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My postings seem to be all about my S2 class at the moment, but they are doing such good and interesting work, with such gusto I mentioned in recent tweet how happy I have been with them, particularly the standard...

Will the Chinese people rise above cyber-vigilantism and use the Internet to build a just and fair society governed by accountable leaders? Or will the majority be be happy to wield their new-found powers of online speech in random fashion? That's really up to them. People like Liu Xiaoyuan and Yang Hengjun and a number of others have been raising such questions. It's hard to know whether people beyond the elite intelligentsia will pay attention to such concerns. This is why the suppression and censorship of Cultural Revolution history in China is so dangerous. If people could freely write and debate about what happened under Mao, history would have less chance of repeating itself.

"The ACTFL Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL) is unlike any other assessment. AAPPL Measure addresses the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning and uses today's communication media in which test takers perform tasks such as participating in a virtual video chat, creating wikis, e-mailing, and using apps to demonstrate language ability."

"Each week, we will be interviewing people who are truly inspiring. They come from all over the world, and have overcome obstacles that make life that much harder. Their stories are inspirational, and allow us to be grateful for what we have in life. "Many people have come to see disease as a gift in their lives. Often, they learn that they are more than their disease, and once freed by that certainty they go on to live the rest of the story." This week, we interviewed Chloe Cohen. A truly inspiring woman who has been dealing with Multiple Sclerosis for many years. Chloe's inner strength and determination to help her deal with MS allows us to realize that their is hope for everyone. I feel honored to be able to share Chloe's story with everyone, and I hope it gives you as much enjoyment as it has given to me. Women like Chloe are hard to come by. Too many of us give up before we even try, especially, when suffering from a disease such as MS. Chloe's openness and willingness to share her story with all of us is amazing."

English captioning in progress - - anyone wishing to join?

A great English game where players shoot the correct word when given the word class, such as noun, verb, adjective etc. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

Site contains hundreds of visual aids (illustrations) that can be used to support instructional tasks such as describing objects and people (i.e., teaching vocabulary) or describing entire events and situations (i.e., teaching grammar).

"You have all heard about the more popular open source content management systems such as Joomla and Drupal. However, there are many more open source content management systems out there that are more than capable of accommodating the needs of your website. In fact, some of the less popular CMSs actually provide features that cannot be found in the standard CMS. Not all CMS live up to their developer's hype though, so we've compiled a comprehensive list of the top 20 open source content management systems."

In short, while "kids" with brains that are hard-wired for written language may get a kick out of learning phonetic transcription tricks, I submit that synthetic phonetic devices such as Truespel, Shavian, etc., are devastatingly confusing and counter-productive for dyslexic or other language-disabled individuals or for second language learners.

Contains the best stories from the Bible. Written in simple and understandable language, the stories are perfect for retelling to children of all ages. The wonder book of Bible stories is not only a recasting of the familiar stories of the Bible such as the finding of Moses and the story of Adam and Eve. It goes a step further to add characterization to make them look contemporary and lively. Interesting reading and specially suited for children as well as for adults who teach at Sunday schools. Every family should have this beautiful story book.

The lingro browser tools (bookmarklets) allow you to open any site you're viewing using lingro with one click. Once you have copied the bookmarklet to your browser, click it when you're on a page you want to view with lingro. (The bookmarklet doesn't work for sites that require you to log in, such as webmail. We're working on a way around this - stay tuned!)

Bookmarklet

This is a fantastic resource for any classroom learning Chinese or about China. The dictionary pinyin with tones as well as simplified and traditional writing, an animation of the order stroke for many words and audio of how the word should be spoken. There is also other resources such as practice sheets for writing, a translator, and other stuff for kids and the classroom.

image manipulation program like Photoshop, only free! It tackles tasks such as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring

...The CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) has developed two such tools, version 1.0 and 2.01 of the Media Access Generator (MAGpie), for creating captions and audio descriptions for rich media. ...

Cacoo is a user friendly online drawing tool that allows you to create a variety of diagrams such as site maps, wire frames, UML and network charts. Multiple users can edit the same diagram in a simultaneous collaboration.

"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."

Since the 1970s at least, lists of humorous rules for writing have circulated around schools, universities, and offices. The humor depends on each rule contradicting the very advice it gives, such as "Don't use no double negatives."

"Introduction In recent years, the world has witnessed a growing wave of local initiatives in support of public schools. Teachers, cultural associations and civil society have been playing an active part in grassroots experiments aimed at helping schools in the creative elaboration of new educational methods, also exploiting information technologies. Here answers are coming from those directly faced with educational issues, in contrast with the more common top-down reforms, where experts' committees draw up didactic experimentation plans to be put forward to willing teachers. Experiments like that are often very effective but, unfortunately, they rarely get known beyond the immediate sphere of their promoters. Moreover, they tend to be short-lived because promoters don't have the strength to sustain them and a suitable supporting network is lacking. They are like drops in the ocean: they apparently cannot change the entire educational system. But the ocean of whole human community could be flooded by many such contained experiments that would transform it, if the most meaningful of them could be fostered, spread and developed. ..."

Scary how new popular words finds its way into the dictionary... Or is this a rip-off, better go check it out! I feel like such a muggle