Like many of you who attend IWLA and participate in different technology offerings, I am often amazed by all the cool internet tools that we can use in our world language classrooms.  I just ran across one that I'll use in some of my classes this semester.  I often shy away from tools that entail lots of explanation or practice--I admit it.  But this one is easy.

My students are assigned to write paragraphs or compositions in Spanish.  They often prefer to type them on the computer, but putting in all the appropriate accents and punctuation can be time-consuming for them.  I show them the shortcut keys with the ALT key, but this only works on keyboards with a numeric keypad.  I tell them about Microsoft Word and Insert-Symbol.  I show them how to select the US-International keyboard.  It all seems too complex. 

So now there is yet another option to add to the list of possibilities, a website called TypeIt.  http://www.typeit.org/  Choose your language and students can click the button for the character they want, or they can hold down the Control key and type the letter.  Quick and easy.  The text can then be pasted to essentially any application.  I'll be trying it in some of my classes this term.