Korean Videos, Anime Reviews, and a geography game!

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

Many of the good websites for teaching have already been included on this forum. I kept finding a website that I liked only to see that a review had already been posted! With this in mind, I decided to step out of the box and review three less academic websites that I have found interesting or useful in my time of studying SE Asia.
1. The Korean Film Archive on Youtube. (http://www.youtube.com/user/KoreanFilm)
This channel contains hundreds of old Korean movies that you can view for free! I used this channel to watch an old Korean Movie - the movies definitely take some getting used to! There are generally English subtitles for every film and you can filter through some of the bad ones by watching the most popular and reading the user comments on the website. USER BEWARE: These films are unrated and should always be previewed before being shown in a classroom. There is some nudity and other objectionable material in them.
2. Anime Planet (http://www.anime-planet.com/)
Not all anime review websites are created equal. I found this out the hard way when I was searching for some anime to watch for my movie review. Anime Planet has some useful features for teachers who are looking to teach anime or manga in their classrooms. First, Anime Planet is one of the only websites with a search feature. This makes finding a specific film much easier on Anime Planet than many of the other anime review websites on the web.
Anime Planet is also unique in its ability to sort movies by different tags. Using this feature I was able to find "Rurouni Kenshin", a highly reviewed movie that takes place in the feudal time period. Good luck doing this with other anime review websites! Overall, Anime Planet is a great website for a teacher that doesn't know exactly what movie they are looking for, but wants to narrow the vast encyclopedia of anime and manga material into a handful of movies that will serve the purpose of their class.
3. GeoGuessr (http://geoguessr.com/) (http://geosettr.com)
This may be the only review with a playable game at the end! Geoguessr is an addictive game where you are placed at random locations in Google street view. You have to guess your location based on the surroundings (you can only move around and zoom). The best (and most addicting) part? The closer your guess is to the actual location on the map, the more points you get!
This website really becomes useful for teachers when they use the Geoguessr's companion website, Geosettr. Geosettr allows a user to create custom locations for the game and email/share a link for their custom game to anyone they want! I guarantee that students will have fun with a quiz in this form. They can even challenge their friends to make it even more competitive!
There are a couple of limitations of using Geoguessr for studying SE Asia, however. First, Japan is really the only country that is extensively available on Google street view. Both Korea and China have a couple of locations available, but the resources are limited. Also, the company could make it a lot easier to find landmarks on Geosettr. The Geosettr maker is basically a stripped down feature of Google maps with no search feature. I had to search for my locations in Google maps and then manually locate each location in Geoguessr. Other than that, however, the website was great! Feel free to play a Japanese challenge that I made. Just click on the link below!
http://tinyurl.com/stevegeojapan1
edited by sthroop on 8/26/2013

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