20 September 2006
It's with great pleasure that we welcome you, as a registered eLanguages teacher, to the first eLanguages newsletter.
eLanguages (www.elanguages.org) is now bigger and brighter than ever, with more teachers around the world looking to get involved and build fun, interactive eLanguages projects with partner teachers in other countries.
The eLanguages newsletters will help you make the most of eLanguages by highlighting special features of the eLanguages platform, showcasing exciting projects to join and resources to use, and giving you ideas about how to start and build your own eLanguages projects.
Perhaps most importantly, every newsletter will give you the details of suitable partner teachers for you - teachers who match your preferences and whom you can contact right now to begin an eLanguages project. There are plenty of registered eLanguages teachers all over the world who are looking for partners and hoping to hear from you. See our automatic eLanguages Partner Match below for a full list of eLanguages teachers who match your preferences.
Important - Please make sure you use your 'hello page'. This page allows you to present yourself and your school to the world. You can include, say, a picture of yourself and your school, a link to your school's or your town's website, details of the kind of projects you'd like to do. This is also the place to say what languages you speak and what countries you want to partner with.
To view your hello page you must be logged in. When you are not logged in and when you click on the link "view your hello page", the system will return an authorisation error. Insert your accountname and password and the system will direct you to your hello page. View your hello page.
From our own correspondent - See how powerful eLanguages projects can be.. This project uses news clips of two important historical events (the fall of the Berlin Wall and the last flight of Concorde) as the basis of collaboration between two schools to teach English and German. The students research the news stories, prepare scripts and - using simple free tools available on eLanguages - create their own news clip with the original movie and their own commentary. Why not use this project or its resources in your own language lessons? View Here
My Nepal, Your country - This project offers teachers the opportunity to work with a teacher in Nepal, to enable students to find out about Nepal's culture, music, language, arts and crafts through pictures, letters and a range of digital media. It will focus on helping students to understand the differences between underdeveloped and developed countries and how they can help one another to grow. For students between 10 and 18 years. View Here
Each month, our newsletter will contain a poll, allowing us to find out more about eLanguages teachers and the kind of things they want. Click on "Tell us who you are" to view this month's question and vote. Tell us who you are
Voting polls. It's really easy to add to your eLanguages project clickable polls enabling your students, your partner's students and the world in general to vote on any subject of your choosing. Just go to your project page, click on edit mode (make sure you're logged in first) and when you go to 'add', choose the poll icon from the toolbox. Users can only vote once. After they've voted they'll see the results in graph form - just as you will when you vote in our poll.
Help system. Use the help system to access more information about how to use eLanguages. You find the help icon in the top right corner of every page page under the language selector.
Forgotten your password?... use the reissue password link to receive a new password. Forgotten your accountname and password...send us your first, last name and school name by using the contact form and we will send you a new accountname and password within 24 hours.
eLanguages is available in 18 languages, including the 10 most spoken languages in the world. The full list is: English, French, German, Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Punjabi, Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati and Hindi. Can you guess the top 5 most spoken languages in order? Answer next month!
