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offers a nice selection of educational games and activities for learning 55 different languages. Most of the games are designed to learn and practice the basics of each of the 55 languages listed on the Digital Dialects homepage. Another good website for learning and practicing language basics is Literacy Center.net. Literacy Center offers games for learning and practicing French, Spanish, German, and English. The Literacy Center is a 501c non-profit with a contract from the US Department of Education. Applications for Education The educational games and activities found on Digital Dialects and Literacy Center are great for students just beginning to learn a new language. The games provide instant feedback to students and parents so that they can monitor progress and choose a skill or set of vocabulary terms to practice.

The Literacy Design Collaborative is a loosely affiliated group of partners interested in making sure secondary teachers have strong supports for teaching literacy in content areas. If all students are to be prepared for the tough literacy demands of college and the workplace, it's up to teachers to make that happen.

is a free visual, video dictionary. Wordia features a selection of user-submitted and professionally created videos explaining the meaning of a word. The videos focus on the everyday use of words while the text accompanying each video provides the dictionary definition of the word. The video below explains the word literacy.

Vocab Ahead is a great service offering hundreds of videos designed to help students learn SAT and ACT vocabulary words. Each video features a narrator pronouncing the word, reading the definition, and then reading a sentence or two using the vocabulary word. An animated drawing accompanies each sentence to illustrate the meaning of each word and sentence. You can watch the Vocab Ahead videos individually or in a continuous stream. All of the Vocab Ahead videos can be viewed directly on their website or you can embed the Vocab Ahead widget into your own blog or website. Vocab Ahead also gives teachers the ability to create custom playlists of vocabulary videos. The playlists can be shared via email, a posted link on a blog, or by posting a vocabulary video widget on a blog or website

is a free service that describes itself as "half vocabulary builder, half dictionary, and full awesome." Word Stash is pretty true to its self-description. At its most basic Word Stash is a dictionary that provides contextual examples to support the definitions offered. For many words, Word Stash provides an audio pronunciation. The vocabulary builder aspect of Word Stash lies in the fact that users can create accounts in which they create and save lists of words to study. Users can create as many lists as they like and expand existing lists as they go. Word Stash provides short quizzes based on the words a user puts into a list. In creating the study quizzes, Word Stash uses a spaced repetition algorithm to present users with words based upon how often they answer correctly or incorrectly. To create a list of words users simply need to click "stash" anytime they view a word in the Word Stash dictionary. Users can also share lists and study other users' shared lists