I've discovered a Spanish Grammar website that I think is wonderful (www.colby.edu/~bknelson/exercises/). Basically, it is a website that has basic grammar exercises as well as songs, interviews and stories that incorporate reading, writing and listening into the site. It was interesting to go back and evaluate it on such a detailed level, using the Kathy Schrock template. Often, I think we take things at face value, when it is a very useful exercise to critically evaluate it based on important factors.
The technical and visual aspects of the site are excellent. It is easy to use, loads well, there are not "page not found" messages nor any major problems. The content is also wonderful. This is information that you could never get in a book, due to the multiple medias it uses at the same time. Not only is it teaching you spanish, new vocabulary and aspects of culture, but it does it without directly translating into English. For example, there is a song called "Ofrenda", which is all about the altars used in Oaxaca during the Day of the Dead celebration. The song is there (audio), along with the words. But the interesting part, is that the words that are difficult are highlighted and can be used as links. When you press on the word "trigo", a picture of "wheat" comes onto the screen, while the song is still playing. This way, they are still listening to the song, following along with the lyrics and understanding even the difficult vocabulary all at the same time. And they never break into English.
This page is the baby of Barbara Kuzkun Nelson, a professor of Spanish at Colby University. She has put it up on the internet for public use, and I am entirely confident that what she has put up there is correct, and valid.
The pedagogy of the page is also excellent. Any time you can teach in a variety of mediums at the same time, you are reaching kids at all different levels. It is educational as well as entertaining at the same time. There are many different links for each topic, so you don't only get the song activity, but backgrounds on the singers, pictures from Oaxaca as well as grammar exercises related to the song. It is a very thorough treatment of the topic and an admirable project for someone to have put together for free internet use.
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This is an interesting site. It seems to better support Spanish immersion as compared to other sites. Good point about how the site does things, like featuring multimedia, that a book would be unable to do.
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