New Mac site launched for language teachers

There’s a new Mac site for language teachers. Mac-FL, described as “the definitive source for information about using Apple Macintosh technologies to teach languages,” is designed to aid teachers who are using Macs to teach languages, including English.

If you’re interested in learning a language, teaching a language, or creating your own language learning materials, the site is worth checking out. Mac-FL offers: university success stories; a list of multimedia creation-authoring tools (by Apple and third parties); multilingual word processing, Web, fonts, and e-mail tools; language software; on-line resources; and Mac software vendors.

The Web site also links to a mailing list so teachers can share ideas with each other. Finally, it lists new products and services that might be of interest to language teachers. In the “New This Month” section, you’ll find:

Hot Potatoes, a suite of six applications that let users create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises;

Prentice Hall Regents ESL for grades 1 to 6, which is a comprehensive CD-ROM program that links directly to each theme;

Azar Interactive, which lets you use multimedia to put grammar in context with a mix of video, audio, readings, and exercises;

The story of Evangeline, with 200 pages of background information about the history, culture, language, food and music of the Cajun people;

iDVD: Apple’s new product that can be used in tandem with iMovie to let language teachers make their own DVDs for classroom use.