Web Exercises & Activities
Interactive Web Exercises
Web exercises should be designed to test or check students' contextual use of grammar and vocabulary, cultural concepts, etc.  Students are normally able to submit their answers online.  Many publishing companies are now making such exercises available on the web site designed to accompany specific textbooks (e.g., Treffpunkt Deutsch, Neue Horizonte).

An excellent workshop on what it means to make an exercise for the Web "interactive" can be found here --> http://web.uvic.ca/~esg8/interact/wkshp/

A list of recommended interactive Web exercises follows:

http://www.geocities.com/hschwab57/quiz.html
(List of online quizzes)

http://www.edition-deutsch.de/lernwerkstatt/
(Lernwerkstatt: Übungen, Tests und Materialien)

http://mitglied.tripod.de/daf1/Portal.htm
(Grammatikübungen und Aktivitäten--von Deutsch Online)

http://www.imsa.edu/edu/forlang/gr/gr3/exercises/
(Web Exercises for German III--written by John Stark, IMSA)

http://www.colby.edu/german/deutsch_ueben/
("Deutsch üben im Internet"---> exercises and activities 
created by John Lyon of Colby College)
 
Web Activities
Web activities are primarily information-gathering activities.  Many publishing companies have such activities as part of the site for a specific textbook--e.g., Treffpunkt Deutsch, Neue Horizonte).  For instance, instructors might have students put together a menu for a German dinner by visiting some German restaurant sites, reading their menus and deciding what to include on the menu they put together.  These activities very often include forms which can be submitted online.  A list of such Web activities follows:

http://ml.hss.cmu.edu/FacPages/amgreen/projects/webex.html
(written by Anne Green, Carnegie Mellon University)

http://nosferatu.cas.usf.edu/german/forms/webforms.htm
(written by Lizz Caplan-Carbin of the University of South Florida)

http://clem.mscd.edu/~mdl/gerresources/gerubung.htm
(selection of exercises and activities collected by 
Metropolitan State College of Denver)
 
Chat Rooms, Discussion Boards, E-mail
Although chat rooms, E-mail and asynchronous discussion boards don't fall under the category of "Web Exercises and Activities," it may be useful to discuss their use in the German classroom here.  I have made extensive use of E-mail and asynchronous discussion boards in my German classes since their use has encouraged students to interact and to collaborate with each other both within and outside of the classroom.  This has occurred among classmates and between my students and students, instructors, or other native informants at different universities/schools in the U.S. and in Germany.

Examples of my use of discussion boards in my classes:

I've never used chat rooms in my teaching.  Have any of you?  I do understand from several teachers with whom I've spoken that making use of chat rooms and allowing students to converse "live" with native informants in German can be an invigorating, empowering experience for students.  Any ideas?