What’s The Edtech Roundup? Extempore was just reviewed by The EdTech Roundup! If you’re unfamiliar, The Roundup is run by Mike Karlin, who has over a decade of classroom experience and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University’s Instructional Systems Technology program. The review gives an overview of what Extempore is, goes in depth[…]
The Can Do Descriptors which are similar to the WIDA Language Development Standards, were created to show what students at different levels of proficiency in English should be able to do in each of the four domains. While not a replacement, the Can Do Descriptors are a supplement to the WIDA Standards in instruction. Each[…]
In today’s image-rich world, infographics have become an essential way to convey information and statistics without an overwhelming overdose of text. This feature makes infographics an ideal instructional tool for teachers in the world language classroom. I often use infographics in the to elicit responses and reactions from students in the target language. THE[…]
One of the great advantages of cloud-based products like Extempore is their portability and flexibility: unlike on a legacy language lab, your students are free to practice speaking in any setting, at any time. You are not tied to a room, or a specific type of hardware, or a booking system. This flexibility means Extempore[…]
It’s the 21st century: Why do we keep taking 3 days to do oral exams when it can be done in ten minutes? If you can relate to this post’s title, it’s probably because you still go through 3 or 4 days of intensive (for you, not for your students who only meet with you[…]
As we do every year, we use the summer break to push updates to the platform. Some of these updates are major new features; but many others are small tweaks, performance and usability improvements that are reported to us during the year. That being said, we’re excited to announce the first one of the summer![...]
Posted on 2020-06-26 by Thomas Murr
Guest Post by Susana Perez-Castillejo, PhD, Assistant Professor of Spanish, University of St. Thomas. Beyond the Zoom breakout rooms for speaking activities and shared Google docs for collaborative writing practice, there are other tools we can leverage to make our synchronous class meetings a bit more interactive. These are ideas I have been learning these past few[...]
Posted on 2020-04-16 by Thomas Murr
Nowadays technological developments have affected our lives, how we communicate, how we learn and, of course, our way of teaching. Indeed, it is almost impossible to find a language class that does not use some technological support. Computer assisted language learning has changed the practice of teaching (Chapelle & Voss, 2016). Technology in Language[...]
Posted on 2020-02-10 by Thomas Murr
