The Louvre website
| Vocabulary level: |  |
| Website size: | |
| Complexity: | |
| Interactive |
Click here to look at the Louvre site.
Click here to look at the Activity on the Louvre site.
Click here to see the answers to the Louvre Activity.
Unsurprisingly, the website for the Louvre museum is almost as huge as the museum itself. However at the same time, it remains relatively straightforward to move around and there are hundreds of pictures and photographs to keep pupils' attention. The website divides between information about getting into the museum, details of temporary exhibitions and the very thorough coverage of the permanent collection (under "Collections" in the menu on the left), the latter complete with "virtual" visits (see below) and photos of all the most famous works of art. The fusée activity, after checking comprehension of the different parts of the website, gives pupils free rein to find an object or picture and to write their own description. Seeing as the permanent collection is just that, however, it would be easy to write your own comprehension questions about certain famous paintings, for example.
The "Visite virtuelle" gives the chance to get sweeping 360º views of rooms and parts of the museum and is very entertaining. However, to use these your computer(s) have to have Quicktime 4 installed - this is downloadable free from the Apple website and works on either PC or Macintosh. Make sure you choose the free version rather than paying for the "Pro"!
The Tour Eiffel Website
| Vocabulary level: | |
| Website size: | |
| Complexity: | |
| Interactive |
Click here to look at the Tour Eiffel site.
Click here to look at the Activity on the Tour Eiffel site.
Click here to see the answers to the Tour Eiffel Activity.
The website for the Eiffel Tower is a good combination of information and fun, and is packed with history, trivia and pictures of anything related to the famous landmark. The opening page can launch you off immediately to specific details of different parts of the tower or the quiz - so it's best to make sure that everyone starts by going to the "Sommaire" contents page instead by clicking on the orange box on the right. The first few questions in our activity test understanding of the different sections of the site, and students are then invited to have a go at the interactive quiz on the history of the site. Encourage them to try to understand some of the history first as otherwise the questions will be pretty tricky! If you get full marks in the quiz you can enter a draw to win free tickets to get into the Tower.
The site also has
some nice extra features like a very short 3D Quicktime video of the spinning
tower (see under The Louvre website above for how to download Quicktime), plus
virtual postcards with moving graphics that can be sent to friends' e-mail addresses.