."
"There's definitely a learning curve when trying to learn all of those features. It's a powerful tool once you learn its quirks. Check the user guides and examples in the Textivate blog."
"I am not a fan of most tech in the classroom. [...] That said, I do like using Textivate, which is a platform that allows you to upload stories (or whatever you use in your target language), and then have students do stuff with these activities. [...] I like Textivate because it involves students reading and processing meaning, it is relatively low-tech, it is simple and reliable, and kids don’t need accounts, apps etc (it is doable on a phone)."
"I love your site! I teach 4-6th grades using TPRS in a private school in California, USA and think that what you have done is amazing for my students!"
"Thank you so much for all your work. Textivate remains the best and the best value language-learning resource available as far as I am concerned."
"I absolutely love Textivate and my students really enjoy it!"
"I love this site and the excellent customer service."
"My students LOVE Textivate and it is my 'go to' for sub days. Thanks for all you do!"
"I am the department chair for World Languages. We love your service!"
"I love Textivate and will use it a lot this year! Thanks for always making it even better!"
"Thanks for offering Textivate to the world. We love it."
"Textivate is fantastic! I, and my students, love it!"
"Thanks again! I love Textivate!!!"
"Thank you for such an excellent resource! I love using textivate for my students."
"First of all, I would like to thank Textivate.com. It answers my need to do differentiation in classroom. The TTS of Chinese is 99% near native speaker. Just love it."
"I got a lot of mileage out of Textivate last year, at a point in my career when it was tough to push myself to do anything new. [...] I love the possibilities you've created for the tool, with all the thought and hard work you've poured into it!"
"I can't thank you enough for adding in the classroom piece to Textivate. So excited to try it out in the Fall. I don't think you realize how much Textivate gives me a platform to make my classroom more practical for student practice of personalized CI. Truly amazing. Thank you!"
"Textivate motivates even students with only 7 days of class instruction to want to read and write in Spanish like no other product I have seen."
"One of the many things that Tina (Hargaden) and Ben (Slavic) mention in their book ("A Natural Approach to Stories") is Textivate. I love Textivate! I have used it in the past as a way to review stories. I like it because it is easy differentiation and students can go at their own pace while reviewing stories."
"The challenge gets everyone engaged. We do it as teams. My classroom gets so quiet you can hear a pin drop and then there is raucous uproar when someone on a team dumps a chunk of points. The kids get so intense. It is a great wrap up activity after a story has been told and I've done everything I want to with actors and re-tells, etc. this is my final push and we end with a bang!"
"LOVE textivate! Just type in your text and then create games for language practice. Good for working with music lyrics, too! You can allow students to decide how to play with the language or assign specific tasks / games. The subscription is worth every euro."
"I hesitated for a long time, wondering whether or not it was worth it. I got a subscription this year and it was honestly a lifesaver."
"It’s a brilliant resource, particularly if your school is keen to tick the box for tech - this is a really useful tool. I love Textivate!"
"I really rate [Textivate] as a productive use of simple tech for providing input and practice. So adaptable and easy to use."
"I love Textivate! It's a great sub activity or can be used for a change of pace. It's also really easy to differentiate activities. I use it a lot to review a story, reading, or Movie Talk."
"I love textivate. Kids love the challenge activities. Great with a reading or just with a vocab list. Tons of different activities."
"I use it for my "I just can't" days. We review a story or some other reading and I create a challenge and that's pretty much the lesson plan :) "
"Love it! I did think it took a little time to figure out ... but not so much that it deterred me from using it."
"Textivate is a Ferrari compared to Quizlet's Ford Fiesta. Can be used for all age groups as it depends on the text you use. One feature that I love and find students engage with is a variety of different activites exploiting the same text, so high reps with what should be comprehended input. Also when you add the text-to-speech functions and parallel text activities, it allows for mixing the skills in different ways which I believe adds a depth Quizlet does not offer."
