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With their ideas as a guide, the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative is embarking on a collaborative project to create a blueprint for the "classroom" of the future -- realizing, of course, that it may not be a classroom at all. With wikis as our workplace, we're asking the EDUCAUSE community to share their ideas and expertise to help us, as a community, a vision of what the ideal learning environment might look like. Comments will be used to construct simulated course environments, starting with easy-to-implement solutions for rethinking the traditional lecture format and scaling to "blue sky" initiatives that include global collaboration and opportunities to "learn by doing." We hope you'll also take this opportunity to share the unique and innovative ways that your campus is already transforming learning in the classroom, on campus, and in virtual worlds.

Free lesson plans, homework help and professional development for teachers, students and parents. This site is a search portal for materials collected/developed by 9 major educational organizations (National Council of Teachers of English, American Library Association, etc.) Although it seems primarily aimed at lower-ed educators, the search function does have a category for "higher ed" materials. There is also a parallel site in Spanish, which might be useful for beginning-level Spanish learners.

Vocabulary study program for SAT or GRE. VerbaLearn's patent pending system will automatically remove words as you master them so you don't waste time studying like you used to. You can learn your words by listening to customized mp3 files or practicing examples online, track your progress, and even review all your words from your homepage whenever you need a brush-up. Free mp3 Vocabulary Lessons: All you need is iTunes or any other podcast aggregator and VerbaLearn will instantly download your new mp3 Studylists to your computer. From there, the podcast is automatically transfered to your iPod or mp3 player. Try our new motivational program VerbaLearn2Earn that helps students stay motivated by earning cash rewards (donated by a friend or family member) on a pre-paid debit card as they study! It's free, just like VerbaLearn.

Kanji alive is a free, web-based tool to help beginning and intermediate level Japanese language learners to read and write kanji. It is cross-platform and will run in any browser that supports Adobe Flash and Apple Quicktime. Please Note: The current version of Kanji alive available on this site is an initial beta or pilot version. We are making it available now in order to solicit comments and suggestions from our users. It is not a dictionary: only searches for individual kanji, not words. Shows character in font and animation of handwriting, on/kunyomi, audio clips & translations of associated compound words, radicals, stroke count and breakdown, and grade level/reference numbers for kanji lists.

Lists some suggested people to follow in Twitter who tweet in Japanese for the purpose of learning the language.

Self-assessment for students to help decide if an online course would fit their learning style/personality/habits.

Different games to help French language learning, including vocabulary and grammar.

"This article is designed to help users who are new to NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) learn the basic controls for testing web content, and to serve as a reference for the occasional NVDA user. NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It supports over 20 languages and can run on any computer entirely from a USB drive with no installation."

"A resource site for all Moodle-related news, tutorials, video, course content information and original resources." Links to various help, how-to documents, videos, etc.

The Breeze, the newsletter for The Japan Foundation, Los Angeles, will drift in with refreshing reports and facts of Japanese language education in North America. Publication of The Breeze is in part intended to help in developing strong regional and national networks in the teaching of Japanese.

The Pinyin tutor is an online tool that promotes Chinese learners in their phonological perception (including the perception of Chinese tones, initials, finals, etc.). Through a series of online Pinyin dictation tasks and corresponding feedback, the tutor helps students be conscious of their errors and thus improve their phonological perception in Chinese eventually.

Hello-Hello is a revolutionary interactive online language course with a community of like-minded individuals that help each other in the learning process. And all for free! Our lessons were developed in collaboration with ACTFL.

f4audio helps you transcribe audio data such as interviews or dictation. It is the digital answer to well-known cassette transcription equipment such as the Stenorette. The main functions include the variable playback speed, the rewind interval and operation via the f4 key or a footswitch from any computer programme (e.g. Word).

Simulations in Higher Education (SHE) is a focus for these initiatives at UWE. It is part of the E-learning Development Unit, which works with colleagues across the university to help with developments in curricula and delivery that use ICT. This SHE website describes the projects, technologies and underpinning pedagogies that these initiatives draw upon, and develop.

NMC Virtual Worlds is an NMC program designed to help educational and other learning-focused organizations explore the potential of virtual spaces in a manner that builds on community knowledge, is cost-effective, and ensures high quality. Since its launch in January 2007, NMC Virtual Worlds has been known for its attention to detail and to client needs. NMC provides a palette of premium custom services for education and training that includes developing facilities to hold company meetings and events, holding trainings and seminars, creating simulations for educators to recreate historical, scientific, and literary settings, organizing and managing conferences and mixed media events, and growing successful learning communities.

'Más arriba' is an online interactive workbook of introductory Spanish language exercises, based on the pictorial contextualization of fundamental vocabulary and language points. The exercise material includes full-colour drawings, sound clips, instant feed-back, vocabulary help and a new, significant feature: a voice recorder! 'Más arriba' is freely accessible and is designed to be used with any introductory approach.

A free interactive guide to help faculty determine the appropriate copyright guidelines they must follow to use different types of copyright protected media in their courses

The French Heritage Language Program was created in 2005 by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and received additional support from the Alfred & Jane Ross Foundation. It is designed to support and enrich the teaching and learning of French language, literature, and culture for students of Francophone background enrolled in New York City public schools. The primary objectives of the program are to help these students develop proficiency in French (reading comprehension, writing, oral expression and other literacy skills), and keep a connection to their respective cultures and identities, while increasing their opportunities for success in their new environment. Through university partnerships, this project also hopes to contribute to scholarly research in the field of heritage language learning. As a pilot program, it is a place for pedagogical and methodological exploration, and a way to build new partnerships. We seek to develop curriculum models that can be replicated and adapted in other cities in the United States, in France as well as in other countries. The French Heritage Language Program works closely with the Internationals Network for Public Schools, which includes nine high schools for new immigrants in New York City and one in Oakland, California, all working at the development of models for global education.

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: Voiceboards (an asynchronous speech tool), LiveChat (a 4-way conversation tool), and Voicerecorder (a widget for instant recordings). Each really opens up the scope and sequence of spoken language tasks. Creating media-rich lessons in ANVILL is simple and straightforward. There are templates for audio, video, and image tasks; there are also tools for text-based discussions like blogs and forums. ANVILL's assessment tool,Quizzes and Surveys, gives teachers an easy way to assign and respond to spoken language tasks. In addition, ANVILL is a course management system. Teachers who are doing distance or hybrid courses have a simple means of managing their students as well as their curriculum. We think you'll find that ANVILL is quite flexible, and permits the kind of extra listening and speaking practice that language students need so much. ANVILL is a project of the Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon. These tools are currently in use at UO and at a select number of K-12 sites around the Northwest. Thanks to our National Foreign Language Resource Center partners at CASLS, we are able to offer ANVILL to educators at no cost. Here is an overview of its features. If you think it would be helpful to you and your students, contact us to set up an account. Our two-year pilot study has just gotten underway and we're looking for language teachers at all levels to use it and tell us what they think.

Forvo is the largest pronunciation guide in the world. Ever wondered how a word is pronounced? Ask for that word or name, and another user will pronounce it for you. You can also help others recording your pronunciations in your own language.