Two Spanish Teachers’ Blogs

http://zachary-jones.com/spanish

http://ochoamores.typepad.com/morespanish

Zachary Jones, a Georgia Spanish professor, created “Actualidades:Blogueando Para Aprender,” which features articles on topics that include art, music, news, and movies. Jones invites Spanish teachers from around the world to participate on his blog, and those who have responded to his invitation include teachers from Mexico, Spain, Argentina, Peru, and Puerto Rico. “More Spanish” by Sherry Amorocho features lesson plans and technology for the Spanish classroom. The site has recently included articles and discussions on topics such as Skype,Google Voice, and authentic translating, and archived postings are available as well.

ThinkQuest
www.thinkquest.org

On the Oracle Education Foundation’s ThinkQuest site, teams of students build educational websites to share with the world as a project-based learning experience. The websites are all published in the ThinkQuest library. There are currently members from more than 50 countries, and teachers can find learning projects on the site that they can integrate into their classroom curriculum. The annual ThinkQuest competition is open to students ages 9 to 19, with laptops and cash awards for their schools given to the top five teams in each age division.

Center for Applied Second Language Studies
http://casls.uoregon.edu

The Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS) at the University of Oregon incorporates technology and research with  curriculum, professional development, assessment, and articulated programs.  It has numerous resources for teachers, students, and researchers, including a free e-newsletter for language educators and the National Virtual Language Lab. Among its other resources are the MOSAIC content-based thematic units in French, Spanish, and Japanese, Dynamic Activity Templates in Chinese, Japanese, or Spanish, and the virtual world MyChina.

Foreign Language Video Clips
http://dmc.ohiolink.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?page=index;c=forglv

Foreign Language Video Instruction is a collection of video clips in which native speakers discuss topics such as their culture, family, and daily life. Each video clip is accompanied by a description of its contents, the country of the speaker, and additional grammar and vocabulary notes. These videos are produced by the ViewPoints Project of the Five Colleges of Ohio consortium.

Exploring French Art
www.curiosphere.tv/decodart/home.html

Décod’Art is a French-language magazine website that guides visitors through a gallery of French art, as it explains, compares, and analyzes the works. There is also a quiz that can be taken at the end.

Videos about Beijing
www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DA0FEE1B6B5D844F

These YouTube videos include “For Schools: A Week in the Life of Beijing,” “Chinese Kindergarten–Olympics 2008,” and “China Youth Speak Out,” among others.

Try Open Source Software for Free
www.click2try.com

Click2try describes itself as a community site where it is easy to try Open Source software for free. The education section includes Moodle, Sakai, TCExam computer-based assessment software, Open Administration for Schools, and the openSIS student information system.

Spanish Exercises
www.ver-taal.com

The vocabulary exercises on this site include thematic, lexical problems, crosswords, and a hangman game. There are also listening exercises using news reports, cultural videos, movie trailers, songs, ad messages, and information campaigns.

Projects for Teaching about Medieval Islam
www.historyforkids.org/crafts/islam.htm

At this site, teachers can find ideas for projects that they can use in the classroom to teach their students about ancient Islam. The topics include clothes, food, and activities such as polo, archery, and chess.

A Gazetteer of Italy
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/home.html

Bill Thayer’s Gazetteer of Italy includes photos and accounts of his travels around Italy, as well as topical pages and other travelers’ accounts. The site is available in both English and Italian.

Greek Alphabet Cutouts
http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson_images/lesson517/Greek_Letters.pdf

This site has a worksheet of Greek alphabet cutouts that educators have permission to reproduce for classroom use.

Computer Games as Educational Tools
www.learninggamesnetwork.org

The Learning Games Network is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to develop and facilitate the use of computer games as educational tools. Its flagship project, ISLE (Interactive Social Language Education), is an online gaming platform in which users will enter a virtual world and engage in activities and games that will help teach a new language.

Science Videos in German and English
http://dfg-science-tv.de/en

In three-minute videos, available in both German and English, researchers report on their projects for DFG Science TV. Recent projects have included a forest experiment on diversity in China, a study of water birds on Lake Constance, climate research in the Arctic, the birth of a new ecosystem in Cottbus, and a look at how math benefits our daily lives.