Language teaching in the iPad classroom

 

Lesson ideas with Apps that could be used across all languages:

Objective: Get students to express themselves verbally in the language they are learning.
Use Screencasting Apps like ShowMe, Educreations or Explain Everything for students to record a conversation, while annotating an image related to the topic.

Objective:  Students research, create and publish an interactive book on the language, culture and customs of the language they are studying.
Use Creative Book Builder App and incorporate Audio, Video, Weblinks, Images etc to provide a reference book resource.
Or use iBooks Author on a laptop to create an even more interactive iBook for access on students iPads.  See iBooks Author for Languages: 3 Guerilla ideas.

Objective : Introduce students to basic language structures and vocabulary, as well as geography customs and culture.
Students subscribe free to relevant courses and collection on iTunesU, with resources like iBooks or podcasts to read, listen and reinforce understanding of the language and country.  eg, Open University Andante: beginners' Italian Audio.

Objective:  Students practice their speaking skills in their chosen language.  
Use Facetime to communicate with native speaking students from a school overseas.

A few selected Apps and websites to take a look at for your Languages Classes

Translation Apps (free ones)
Wordlens - translate words with this App by pointing the iPad camera at a sign
Google Translate
Numeracy fluency
Count to Ten: (free) Identify the numbers in a game based mode across ten different languages

French
A comprehensive list of Apps for students learning French - 'iPod apps for the French Class' is available from Wisconsin World Languages 2010 Wikispace.

A useful information text for French students is  :

Fotopedia Paris: (free) More than 4,000  photos of Paris with rich text descriptions.  Also Virtual Trips and shuffle or shake your iPad to discover new spots and images

French Gender (free) Still confused about which French nouns are masculine and which are feminine? Ready to learn the patterns which will unlock the secret?

Indonesian
Byron Bay High School provides a list of Indonesian language learning Apps

Italian
Living Language - Italian for iPad (free for 6 lessons, remaining paid) This app has 3  levels—Essential, Intermediate, and Advance with vocabulary, grammar, dialogues, and interactive games.

Learn Italian with Busuu! (free plus inapp purchases):  Covers 150 every day topics

Virtual History Roma:  ($5.49) Students discover ancient Rome in a 3d simulated environment that reconstructs the ancient monuments of the city.

Rome HD : ($5.99) includes images and virtual tours of Italy as well as history.

Japanese
Human Japanese HD: ($9.99) The goal of Human Japanese is not just to turn out students capable of repeating canned phrases, but to lay the foundation for real linguistic and cultural understanding. To this end, it focuses on helping the student to understand the core engine of the language, giving lucid explanations of key concepts and making frequent comparisons to aspects of English that are similar.

iNippon: (free sample - full version $13.99) A Japanese-English conversation book about traditional Japanese things.

AIUEO-HIRAGANA for iPad  ($4.99) learn to read Japanese Hiragana, listen to native speakers pronounce the hiragana characters.