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Anonymous.
Anonymoushttp://www.analects.org/
The analects of Confucius. Check it out and judge for yourself.
AnonymousThis is another great site that provides general information on the different periods in Korean History that is very easy for middle school students to acess and understand. It would make another great resource for any teacher doing a unit on Korea and asking the students to do some research on the different time periods.
AnonymousI found a very neat website that offers a collection of Korean Art. Each piece is titled for each browsing and when you see a piece of interest you just click on it and a picture of the piece will pop up with a description, the artist, the time period, and the location of the piece. A very nice resource for those who are interested in Korean Art.
AnonymousWebsite: http://www.ikebanahq.org
Title: Ikebana International
This website is all about Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging. I first heard about the site when I visited the "Living Flowers" exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo (which I highly recommend- the exhibit id there through September 7). The site is easy to navigate, with tabs on the main page that are well place and organize the different topics on the page well. You can read about the definition and history of ikebana, view a glossary of terms related to the art form (hana=flowers(s)!), read descriptions of the materials used, explore the differences in the various schools of ikebana, view events related to ikebana, and get more information about it and the organization.
I am hoping to use it as a resource with my seventh grade history students. During our Japan and South East Asia unit, I have my students explore different topics of Japanese history and culture through "centers" in small groups. I feel that what I have learned about ikebana will help me develop another piece of this learning experience. This website is a perfect overview, with a few pictures to go along with each of the different schools of the art form. This will allow students to explore the meaning and history of flower arranging in Japan, create an arrangement of their own, and connect the past to how it is still an evolving art form today.
AnonymousWebsite: http://www.uni.edu/becker/chinese2.html
Title: Best Chinese Websites
Well, I don't necessarily agree that they are all the "best" Chinese websites, but this website is a good collection of websites about China, and easy to navigate. There is definitely too much advertising and too many flashy things on it, but it's organized into topics with lists of website titles that are linked, including Chinese Grammar, Chinese History and Culture, Taiwan sites, Chinese Cuisine, Visit China, and others. It's a good jumoing off point for teachers doing background research or trying to find sites for students to use. It would also be a good sites to direct students to in order to limit the amount of sites they would get by just doing general google searches, which can be extremely overwhelming (and sometimes dangerous!).
AnonymousWebsite: http://www.ess.uci.edu/~oliver/silk.html
Title: The Silk Road
Although this site is a bit wordy and would be overwhelming to my middle school students without proper guidance and support, it still proved a fantastic history of this important trade route. What I like about it is that it gives a historical view from different points of view- from China, different points on the west end of the routes, and even the Mongolian influence. It goes from the very beginnings of the trade routes through what is happening with the old routes in modern times. I have to say that my favorite piece is definitely the page of pictures, with cations under them explaining where the picture was taken, where on the Silk Road it was, and even how the lasting cultural influences of the Silk Road can be seen there today. I will use this portion of the site with my students for sure, and I may map these and other images to show- rather than just tell- my students about where the Silk Road went.
AnonymousWebsite: http://www.chinahighlights.com/silkroad/
Title: China Highlights: The Silk Road
I stumbled upon this one....and I am so glad that I did! This is obviously a travel and tourism of China website, but it provides information, history, travel tips, maps, and- the most exciting part for me!- lots of pictures! It covers many different places and topics in China, so do check out the home page if you want more general info and pics, but I was searching for information and images of the Silk Road specifically, so that is what this link will take you to.
I will definitely be using this site with students. Its a great one to project on the LCD for the whole class to take a virtual tour of the Silk Road through these images, but it is also easy enough to navigate so that students can use it as a source for research and images, and they can examine the map of the silk road and the corresponding pictures on their own as well.
AnonymousI apologize for shameless commerce, but it's really hard to find good bookstores this side of Monterey Park. There was a store in Westwood called Eastwind, but they closed. There is another Eastwind books in San Francisco that has lots of stuff about Chinese language, there is also a store in Berkeley with the same name. However, the one I like the best is Chinabooks.com. They have lots of stuff about Chinese culture in general, including recipes or art. If you are looking for some fun stuff to show your students, you might find it on their website. It also has tons of books, even modern fiction in English.
