pre-2011 web resources

[Anonymous]

This is a great resource to enlarge your classroom library.

Chinese Culture Books
Silk Road Press is a unique bookstore that offers a complete line of books that can satisfy all your Chinese language and culture learning needs. Order online. Competitive prices.
http://www.silkroadpress.com

[Anonymous]

For one of my website reviews, I definitely wanted to include a Think Quest site I found when making my lesson/web page for class.

It is part of the Oracle Education Foundation Library, and I loved the materials I found there on Japan. The part of the Library I like especially for my purposes (7th grade world history) is on the Castles of Japan.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C001119/parse.php3

I included it in my lesson as a tool for my students to gather some of the background information I wanted them to have on Warrior Japan. They are also going to take a little quiz available at the site after they go through the information pages I selected for them.

There is a ton of great information, also a glossary and photo section.

I really liked the "History" pages, they gave very nice, concise overviews of under the headings :
Early History
The Kamakura Period
The Muromachi Period
The Azuchi-Momoyama Period
The Edo Period
The Meiji Period & Beyond .
Also, if students go to the "Library" they can search many more sites for any topic they wish. I really like this one, check it out.

[Anonymous]

Another website I would like to mention here belongs to the Matshutia Center for Electronic Learning which is located on Pacific University's campus in Oregon. The page for their Asia Studies is

http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/home/as.html

I have run into their site many times as a teacher as they have many K-12 Teacher resources, but I found Asia materials that I incorporated into my web based lesson plan on Japan. There is good background material on Samurai, the Bushido creed and Bushido today.

This will help me give students another source for content (one of my major 7th grade standards on Japan) and it is definitely enjoyable for them to use the computers rather than simply reading through their textbooks

The site also has nice links to other related topics, including the Tea Ceremony, Zen Buddhism, and Japanese Gardens.

I do not have enough computers to have students use sources like these or do computer based lessons in my own room (2 computers to about 32 students) but we have a nice computer lab.

The gentleman who runs our lab is happy to prepare for my use of web based lessons by putting the specific links I intend to use onto the computer stations prior to my reserved time. That way I don't have students wandering too far afield.

[Anonymous]

Asian American Village: Where Opportunities, Diversity, and Communities Connect

http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/asian/village_asian_american.asp

This is a general website that I found designed about Asian American culture and issues. According to the website, it was originally founded as IMDiversity.com by tTHE BLACK COLLEGIAN magazine to help African Americans find career and job information. Since 1970, the website has grown to include an Asian American Village, Hispanic American Village, Native American Village, Women's Village, and a Minorities Global Village. The Asian American site, as well as the others, provides articles and information organized by top features, views, communities, and business. There is also information of jobs .

The thing I like about this website is that it contains many high interest articles about Asian American popular culture, as well as current events. Also, there are local as well as global topics discussed. For example, there is an article about Asian Americans starting a letter writing campaign to an Ohio radio station for making offensive remarks. There are movie and book reviews. There is even an article about Asian Americans' perspectives on the immigration protests. I think this would be a great resource for teachers looking for current high interest articles, and students would like it as a way of keeping up on issues affecting several cultures. It might be a good exercise for comparing different cultural perspectives on several issues.

[Anonymous]

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/translations/index.htm

Since Sam Yamashita's lecture this semester, I've become very interested in Japanese poetry. From what I've learned, Kenneth Rexroth worked to translate many Japanese and Chinese poems into English. The above website, called The Bureau of Public Secrets, provides many of these translations online. Here is an index of the poems included at this site:

Chinese Translations

Men Poets

Su Wu
Wang Wei
Tu Fu (6)
Han Yu
Mei Yao Ch’en
Su Tung P’o
Kao Chi

Women Poets

Ts’ai Yen
Li Ch’ing-chao
Kuan Tao-shêng
Huang O
Sun Yün-feng
Ch’iu Chin
Hsiung Hung

Translations from Japanese

Men Poets of the Classic Era (ca. 700-1200)
Shami Mansei
Hitomaro
Akahito
Narihira
Ki no Tsurayuki
Ônakatomi no Yoshinobu
Saigyô
Anonymous

Women Poets of the Classic Era
Ono no Komachi
Lady Ukon
Sei Shônagon
Murasaki Shikibu
Izumi Shikibu
Lady Suwo
Yokobue

Haiku Poets (ca. 1650-1900)
Bashô
Kikaku
Issa
Shiki

Anonymous Geisha Songs

Modern Women Poets

Yosano Akiko
Fukao Sumako
Ibaragi Noriko
Shiraishi Kazuko

I liked finding this site, as I plan to teach about poetry of these periods, and it is nice to have such easy access to a variety of poems in one place. The only problem is that there is a poem that is quite racy and might offend some students (or just be downright uncomfortable to have your students find) by Kazuko at the very end in the Modern Women Poets section. So, it may be a better resource for teachers. Many of the poems deal with love, which seems to be the favorite topic for poems of my students, and the passion expressed in some of these poems is unparalleled. I also found it quite amusing that Rexroth published some "translations" from a poet called Marichiko, who he said was a Japanese woman, but, in reality, he wrote the poems himself using this persona. They're quite good and do have much of the same flavor as their authentic counterparts.

