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Now that more and more classrooms are publishing student work for digital storytelling, podcasting, or through wikis and blogs it is becoming increasingly critical students follow the copyright and fair use guidelines. To help you and your students, I've created another freebie post - free images and sounds for student projects. Yes, there are multiple websites out there for public domain images and sounds, but I tried to pull those that are safe for student searching. You will find glorious photo landscapes, character illustrations of fairy tale characters, tornado sound effects, and more.

Aimed at younger students, it again lets you choose characters and scenes but will also update the text of the story depending on characters chosen and their actions. Be sure to play the instructions befor you begin

a guide to getting special characters when using computers

This is a wonderfully designed site to learn Mandarin Chinese. It uses a huge collection of Chinese TV programmes and movie clips with interactive and dual-language subtitles. Click on a Chinese character is see the translation and hear the pronunciation. You can set your ability level and also what sort of media you are interested in. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Mandarin+%26+Chinese+culture

A well made Mandarin resource for kids. Choose a topic page then hover over the objects to see the characters and pinyin and hear the pronunciation. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Mandarin+%26+Chinese+culture

QR voice will let you speak up to 100 characters and create a QRcode that will replay that voice recording. Nice for listening comprehension activities for discrete point assessment.

This is a great game app for learning Chinese Pinyin, simplified Chinese and Mandarin. Play the Scrabble-like game by arranging your tiles on the board to form Pinyin words. Choose a character and the correct meaning to gain extra points. Play against friends on the web. Download the app at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pinyinpal-only-free-mandarin/id573873383 http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Mandarin+%26+Chinese+culture

Orson Welles had quite a career in radio, from his days as The Shadow and his Mercury Theatre On The Air, to the radio version of his Third Man character from the movie, and beyond. This podcast will replay his radio performances from his various series and guest appearances.

Speakaboos brings classic children's entertainment into a digital world. Beloved characters and treasured stories are given new life through amazing celebrity performances, beautiful illustrations, and original music. At Speakaboos, children develop literacy skills while learning about technology in a safe and fun environment.

Congratulations for getting rich Happy Birthday Happy Christmas Happy Father's Day Happy Mother's Day Happy New Year Happy Teacher's Day Happy Thanksgiving Happy Valentine's Day How Are You I Love You

InkLearn is an indispensible tool for learning how to write Chinese characters.

allows you to create your own comic characters and comic strips

Advice for language learners General warning: what follows may or may not apply to you. It's based on what linguistics knows about people in general (but any general advice will be ludicrously inappropriate for some people) and on my own experience (but you're not the same as me). If you have another way of learning that works, more power to you. Given the discussion so far, the prospects for language learning may seem pretty bleak. It seems that you'll only learn a language if you really need to; but the fact that you haven't done so already is a pretty good indication that you don't really need to. How to break out of this paradox? At the least, try to make the facts of language learning work for you, not against you. Exposure to the language, for instance, works in your favor. So create exposure. * Read books in the target language. * Better yet, read comics and magazines. (They're easier, more colloquial, and easier to incorporate into your weekly routine.) * Buy music that's sung in it; play it while you're doing other things. * Read websites and participate in newsgroups that use it. * Play language tapes in your car. If you have none, make some for yourself. * Hang out in the neighborhood where they speak it. * Try it out with anyone you know who speaks it. If necessary, go make new friends. * Seek out opportunities to work using the language. * Babysit a child, or hire a sitter, who speaks the language. * Take notes in your classes or at meetings in the language. * Marry a speaker of the language. (Warning: marry someone patient: some people want you to know their language-- they don't want to teach it. Also, this strategy is tricky for multiple languages.) Taking a class can be effective, partly for the instruction, but also because you can meet others who are learning the language, and because, psychologically, classes may be needed to make us give the subject matter time and attention. Self-study is too eas

This is a fabulous site for creating free ebooks by uploading photos from your computer, or by using the well stocked gallery of props scenes and characters provided by the site. Just drag and drop your items into place. Books can be private or shared using a url link. A free signing is required. You can also have your ebooks made into real books for a fee. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

"With this interactive tool, teens can create printed social networking or magazine/newspaper profiles for themselves, peers or family members whom they have interviewed, or fictional characters from books they have read. Featuring components of popular online social networking applications, this tool engages teens and provides a means for adults to talk about safe, responsible online behavior, such as having an awareness of who could be seeing online profiles and limiting highly personal information."