"I use textivate for when I have subs and for our virtual days. I can track students progress and make sure they all did their work. I also set the minimum to move through the sequence at 80% so I know students aren’t just clicking answers. I also use it for class challenges and my students love them! Other teachers tell me they are playing textivate in other classes because they want their team to win... but for me I just see them practicing Spanish outside of class. I like that I can input my own stories, questions, and vocabulary lists so it’s appropriate for what we’re studying. It is a bit of work but you can save your resources."
"Perfect for sub plans. I use it every time."
"I love it! I'm still learning a lot about it but it's perfect if you do class created stories. I love the matching feature."
"I couldn't live without textivate. Get the more expensive subscription for the student password so they can do the independent work."
"I love using it for a follow-up to a story to get the kids to read it again."
"Yes! All of my students in all of my levels love it. It is totally worth it."
"The “challenges” are amazing and my students love them. The students played them right up until the bell, even the last period of the day and some hung around to finish their “game”."
"It is really useful in helping students figure out the logical next word in a sentence / story by using context clues."
"I have lots of absent students each class and I type up our class story, summary of class conversations, readings, songs lyrics... whatever we did that day, and assign a sequence for makeup work. It’s perfect!"
"I think it is a wonderful resource for reading reinforcement. It is worth the investment."
"I love it and my students do too! It’s great for sub plans too (Also, bc you can print out low-tech activities just in case computers are down!)"
"I use it and love it! I use it when I need to give myself a break."
"Textivate is way less intuitive than it should be! But, once you get the hang of it it is amazing!"
"I enter the text of a story we created or that I told. Once it is saved, I click on the trophy to create a challenge. When I save the challenge I copy the URL to it and create a QR code so my students scan it and go to the challenge. They LOVE it! There are tons of activities for them to do with the text and it is all CI."
"I love Textivate. It does not look user friendly, but after a bit of playing around it’s very easy to use and a wonderful tool."
"I love textivate. This year I have finally taken the time to learn how to set sequences and challenges. My students love the challenges. When I have to be absent, I use different texts to make a sequence for each level. The students log in that day and complete the sequence. If they finish early, they can do the challenge (and the winner always gets a sticker -- they are so motivated!)"
"Honestly it’s awesome because you just copy and paste your story and it makes all kinds of activities!! Match, fill in, put in order, etc."
"When my students discovered football (aka soccer) I could have walked out the building, gone to Starbucks, come back two hours later and no one would have noticed! Love love love!"
"I LOVE textivate. It really isn't hard to use. Just follow the instructions and play around for a bit. It has been mega useful for me and my students!"
"I really enjoy Textivate. In a CI classroom with class created stories it is great. Perfect for sub plans if you have access to computers at your school!"
"Yes, DEFINITELY get Textivate."
"YES textivate. It is such a sanity saver especially during spring fever! They can do textivate like a whole class period!"
"I use it all the time! You put a text in and it creates lots of activities for the kids, they don’t even know how much reading they are doing. I love it!"
"I have a textivate group subscription with others from my school. We are just getting into it... I see it as VERY compatible with CI because it allows many different types of activities to be created from texts. I have been putting our class-stories into textivate as well as the stories from animation we used for movie talk."
"Textivate is easy to use, tons of activities, and provides for many reading reps. It’s CI gold!"
"I LOVE textivate! It makes reading activities out of any text 500 words or less. You can have students do the activities online or you can print them out on paper. There's stuff like gap-fill, ordering, who wants to be a millionaire etc. My students love the choice and they love the soccer game (gets my athletic boys excited about reading!)."
"I have really loved it. Being able to save readings for classes has been incredible and is a great way for students to make up missed classes as well."
"I love it!"
"I think it is a great tool for getting the kids to re-read a text in multiple contexts while focusing on meaning. [...] It requires a focus on understanding (for the most part) and the students enjoy it very much. For me personally it is also a break from having to deliver lots and lots of input to the students, it is a day to rest my voice while confident they are getting CI. I think it works best if your students have devices to work individually - you can certainly project it on the board and use it as a whole class activity, but the differentiation provided in the many different activities - to challenge high flyers and support slower processors, is one of the key benefits."
