eLanguages creative collaboration for teachers globally

Welcome to this month's eLanguages newsletter.

eLanguages (www.elanguages.org) has been developed by the UK's Department for Education and Skills (DfES) to support international collaboration for teachers globally. It’s absolutely free to use and as a registered eLanguages user you can start building your online project straight away - you have up to 100MB of web space for each project. You don’t need to wait until you have a partner. You can also join projects already up-and-running and looking for new partners.

Additionally, you can build up your 'Hello Page' to showcase to the world yourself, your classes, your school and your town, which will help potential eLanguages partners get an idea about who you are, where you teach and 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. Why not get your students to help you with your Hello Page... you could include on the page pictures that your students have taken of your school, web links they have found about your town or region, text they have written about their interests.

Go to www.elanguages.org to see just how simple it is to present yourself, your school and your work on the web!

If you're looking for a partner school in another country to start an eLanguages project with we can help with that too. 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, with contact details, who match your preferences. Why not contact them right now and take the first step to building a rewarding international school partnership?

Important - 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.

In your eLanguages newsletter this month...

Monty Panesar launches school links

Since the last eLanguages newsletter, English cricketing hero, Monty Panesar, the first Sikh to represent a nation other than India in test cricket, has launched new links between teachers in England and India as part of the 'Chance to Shine' cricket initiative. All the teachers are using eLanguages to build their collaborative projects. Find out more about their projects here.

Chance to Shine (www.chancetoshine.org) is run by The Cricket Foundation (www.chancetoshine.org/info/cricket_foundation.php ) and recognises the educational, personal and social benefits that playing cricket offers young people.

Model Project

Making the News - an example of how powerful eLanguages projects can be. Designed as a fun and imaginative project which enables students to create their own newspapers with stories and pictures sourced from their partner's countries. Why not use this project or its resources in your own language lessons? View Here

New Project of the Month

Fast food - Children's diet is a hot topic in the UK and, it seems, in other countries as well. Prince Rupert School in Germany have set up this project which challenges the notion that fast food needs to be unhealthy. What is fast food like in your country - is it bad for you, or healthy and nutritious? View Here

Vote in our poll

Each month, our newsletter contains a poll, allowing us to find out more about eLanguages teachers and the kind of things they want. Click on "Tell us about your school" to view this month's question and vote. Tell us about your school

Tip of the Month

Do you want to make certain project resources accessible to only site members rather than to the whole world? When editing your page, select the padlock icon of any resource you want to make private, click on the icon next to the category "public" and deselect READ permissions. The resource will now only be visible to site members who have logged in to the system.