Group items tagged

"Welcome to the first ever intercultural podcast. 'absolutely intercultural!' is its name and, as far as we know, this is the first podcast in the world to deal with intercultural issues. We'll be releasing a new episode every second Friday evening, looking at all intercultural aspects of human intercultural communication. For example, we'll be hearing from students on foreign work placements, asking how teachers can make use of intercultural exercises and simulations in their classroom and sharing with you any intercultural gossip we come across. 'absolutely intercultural!' won't be so much about passing on information but more about starting an intercultural dialogue between the makers, and you, the contributors and listeners."

The lessons are free. Each lesson has 26 pages of printable activities / handouts. There is a new lesson every two days. The lessons alternate between pre-intermediate and intermediate (plus). All lessons are based on stories currently in the news - as the world's news breaks, teach it. All lessons are also downloadable PDF format. There are 30+ online quizzes for each lesson. Listening files can be downloaded in mp3 format or subscribed to via a podcast. Classroom handouts are readily reproducible. There are graded listenings with each lesson. Thousands of teachers and students say they love using the news lessons.

Freeplay offers free network synchronization to all BMI/ASCAP & SESAC, national network content broadcasts in exchange for music cue sheet compliance. (Domestic and International). Other commercial uses of Freeplay, are usually subject to fees and must be negotiated in advance. 

Explain the Joke began in January 2013 as a way to explain jokes to folks new to English or new to United States humor.  It also works for folks who laughed but did not get the joke… until it was explained. Enjoy the jokes and enjoy the explanations! 

Learning English / Learn American English and more

Text 2 Mind Map offers a great way to turn your typed outlines into mind maps. To create a mind map on Text 2 Mind Map type out an outline in the text box. After typing your outline click "draw mind map" to have your mind map created for you. If after creating your mind map you need to add more elements to just add them into your outline and click "draw mind map" again. Your mind map can be downloaded as a PDF or PNG file. The mind maps that you create on Text 2 Mind Map can also be shared via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

CreateDebate is a new social networking community built around ideas, discussion and democracy. We've done our best to provide our community with a framework that makes compelling and meaningful debates easy to create and fun to use. Our goal is to build CreateDebate into an incredibly useful learning tool that will help groups of people to sort through issues, viewpoints and opinions so that consensus and understanding can be reached and better decisions can be made.

"The Teacher's Guide To Copyright And Fair Use"

Story Cove is a service that hosts audio and video stories based on the folktales from a variety of places and cultures. The stories are divided by their continent of origin. Each story is intended to convey a lesson on culture and society. The stories can be watched as videos or listened to as audio-only recordings.

MeeGenius is a nice source of free and paid ebooks for kids. There are lots of sites that offer the same thing as MeeGenius but MeeGenius distinguishes itself with one excellent feature. That feature is automatic word highlighting to accompany the narration of each book. When children open the ebooks online, on an Android tablet, or on an iPad they can choose to have the story read to them or to read the story on their own. When the story is read to them each word in the story is highlighted on the page. This should help children follow along with the story.

Write Rhymes is a fun little site where you can find a word to rhyme with just about any other word. I tried to use words for which I couldn't think of obvious rhymes, but each time Write Rhymes came up with something. To use Write Rhymes simply type a word in the text box then option-click on it to see a list of rhyming words.

Plinky is a good place to find writing prompt ideas. Plinky provides users with a new writing prompt everyday. The benefit of Plinky over other writing prompt websites is that once you've created an account you can see how other Plinky users responded to the prompt.

Toasted Cheese is a daily writing prompt site that publishes prompts on a monthly calendar. The whole month is laid out for you with a different prompt each day. Don't see anything you like on the current calendar? That's okay, click through the previous months to find old prompts. Periodically, Toasted Cheese holds writing contests which you can learn about by clicking on the links on the calendar. The writing contests are based on one or more of the prompts from the calendar.

wireWax is a new service (still in beta) that takes the concept of YouTube annotations and makes it much better. On wireWax you can build interactive tags into your videos. Each tag that you add to your video have another video from YouTube or Vimeo or an image from Facebook, Flickr, or Instagram. A tag can also include an audio track from SoundCloud or a reference article from Qwiki. What makes using wireWax different from using the YouTube annotations tool is that clicking on your tags (what YouTube calls annotations) does not send you outside of the video you're currently watching. This means that you can watch a video within a video or view a picture or listen to a different audio track within the original video. When you click a tag in the original video the video pauses and the tagged item is displayed. wireWax allows you to add tags to any YouTube video that is publicly viewable and has not had embedding disabled. I tried wireWax with this five minute video. It took a while (15-20 minutes) for the video to process for tagging, but once it was processed it was easy to create a tag. To create my tag I just advanced the video to the spot I wanted to tag, drew a box around the person I was tagging, then selected the wireWax YouTube app to put a video within the original video. Check it out below by advancing to about the 1.5 minute mark. Applications for Education wireWax could be a great tool for adding new layers of information to educational videos. If you're creating videos for your students or your students are creating videos to share with others consider tagging key points at which viewers might have questions. At those points insert tags that reveal clarifying information in the form of a video, an image, or an audio recording. 

"Free fonts have met their match. We know how hard it is to find quality freeware that is licensed for commercial work. We've done the hard work, hand-selecting these typefaces and presenting them in an easy-to-use format. "

This great blog created by Gareth H. Jones provides Spanish language speakers with clear explanations of some grammar points, concepts. expressions, and vocabulary.

Useful website to create, for example, some listening comprehension exercises from this complete Advertising & Commercial Archive with more than 2,000,000 ads. 

"Create timelines, share them on the web. Timetoast is a great way to share the past, or even the future... Creating a timeline takes minutes, it's as simple as can be."

"The best way for teachers to organize their day"

Like a real-life three ring binder, this tech tool allows you to collect and organize resources. Much better than a binder, however, the site also comes with tools to connect and collaborate and a virtual whiteboard.