Ipod touch/ iphone Applications for The Language Teacher (Part 3)

In this last post, I have tracked down applications offering cultural references and information in English and in the Target Language. Some of these application are also a great source of authentic materials to be exported in the form of screenshots into your own language resources.

Cultural references

EU fact book and quizzes (free): Great to devise quizzes for any European day. Students could also be asked to download it onto their ipods and devise quizzes in groups.

World Countries (free): extract from the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia: search facility, flags, country, continent and world maps (can be emailed), quizzes, flashcards with name of countries on. Full version costs £0.59 and includes more games, flashcards, travel guides and pictures.

WorldCustoms (free): covers greetings, personal space & touching, eye contact, views of time, gender issues and gestures. Could be used when teaching countries and the imperative (for gestures). A phrase book is also available (16 languages for £1.79)

Wikipedia (free): set language can be changed to search for articles in a foreign language

Communes (French) (Free) Tap in the name of the town and find out its basic statistics, name, address and contact phone and fax for the Mayor and Town Hall, name of nearby towns with distances and link with googlemap. Search for a place you have a link with or town visited on a trip for further information.

Perpignan (free) very interesting description with pictures of places of interest, exhibitions, shows (In French)

Marseillaise (free): audio, video, text and history surrounding the French national anthem (in French)

Quite a few French museums have their own free applications. They usually consist of a gallery of high quality pictures with added written and audio commentary:

Musée du Louvre

Musee Jacquemart-Andre-la collection Brukenthal

Grand Palais

Musee Cluny

Musee Marc Chagall de Nice

Wim Delvoye au Musee Rodin

Musee National Fernand Leger de Biot

Multimedia travel guides are also worth a look, although very few are actually free. The "Paris Multimedia Travel Guide in French" (Navigaia) offers quite lot of functionality for a free application and could be used to do some resarch on Paris in the target-language.

Authentic resources:

Icam (Spain)-free: Links to live webcams in a selection of cities like Barcelona, Madrid or Seville

La Redoute-free: good resource for clothes and prices in Euro (through snapshots)

SNCF (free): to get authentic resources on train transport

Allrecipes.fr (free) lots of recipes in French with link to the allrecipes.fr website for more information

Tele-Loisirs (free): Could be used with screenshots to discuss TV programmes or films

7 jours sur la planete :TV5 Monde (free) videos and comprehension exercises

Press/news video:

National French Papers : Le Figaro.fr, Le Monde.fr

Magazines : Marianne2.fr, Le Point.fr, Elle: good to discuss fashion trends and get really up-to-date information/pictures

La Depeche.fr (local paper for the South West of France)

France 24 (news videos )

National Spanish Papers (also covers news from other Spanish-speaking countries)

El Mundo.es LaVanguardia El Pais

Noticias EFE (Spanish national press agency)

20 minutos.es (national and international news)

Que .es (free) full news coverage with sport and stock exchange news, weather, traffic and stars

Hola.com (celebrity gossip magazine)

Other:

MemoBac Francais (free) some interesting reading in French about French literature

Code de la Route deluxe (lite) (free): Highway Code theory test in French including quizzes and a couple of short videos (the ultimate CLIL resource?)

Radio :

LCI radio (French)

Radio France (French)

Europe1 (French)

RNE radio (Spanish)

Cadena Ser (Spanish)

Onda Cero (Spanish)

Euro Radio (£0.59) Select stations by countries and post your favourite stations to Twitter, Facebook or MySpace.

E-books :

A lot of them are free and can be downloaded through free Applications like Wattpad, stanza or classics2go (also available in French and Spanish)

Le Petit Prince (£0.59) a French classic to peruse on the go

Fables (La Fontaine) is free on the Classique application

Free Audio Books are also available through the free audio books applications (available in foreign languages too)

What is next?

I think the first thing is to make colleagues aware of the wealth of resources available, second students, who could be enrolled to research language applications for alternative smartphones like Blackberries, for instance. Last but not least, parents need to be made aware too so that phones and ipods can fully support independent language learning from home.

Thank you for adding to my list if I have forgotten any applications you use regularly for language learning and teaching...