Creates a room in which you and those you invite can simultaneously watch a YouTube, Vimeo, or Dailymotion video and have a text chat at the same time.
Four classrooms are connected in a "quad" and comment on each other's blogs.
Limitations: To sign up, the instructor includes his/her name and email address in a public Google doc.
I have found that this site is much better for language augmentation than actual language acquisition. The exercises and topics are useful for adding to what an individual already knows and are useful for brushing up skills.
The ability to test into a level is an added bonus!
Write in your L2 and get feedback on your writing from native speakers of that language. You can also give other people feedback on their writing in your native language.
Limitations: You can only choose one L2 in the free version.
A sequence of audio and video selections to help intermediate and advanced students improve their oral comprehension skills. It provides the basis for comprehension exercises of increasing difficulty. The topics are extremely varied: the creation of Lalique crystal; winemaking, Van Gogh's genius; the production of sound effects for cinema; Sartre discussing Huis Clos in 1946; cinematographers Pialat and Karmitz describing their work; the history of the Louvre; Alphonse Daudet in a 1927 recording of his famous Provençal story, La Chèvre de Monsieur Seguin.
Great way to keep your classroom current! This site features online and downloadable German news reports which have been slowed down in order to aid with comprehension. The suggested level is B2 and up.
Learner response system that includes polls, quizzes, and drawing. The drawing function might be used to check students' handwriting for nonalphabetic languages.
This service will shut down on April 3, 2015.
Great site for watching current episodes of all types of German TV programs, from Tatort and dramas to hard hitting news programs.
Subtitles available on all programs. Some live casts may not stream if viewer is outside of Germany/not using a German VPN. Intermediate to advanced German proficiency.
Deutsch Interaktiv: Designed for teachers as a means of seeing potential lesson plans and subject/topic groupings. Bilingual: parts in German, parts in English
This mediathek provides excellent streaming links to recent news via television and radio programs. There are some links to current TV shows, but the site is more focused on news. Advanced proficiency preferable.
Note: many of the live TV broadcasts can only be used if the computer believes itself to be in Germany (a German VPN may be needed).
The Chinese Text Project is an online open-access digital library that makes pre-modern Chinese texts available to readers and researchers all around the world. The site attempts to make use of the digital medium to explore new ways of interacting with these texts that are not possible in print. With over ten thousand titles and more than one billion characters, the Chinese Text Project is also one of the largest databases of pre-modern Chinese texts in existence.