Podcasts

Related to podcasts, we selected "ELTpodcast" which we found interesting as, besides the podcast listening itself, the correspondent transcripitons are also avaIlable, for instance, ELT Podcast - Basic Conversations for EFL and ESL. We would like to note that BBC podcasts unfortunately are not available outside the UK.

Webquests

Afer going through several websites dealing with webquests, we noticed, for instance that WebquestUK provides rather useful links related to the subject students are invited to work on. This website offers relevant explanations on how to create and develop a webquest.
Another website which called our attention was "Women of the Century". The website structure was very well organized with clear instructions with all steps and resources easily available. This feature makes it easy both for teachers and students to reach their goals.

Resources by skills

On what concerns eleventh session,  we explored the BBC Education website and we realized there are great materials on it to use in the classroom. Among these, we selected a group of activities based on an online soap opera and we chose a worksheet on missing phrases which the students were supposed to fill in with the suitable sentences and then listen to the episode to check their work. We are sure this kind of tasks is extremely useful and enjoyable for students.
As for reading skills, we chose in All Books Free a e-book about animals where students have the opportunity of listening as they are reading the text. This way, they can explore vocabulary related to the theme.

Encyclopediae

On Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, on Civil Rights Movement and The Suffragettes, we came across their definition, history and origins. We found it interesting the fact that there are links somehow related to these subjects.
On Wikipedia, we came to the conclusion that both on Civil Rights Movement and The Suffraggettes, these subjects are approached on the same way as on Encyclopaedia Britannica Online.
Finally, Encyclopedia-Online Dictionary, both on Civil Rights Movement and The Suffragettes, comparing with the two previous encyclopedias, presents the same tools and similar general characteristics, however with more detailed texts on these subjects.

Meeting Points

Dave's ESL Café is free and it doesn't require any subscripition. The activities available for students are a bit boring and repetitive.
For teachers, it has a link "Idea Cookbook" which turned out to be the only interesting thing, presenting teaching ideas.
edHelper.com is not free and it requires subscription. We tried to do a word search and we found out that it requires subscription. As a result, we weren't able to fully explore this website.
edna.edu.au is free and it requires no subscription. It's a kind of directory as it leads us to other links where we can get various information. As an information source, we consider it rather useful to do school projects, although it doesn't offer any pratical exercises.
Education world is free and it doesn't require any subscription. It gives us the possibility of doing interactive activities and these are printable. These activities are extremely varied, for instance  "the coloring calendar" which we tried to do.
enchanted learning.com requires subscription. However, some activities we went through are printable.

Mass Media Hands-on

After analysing the news on the royal wedding in Britain, we came to the conclusion that the american newspapers (Newsweek and NPR) have the news shown on the homepage. Both have a critical approach on this topic without giving it much importance, while the British BBC and The Times deal with this matter in a more serious way, giving much more details about the ceremony. With the exception of The Times, they don't focus much on relevant pictures although all of them are different and so are their captions. None of the four newspapers make use of direct speech and the stories have different lenghts and so are their beginnings. The facts reported on the homepages are not the same as they emphasize diffrerent aspects of the news.

Oxford University Press

After analysing Oxford University Press, we came to the conclusion that it's free even though it requires a free registration to use some resources. Other resources are available even without any registration, for example "Natural Grammar Online". It provides grammar, listening and writing exercises, including the final score on each of them. It's possible to use this website with students as we found it rather apealling and motivating for them.

On which concerns to Encyclopedias, we selected "Kids Encyclopedia" After analysing this encyclopedia, we noticed it's not totally free as it requires a paid subscription to have access to further information, that is, it shows parts of each information or activity and it asks for a paid subscripion to have access to the rest of it.However, it gives a free 30-day-trial.
It only offers printable webquizzes, e.g. "The American Civil War". Otherwise, in order to do them online, we must have a paid subscripition.
We experienced some difficulty when exploring this website for it keeps continuously changing its main page.

The Phrase Finder Dictionary

Through this dictionary we were able to find the meaning of the following idiomatic phrases:
"Loose one's MARBLES":
"Let the CAT out of the BAG"
"Live in the FAST lane"
"Be off one's ROCKER", *
"FLIP WIG"
 "Burn the CANDLE at both ENDS"

**As we couldn't find the meaning of this expression in "The Phrase Finder Dictionary", we found it in "The Free Dictionary".N

"Work with nursery rhymes"

When going through nursery rhymes, we found out interesting rhyming exercises for ESL students. Besides a large variety of nursery rhymes, we also noticed that this website includes a rather interesting  explanation about the lyrics, history and origins of each nursery rhyme, ilustrated with symbols. Among them we have decided to include this one as an example:

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,What a beautiful Pussy you *, you *, you are,What a beautiful Pussy you are."
Pussy said to the Owl "You elegant fowl,How charmingly sweet you sing.
O let us be married, too long we have tarried;But what shall we do for a ring

 They sailed away, for a year and a  day,

             To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
             And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood            With a ring at the end of his *, his *, his nose,
            With a ring at the end of his nose.            "Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?"
             Said the Piggy, "I will"
            So they took it away, and were married next day            By the Turkey who lives on the _hill.            They dined on mince, and slices of quince,            Which they ate with a runcible spoon.
            And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand.           They danced by the light of the *, the *, the moon,            They danced by the light of the moon.

Macmillan Dictionary

Macmillan Dictionary is free and it doesn't require any subscripition in order to be fully used. In terms of resources available, we can access "Language Resources", "Pronunciation" (through listening and phonetic transcription), "Clear Definitions", "Red Words and Stars", "Thesaurus", "New Words", "Real Examples" among others. It should be highlighed the fact that it in "Real Examples" section, it provides rather clear explanations on how to use a word in a very specific context of grammar structure, eg the collocation of an adverb in a sentence.

Oxford dictionary

Although the first impact isn't very actractive, it doesn't require any subscription, it offers free english resources, including puzzles, games, word of the day, which can only be photocopied. Unfortunately, the listening practise is not available. In a specific section "Better writing", there is a wide range of grammar, spelling, punctuation, practical writing, improving english and abreviattion tasks. It's only available the English language dictionary. The activity we chose was Headword hunt, which turned out to be very boring.

Cambridge dictionary online

Cambridge Dictionary is totally free, it has got five types of dictionaries ("Advanced Learner's", "Learner's", "American English", "Idioms" and "Phrasal Verbs"), translation, how to pronounciate (both British and American pronounciation), word/image ("picture of the day"), semantic, network, phonetic transcription and thematic general words.
It also offers a wide variety of grammar exercises to be done online, including the final scores and solutions. The list of resources is available from the home page. These resources are focused on listening, reading and writing.
After having gone through an exercise for elementary level, aimed at students aged 12-14, having in mind to test the students' ability dealing with elementary grammar structures, we came to the conclusion that, without being a boring task, it's rather useful for students to practise on dealing with the same topic in several different ways.