AnonymousIf you ever have a piece of actual Chinese text and would like to see what it says, I would like to recommend http://www.clavisinica.com/duwen.html. Paste the text and get it translated. It's a java applet. Now if you want actual Chinese texts you can go to http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dporter/sampler/sampler.html to find something that looks interesting. Copy and paste a chunk and see what the individual characters mean and then try to translate them. Chinese, one could say, has little grammar. Just putting the characters together should give you the sense of a sentence. The applet will also give you the pinyin pronunciation. You might give a few students a chunk of text and ask them to come up with their own translation. You could do a search on "chengyu" (start with the explanation on wikipedia). These are four character idioms that are very commonly used, hard to translate and obscure, but graphic and fun at the same time.
AnonymousSuppose you wanted to prepare a handout for your students and suppose you wanted to include Chinese characters, it's really not too difficult to install the Chinese language pack for Microsoft Word. In that case you can just switch between English and Chinese input. Download the Chinese Simplified or Traditional IME from the Microsoft website: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/CD010224901033.aspx. Microsoft also has a "how to" for IME at http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/user/IME_Paper.mspx. If you search Chinese input on google you will find other alternatives. I have no experience with Macs but there are options there also. I just noticed that google in China has an input method, but I haven't tried it. I have used the MS Word IME and I can mix Pinyin, Chinese Characters Simplified and Traditional and English Text in the same document.
AnonymousIf you have time to waste or if you want to give your students mini projects, one of the things I think is most fun about Chinese characters is their etymology. Chinese characters usually have at least two components, a phonetic and a semantic one. The different pieces have different meanings that sometimes can tell an interesting story. To find out about these stories, I go to a Chinese etymology dictionary. You can search or just go to http://zhongwen.com/. If you search on an English word it will give you a list and your word will appear on the list. Click on the word and it will break it down into the components. For example if you type "home" in English, it will give you "jia" and the components are roof over pig, literally the character for roof over the character for pig. So a pig under a roof is a home. How old is that? What kind of world or economy? I think it's lots of fun and students can, and language learners do, and Chinese lexicographers have, make up stories explaining how these character components work together.
AnonymousIt's very easy to keep track of breaking stories on the BBC website, http://news.bbc.co.uk/. On the left you can select which region you are interested in, for example South Asia (of course) or Asia-Pacific. Today, there are stories about Burma, the Taiwan storm death toll, the moonies founder hurt in crash. Of course you can print any story. The reason I recommend this site is that you can look at stories relating to Asia instead of all the stuff about stars, sports, or the US. I also regularly check the Guardian and CNN sites. You can often get a video. So I showed my class the new Beijing Airport or the Olympic Torch business when that was in the news. It helps them to understand the current events. Usually the videos are only a few minutes long.
AnonymousWebsite: http://www.thebeijingguide.com/great_wall_of_china/index.html
Title: Virtual Visit to the Great Wall
This website provides a 360 degree virtual visit of the Great Wall. This would be fantastic to ise in the classroom as a way to show kids what the wall looks like now, where parts of the wall are located, and how it seems to go on forever. Projecting it on the screen with an LCD will help students feel as though they are there, too...it would be a great way to introduce a writing prompt geared around the building of the wall or other topics related to it.
(Sorry, the link button does not seem to be working for this one...)
AnonymousWebsite: http://www.askasia.org/students/features/chinagame/
Title: Ask Asia.org for students- China Game
This entire website, AskAsia.org, has wonderful many wonderful resources for kids, students, and teachers. The kids and students portions are easy to navigate and provide information, images, and maps as well as fun activities such as learning how to say words in other languages (with audio clips!).
This particular link I have provided will take you to a cute interactive game about China for kids to play. Hosted by a dragon who explains things along the way, kids answer multiple choice questions about China (lots of geography) in order to move them to the 14 different Chinese cities on a map. In the end, you can click on each of the cities to see pictures and read more about them. This would be a great game for students who are finished early with an activity in class or for students to play at home as well. For those who are interested, there is also a link to buy the board game that it is based on.
AnonymousA pretty decent website that I found is http://www.international.ucla.edu/eas/Resource.htm.
This website is very useful because it is all about educational resources having to do with East Asia.
Such links include: Asia in the K-12 Curriculum, K-12 Curriculum materials on Asia, Asia via the Web, Educational films in Asia.
The site is relatively simple to navigate. If you are looking to increase your inventory on East Asia teaching materials then this is an excellent site.