Online Language Activities!

I wrote this on a forum a few months back:

I just wanted to share with you all some things that I have learned in the last year in regards to putting language activities onto the internet for our students. I started learning about this when a colleague told me about moodle and helped me install it. Once I installed the e-learning site I set out to find as many different easy-to-use software or web-based programs to fill my site with.

Jordon Online Quizzes
This site was set up by a private individual who freely shares his knowledge. There are four games and activities that you can set up. Once it is set up, you would need to then 'save as' and put it in a file on your computer for future uploads onto your site. The directions are quite clear. The activities are really creative as well! Here is an example: Dependent Prepositions & Months of the Year

Spellmaster.com
This is my favorite! It is similar to hot potatoes as it can be used freely if you share it. It is also the easiest to set up. You can set up bilingual quizzes and use them online or offline with your face-to-face groups (although you will need a computer). You can add mp3s as well. The games are either flash based or html based. Unfortunately the html based games can only be used with Internet Explorer and not any of the other browsers.

The Internet TESL Journal
You can link the quizzes on here to your website or tell your students to go there. Better yet, you can contribute to their site. There is a link there that explains it. Once you contribute, it may take a few months, but they eventually get the activities online. I've contributed some bilingual quizzes for Finns.

Quia
Sign up for a free 30 day trial and you have access to a lot of games made up by fellow teachers. You can also set up a website specifically for your students. This was the first one I found and have linked a lot of my activities from Quia to my moodle site. Easier to maintain than moodle if you don't have a lot of computer expertise or time. (Use the link above and I'll get referral credit... *grin*)

Hot Potatoes
This is probably one of the most widely known software to make online activities. You can make crosswords, matching--really all types of activities. Here are some examples: Food matching & Email Forward Crossword

TexToys
TexToys has activities to help the students remember the vocabulary based on the text that they may have just read. Quite good activities, especially for the advanced level student. I have added this to a packet with the Hot Potatoes activities as the software is very similar and I believe was written by the same author or company.