[Anonymous]

British Museum (China)

I love using the British Museum websites. They are all arranged similarly, and I use them for multiple sections of my 6th grade World History class. The China one is particularly useful. First of all, all sections have an introduction, a story/information, and explore section, and then a challenge. The explore section sometimes has diagrams and maps that are pretty interactive, taking you through different parts of, say, a tomb in Ancient China and what would be included. The challenge is similar to a game, and the students enjoy the set up.

There are areas that are directly related to the standards, and you could even have kids play on the site to learn about this things, perhaps as an introduction or review before a test if you have access to a computer lab that has computers that can work with Flash. The geography section is wonderful, which is great because this can be a difficult section to teach the students.

The tombs section is very interesting, and tells a little bit about ancient Chinese religion. The writing section is also nice because it includes a Bronze Vessel like those used to honor their ancestors.

Then, to top it all off, there is the "Staff Room", which has different ideas for lesson plans, some of which even include handouts. I like to take the ideas and modify them to fit my personality and the needs of my students.

The only negative things about this site are the fact that it uses flash, so some of the older computers will be really slow working on it, and that when you click on a section, it comes to a page that doesn't say anything, just has a picture, and you have to know to click the picture to proceed. All in all, these are usually minor issues (unless you have dinosaur computers at your school).

I highly recommend using this website to do research or to have your students explore themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anybody out there who teaches Samurai Japan might be able to make use of a site I found called "Samurai Archives" - the address of their homepage is

http://www.samurai-archives.com/index.html

This site has many features I plan to use with my students. I especially like the biographies of famous Samurai and famous Women. There

There are also other resources that I think would benefit teachers, such as Featured Articles and Discussion Forums. I really like this site and am looking forward to seeing my students use it.

[Anonymous]

Asia for Educators is an excellent website I recently visited that I think is very helpful for teachers. It has information arranged by subject area, file type (lesson plans, maps, timelines to name a few) along with several featured units and faculty guides by time period. They also have a database of teaching materials that can be ordered, a Web Course for teachers on East Asia and a workbook on teaching about China

The main address is http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/

The site is really beautifully done, every single page I went to was great. There are some fabulous multimedia units available on China and Japan. I think this site will be a wonderful resource for myself and I also expect to have students use it directly.

[Anonymous]

http://www.aaww.org/index.html

At first I was really excited to find this website. As a former member of the University of Iowa's Undergraduate Writers Workshop in poetry, I was interested to learn of a writing workshop specifically for Asians in New York City. As far as I know, this seems to be the only formal writers workshop designed specifically for an ethnic group. Anyone can become a member, although that discount on the writing classes probably wouldn't do much good here in L.A. However, what I found that this site could be most valuable as a resource for students and teachers in finding authors and works by contemporary Asian American writers. There is a great link for books that lists many anthologies and works by single authors that could be of good use in the classroom. The workshop also offers awards to which any Asian American writer can apply. It would be great if this website was expanded a bit to give more individualized information about the authors and their works, but the best thing about this site is that you can download a pdf of Voices Wandered which would be excellent to use since the writing is from Asian American youth. Here is the description from the website:

http://www.aaww.org/books_anthologies.html
Voices Wandered: An Anthology of Poetry and Art by Asian American Youth
Edited by Dianna Ng, Nisha Mirani, Karina Liu and Helen Lee

The first of its kind, Voices Wandered is a collection of poetry and artwork written, compiled and edited entirely by Asian American youth. This anthology showcases the fresh, emerging voices of Asian American youth of all backgrounds and interests from across the country, and captures an array of experiences of adolescence, from family relationships to first loves to the communities in which they live. The work in this anthology chronicles the exploration of identity and political beliefs, childhood memories, the examination of communication, whimsical musings, and many other enduring qualities of adolescence.

Featuring poetry by: Yao Bian, Wendy Cheung, Marika Hashimoto, Iimay Ho, Alexandra Kleeman, Lianna Sachiyo Kushi, Daniel Lau, Aislinn Luk, Angela Makabali, Suneela Mubayi, PakSoo Na/Sydney Hoover, Deborah Oh, Suriya Schmidt, Lindsay Taylor, Namita Thakker, Yun Wei and Jennifer Yoo.

Featuring artwork by: Binh Dao, Renee Delosh, Jimmy Dinh, Loan Ho, Claire Min, Imran Shafi, Georgianna Joy Spilman

[Anonymous]

chinadaily.com
Awsome site with tons of info on current events as well as much more.
Great site to gather information on all of the following topics.

