Online Lessons for Using an Informational Website

Superpages.com has a free online course for adult learners (developed by Idearc Media and ProLiteracy Worldwide) that teaches the skills needed to navigate and make use of an informational website. Although the lessons are specific to Superpages, the skills are easily transferable to other sites.

The course includes audio and video lessons and printable Teacher Notes and Student Workbook pages.

Check it out at: http://www.superpages.com/adultlearners/course.html.

Online Exercise Makers from CLA Language Center

These little tools have been around for quite a while, but I have to admit that I had forgotten about them until a couple days ago, when a colleague asked me if there was a better way to make a matching exercise for her online training (the one in the CMS wasn't very pretty). I snooped around my bookmarks and rediscovered these online exercise makers from the CLA Language Center at the University of Minnesota.

There are only three tools, and they have their limitations, but they are FREE, and they are easy to use. The first allows you to make "glossed" web pages - so learners can click on a hyperlinked word to see information about it (whatever extra information you have provided in the 'gloss'), the second allows you to create self-check learning activities (you can embed audio or video, which is nice), and the third to create drag-and-drop matching exercises (including matching to an image).

Once you've made your exercises, you save them as .html files, then share the files with learners through a website or course management system. If you're teaching online, they can make a nice supplement to other online teaching tools.

Check them out at: http://languagecenter.cla.umn.edu/index.php?page=makers.