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great tool here for creating multimedia vocab activities

"Many people don't realize that The New York Times can be quite accessible for English Language Learners. Due to its focus on current events and news, using The Times to learn vocabulary and practice reading can be much more inviting and rewarding than a textbook. And NYTimes.com has some extra tools and features that are particularly useful for language learning. Here are 10 ideas for using The Times to teach and learn the English language." Includes lookup dictionary, multimedia archive, K/W/L Chart, short activities, culture experiences, lesson plans, this day in history, etc.

" The printables encourage writing and thinking in a quick and fun way. A student's efforts to complete the printable can then become the first step in writing longer essays, poems or stories on the same subject. The printables also can be used with students enrolled in literacy and English-As-Second Language (ESL, ESOL) programs and provide an educational resource for teaching language arts." Over 250 printables that can be used for writing prompts.

Listen, create and share FREE geolocalized audioguides. Share your voice and make the world a more interesting place.

This might be a great tool for an extended project, e.g., have your students create an infospot audio guide to their local community. Lots of examples are linked on the front page, and there is an iPhone app to scan, listen, and record wherever you happen to be. There are currently over 1300 guides created by users, and more coming.

This video shows how to use Feed Marklet to create a button on your browser toolbar to add an RSS feed. Takes about 1 minute. You can use an RSS feed to keep track of student Webpages, and have them use it to keep track of each other's work. For instance, they might add all the pages they are making, or their blogs, and so be able to read them quickly when new content is added.

"Learn English online with the help of this free website from the British Council with games, stories, listening activities and grammar exercises. You can search for your favourites, or have a look at the site map to find out where everything is. This is a BETA site and you will find lots of new listening activities and video content in Listen & Watch. We also have a new Grammar section and new IELTS exam practice materials. Click here to return to the 'old' LearnEnglish website. Double-click any word to see a dictionary definition. You can contact us if you have a question or want to report any problems. Become a member and you can add comments to the site and ask questions to get help with your English." This site has thematic/situationally based videos.

Another of Nik Peachey's excellent blog entries, this one included ideas for teaching and an example activity for students: "I've found that in class most students enjoy lessons based around songs or music. More recently I've been trying to discover and develop activities that students can do online to actively engage with the vast variety of resources that are available. "These are six things that I have discovered so far. Each one links to an example activity that I have developed for students."

"City College of San Francisco ESL students explore the Living Roof at the California Academy of Sciences with its 1.7 million native plants and exciting green technology which controls the building's temperature. Instructor: Cora Chen (visit Cora's ESL Page)" This is a nice example of how a day-trip can be combined into a media and reading-writing project for adult students.

"ANVILL (A National Virtual Language Lab) is a speech-based toolbox for language teachers. Like the language lab console of old, it's focused on the practice of oral/aural language, but at its core are very modern web-based audio and video tools from duber dot com and the University of Oregon: Voiceboards, LiveChat, and Quizzes and Surveys. Our newest tool, TCast, allows teachers to record and place audio or video files anywhere in a lesson--in 3 easy steps. Each of these tools really opens up the scope and sequence of lessons centered around spoken language tasks." Jeff Magoto has done a great presentation on how to use ANVILL, which is a wonderful, free, A/V tool available now internationally.

This could be a useful place to find and compare free wiki services.

Type in a tag and see a world of pictures from Flickr.\n\nSnap a screenshot of the globe, and you have a nice logo for a project.\n\nThis is a fun application, and your students will have even more incentive to create pictures.\n