China Briefing
China is one of the biggest countries in the world. It has an area of about 9.6 million square kilometers which comprises about 6.5 per cent of the world total land area. Its population of more than one billion accounts for 23 per cent of the world's population.

China Summary China Eating
China History China Administrative Division
China Agriculture China Finance and Taxation

Discount China Hotels
Beijing Hotels Shanghai Hotels Hongkong Hotels Xian Hotels Guangzhou Hotels Shenzhen Hotels

China Travel
Travel China is a life time experience and a better way to understand China. Only when you are there, you may start to appreciate and understand what a difference to live in a nation with a population of 1.2 billion.

China Tourism Overview China Tour Handbook
China Destination Guides

China Market
The size of the Chinese economy is likely to climb, in world rankings, from its current position as the sixth largest to the second largest by 2030.

China Industry Reports Investment in China
China Business Alerts China Real Estate
WTO and China

China Business
There are a multitude of trade and investment opportunities for exporters in the China market.

China Business Culture Guide
Doing Business in China
China Business Tips

China Economy
Although China is still a developing country with a relatively low per capita income, it has experienced tremendous economic growth since the late 1970s.

Guide to China's Economy
Economic Growth in the PRC
Marketization of China's Economy
The Course of Economic Development
The Socialist Market Economy

China Culture
A great resource on Chinese Culture - from Chinese arts to calligraphy, architecture and poetry, to medicine, philosophy and religion. A wealth of information is available on this section that can start you on your journey of learning about China.

China Culture Essentials Arts & Crafts
Clothing Festivals
Performing Arts Food & Drink
Script & Calligraphy Folk Custom
Literature Architecture
[Edit by="aaguilar on Jul 30, 9:12:45 AM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

http://www.asianart.com

The on-line journal for the study and exhibition of the arts of Asia.

Great site to have students explore Asian art. May want to compare and contrast to other civilizations or look for patterns associated with society's values and morals.

[Anonymous]

http://www.cambodia.org

Type in the SEARCH word silk and it gives you a great site to use with your students showing the silkmaking process.

Cambodia.org is the Cambodian Information Center (CIC), a web-based entity.
The main purpose for CIC is to provide relevant and informative information about Cambodia and its people. It also acts as a communication medium through its online discussion groups and provides links to most recent and current news and events relating to Cambodia.

[Anonymous]

west-meet-east.com

Check out the section on alternative medicine. By the way. Next time you have a sore throat try the Six Spirit Pill. It is amazing. Beats out Chloraseptic any day.

Lots of information and history on Chinese medicicine.

This is also a great site to use with students to gather info on the following topics:

Alternative Treatment
Arts & Crafts
Business
Chinese Culture
Education
Food
Manufacturers
Martial Arts
Travel[Edit by="aaguilar on Jul 30, 9:39:21 AM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Chinese Technology Thinkquest

Webquests can be a great way to have your students do research. They don't mind research when it's on the computer, particularly the internet. I found this website by chance while looking at another that linked to it. While it is not the most exciting website, it does have a plethora of information.

It might be fun to have the students write a mini report and give them this resource as a guide. Thier report could also include other websites as resources. Students definitely need practice siting their sources too, and this is a good opportunity for that. I would suggest you make sure to assert that students must use their own words, as they tend to copy and paste off the internet and just submit that. This is probably a good place to work on that as well.

The information is interesting, but I must admit that in some places the wording is too complicated for regular Middle School students, it would be frustrating to understand for them in some places. In others, it has typos, which are assumably there due to a difference in native language.

This site does not have it's own bibliography, however, which is unfortunate. I think that the site might be best used with honor students, magnet students, or avid students in the seventh grade. They would enjoy the information, and have higher vocabularies so it would be less likely to frustrate them. Or of course, it could be used by a teacher doing some research before teaching the subject. I would, however, make sure it wasn't the only source.

The topics it covers is Chinese technology in the following categories: Warfare, Transportation, Agriculture, Engineering, Domestic & Industrial, Mathematics, Physics, and Nature Discovery (biology & astronomy).
[Edit by="jreynolds on Jul 30, 11:13:41 AM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Silk Road Foundation

This website is amazing! It is a foundation devoted to monitoring research, exhibitions, publications, and events relating to the Silk Road. It has studies, Articles, Lectures, Information about Culture, Travel, Maps and a timeline with a Bibliography, links, and news about the Silk Road. This is a great site for teachers to do research. The information seems a little too advanced for the students, however, one can get a few different maps for teaching, as well as the history of Silk (including the Legend of Lady Hsi-Ling-Shih) and it is full of information devoted specifically to the Silk Road. The site is professional looking, has nice pictures, and there is even a free newsletter that you can sign up for. I highly recommend this site.

[Author]

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