Our Asian Stories - a place to share

The NSW Department of Education and Communities is about to launch a new website: Our Asian Stories.
The website will provide support for The Arts, English, Geography, History and Languages.
It contains:
1. Background information relating to why Asia is a significant part of our curriculum
2. A suite of resources which relate to intercultural communication
3. A searchable gallery of DEC resources, including those linked to the Australian Curriculum
4. A searchable gallery of teacher-developed resources
5. Related links.
We would love you to contribute your resources! Work needs to be original and contain no third-party images or photographs. Microsoft Clip Art, your own photographs or creative commons images are all okay. Contact ourasianstories@det.nsw.edu.au if you'd like more details. Imagine if every teacher contributed just one resource...

"Get Connected!" - 2012

It's on again! On Monday, 2 April 2012, 18 teachers of Asian languages will be coming together to learn about the "Get Connected!" program, which links students of the 100 hours in Languages. We asked the 2011 cohort "What do you see as the program's greatest benefit/s?", and their answers are below:

Stage 4 classes connect with each other

In May 2011, my colleague Leanne Smith and I ran a full-day workshop for teachers wishing to link their 100 hours students with another class, using connected classroom technologies. Providing students with a real audience for their learning is a huge motivator and a vital component in Quality Teaching. Blogs, video conferencing, Bridgit, email, even old-fashioned letter exchanges - linking is now easier than ever before! Teachers of Japanese from four high schools (Armidale HS, Braidwood CS, Camden Haven HS and Glen Innes HS) are linking their students in this way, with students enjoying creating online avatars and speaking in Japanese to each other via video conferences. Why not try it...?
photo credit: Florian SEROUSSI via photopin cc

Quizlet: A simply FANTASTIC online flashcard generator

Quizlet is an online flashcard maker and vocabulary learner. You can create your own flashcards, or students can create their own sets of vocabulary (by chapter, by topic, etc.) and then learn the vocabulary through a series of steps and games. Without exaggeration, to create a set of 15-20 vocabulary items, you'll need less than five minutes!! You can also access existing games created by other teachers and students (Caution: there may be errors!). All languages available.

IWB resources

I have just added 11 new IWB resources to the Curriculum K-12 website:

• Chinese: Leisure and hobbies
• French: School life
• German: At home; Finding your way around town
• Indonesian: Age
• Italian: Pets; Modes of transport
• Japanese: Describing body parts; In the classroom; Likes and dislikes (food); Verbs

This brings the total to 67 resources - ready for you to use! Check them out here.