"It is the one online thing I use. It gets the kids reading a TON."
"I love it and my kids love it!"
"I love it! Have been using it for 6 years now. [...] Bottom line: it is WELL WORTH IT!!! I would not live without it!!"
"Textivate is the best sub plans... once they know how to use it, they don't make a peep for the sub and they get lots of good input."
"Extremely useful. The sheer number of activities/worksheets you could generate is fantastic. All based on stories you input."
"I use textivate to take a break after we are done with a story. I type up the stories together with the class. Cut and paste into textivate and voila, you have countless reading activities. I do this as a whole class or with the chromebooks or both. It has a yearly subscription but is well worth it."
"Worth its price! I upload all of our OWI and stories and do the vocabulary if I have time. If they want practice they have it, and it isn’t extra work for me. I type up the stories along with the class -- as we write and discuss it I have a student type them up. You can enable audio and there are so many things you can do with it."
"I use textivate with all levels."
"I have 90 minute blocks. Textivate works great for me! There are so many different activities the students can do with it. [...] Every single story we write gets put into textivate."
"I used [text-to-speech] today and it was so easy!!! Just click and select the language. You can also adjust the speed."
"For words that I haven't heard/read dozens of times in context, it's very difficult for me to understand them when they are displayed in an isolated form. And it's almost impossible if the word I'm trying to recognize is a slight variation of the 'base' form I acquired. Words that I processed over and over again using textivate and audio are much easier to recognize and translate out of context."
"Do your kids have access to computers? Do you have a textivate account? If so, just upload a bunch of class stories and there you go!"
"Textivate is awesome with stories! I did Quizlet instead with the last story and they all said hands down that Textivate was better and helped them the most!"
"Yes! I use the challenges and the kids love it! I plug a class story in and it automatically creates loads of activities. I have noticed a notable improvement in writing since I've started using it consistently!"
"Yes, I use Textivate often. For teachers who have never used Textivate, it is worth the minimal expense and learning curve. Even as a teacher who works in a low-tech environment (um, one computer in the whole class that we all look at), I definitely recommend Textivate as an easy and exciting way to extend reading activities. Great way to recycle as well, since they are still there two weeks later when I need a five minute filler activity that provides good CI while I boil water for a cup of tea."
"Thank you so so very much for supplying this wonderful tool for our language students."
"Can't have enough of this and my students feel the same way!"
"If you haven't already tried this - now is the time! It is a fantastic subscription site which creates endless resources / activities from one simple piece of text."
"I think the ability to log in and track who has done what, how long they are spending and what they get are invaluable pieces of information. Well worth the money in my opinion."
"Doing textivate activities with the stories before doing freewriting seems to help as well. I have certain students who always do the "anagrams" activity where they need to rewrite the entire story, and they do really well on the free writes."
"I gotta add my voice to the enthusiasts of Textivate. In terms of using it to give practice opportunities, augment and extend, it's hard to beat. Well worth the investment."
"I recommend this website during my CPD [...]. It is genuinely a very effective website which implements many of the ideas, tasks and techniques I put forward in my articles."
"I also rate Textivate. It’s a very adaptable tool with a long shelf-life. Good value too, given what it can do. Very easy to use, even if you are a technophobe. A good example of using tech sensibly, I think."
"I love it! My kids love competing on the smart board with it in front of the class. It’s also great for printed packets for sub days."
"With Textivate, students do so much reading, but in the context of competition. They love it!"
"Now that I've explored it a bit I’m kind of amazed by all the options! So exciting!"
"I LOVE Textivate now. [...] Excellent for differentiation (kids can listen to the text, use a parallel text, and practice fluency, spelling, and reading). Also, I love that I can upload a video or a photo to enhance or enrich the experience. I have found that it is excellent to reinforce target structures, if you use those. We know reading is important to second language acquisiton, Textivate makes a text comprehensible and fun and allows you to use a text that is i+1 (or even i+2 or 3 because of its ability to embed glosses). [...] Shorter texts work best, at least that has been how it has been for me. I use Textivate three times a week for reading."
:o)