The Internet TESL Journal: For Teachers of English as a Second Language is a comprehensive resource for any teacher of ESOL. On this website, you will find articles, research papers, lesson plans, classroom handouts, teaching ideas, links, and more to help you teach English. This website is updated monthly, so be sure to check back every month. To find out more, go to: http://iteslj.org.

Activities for ESL Students is a project of the Internet TESL Journal. The website includes quizzes, tests, exercises, and puzzles to help your students learn English. To see more, go to: http://a4esl.org.

The Internet Picture Dictionary is a completely free, online, multilingual picture dictionary designed especially for ESL students and beginning English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian language learners of all ages. To begin using it, go to: www.pdictionary.com.

Colorful Clotheslines is a short online activity for beginning English learners. It helps students learn the names of colors, patterns, and common clothing items. To view, go to: http://hub1.worlded.org/docs/clothing/index.html.

Riverweb is a website that focuses on the Mississippi River system. Learners can learn about the ecosystems that surround rivers, as well as ways to protect our river systems. To visit this site, go to: www.riverwebmuseums.org.

What tree is it? Help your students learn about the trees all around them. The site allows you to identify trees by their leaves or fruit or to look them up by name. To learn more, go to: www.oplin.org/tree.

The History Place will give you insight into our nation's history, along with the history of other nations as it impacted the U.S. To see all this site has to offer, go to: www.historyplace.com.

Endangered Earth's purpose is to put a face on extinction. Through images, video, and text, the Endangered Earth websites work to provide up-to-date and compelling content that reflects the tragic situation faced by many species, such as the Siberian tiger, the black rhino, and the Bornean sun bear. To view the site, go to: www.endangeredearth.com.

Discovering Lewis & Clark® Conceived in 1993, and online since 1998, Discovering Lewis & Clark® is a hyperhistory in progress. It is enhanced by at least one new interpretive episode each month, employing a variety of multimedia techniques. It focuses on issues, values, and visions relating to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, its preludes, and its aftermath up to the present time. To learn more, go to: www.lewis-clark.org.

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives This is a National Science Foundation supported project that began in 1999 to develop a library of uniquely interactive, web-based virtual manipulatives or concept tutorials, mostly in the form of Java applets, for mathematics instruction (K-12 emphasis). Learning and understanding mathematics, at every level, requires student engagement. Mathematics is not, as has been said, a spectator sport. Too much of current instruction fails to actively involve students. One way to address the problem is through the use of manipulatives, physical objects that help students visualize relationships and applications. We can now use computers to create virtual learning environments to address the same goals. To begin using this award-winning site, go to: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html.

Looking for a way to teach science? Check out the Jefferson Lab website. This site includes worksheets, activities, and lessons for teaching science concepts. To see what's available, go to: http://education.jlab.org.

Women and HerStory Want to make sure that your students learn about influential (and even everyday) women in history? Topics covered are the women's suffrage movement, women's work during WWII, and biographies of women such as Fannie Farmer and Jane Addams. Check out Her Story, part of the Learning Page website from the Library of Congress at: http://memory.loc.gov/learn/community/cc_herstory.php.

Promising Practices for Civics Education This collection of teachers' writings documents the work of programs that were funded by the Massachusetts Department of Education to include civic participation activities in the ESOL classroom. The group includes programs that vary in size, schedules, and approaches to incorporating civics into instruction. Some weave civics into their regular ESOL coursework; some have set aside separate class time to focus on civic participation; and others have approached the civic participation work as a program-wide effort. This broadly diverse set of programs came together to identify the promising practices that they thought were worth sharing with the field and to write up illustrations of their application. To view these promising practices, go to: www.nelrc.org/cpcc/cepg/index.htm.

16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign originating from the first Women's Global Leadership Institute sponsored by the Center for Women's Global Leadership in 1991. Participants chose the dates, November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women and December 10, International Human Rights Day-- in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a violation of human rights. You can take part in an online discussion list regarding this campaign, as well as order a free copy of the Take Action Kit, which includes suggested activities. To learn more, go to: www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/16days/home.html.

AwesomeStories has some new resources available! AwesomeStories is available free to educators. Here are some of the stories that may interest you and your students. There are many, many more included on the site.

• "Jim Crow" Laws
  • Learn about the laws that Rosa Parks fought with her refusal to give up her seat on a bus.
    
    
• "Vertical Limit: A Fight to Survive K2"
  • Learn about K2 and the Kashmir region, site of the recent devastating earthquake.
    
    
• "Galveston: The Deadliest Hurricane"
  • Learn about the devastating hurricane that hit Galveston, TX in 1900 as you talk about the deadly impact of Hurricane Katrina.
    
    
• "The Star-Spangled Banner: The Story of America's National Anthem"
  • Find out how this song got to be our national anthem.

Adventures in Assessment is an annual volume that provides a forum for adult literacy practitioners to critically reflect upon a range of issues and experiences pertaining to alternative assessment. Adventures in Assessment is published by System for Adult Basic Education Support (SABES) in Massachusetts. To view these volumes, go to: http://literacy.kent.edu/Midwest/assessment/assess_adventures.html.

The AALPD Professional Development Registry is now available. The Professional Development Registry is a way for professional developers to share tools for professional development: facilitator guides, workshop agendas and outlines, and manuals that have been created for the professional development of adult literacy, Adult Basic Education (ABE), Adult Secondary Education (ASE), and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers and other practitioners. The purpose of the PD Registry is to share actual tools that professional developers can download and use to deliver training; it is not for posting descriptions of trainings or posting guides for teachers or tutors. To view what's currently available, go to: www.aalpd.org/pdregistry/index.html.

The Literacy Audit Kit developed by Literacy Alberta enables you to audit your organization for its effectiveness in reaching those with low literacy skills. It is available to non-profit organizations for a reduced rate. To learn more, go to: www.literacy-alberta.ca/resource/auditkit/audktpg1.htm.

Atomic Learning is available for a limited time Atomic Learning offers a library of over 15,000 tutorials on over 85 software applications from well-known publishers including Apple, Adobe, Macromedia, Microsoft, Inspiration, and many more. These online tutorials are available 24/7 with Internet access. To view the full list of tutorials available, go to: www.atomiclearning.com. You may access the site through December 1, 2005 using the username vste and password vste.

Global Learning offers a free opportunity to learn how to use common software applications, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, as well as just learning your way around the Internet. To see what else is offered, go to: www.gcflearnfree.org/Tutorials/.

Script-O Quiz Maker can help you develop easy-to-use quizzes that are always available to your students online. To learn more, go to: www.readingmatrix.com/quizmaker/index.php.

E-Square was developed for adult literacy students in the greater Boston area, but the information included there can be helpful to adult literacy students anywhere. Particularly useful is the information on purchasing a computer. To learn more, go to: http://alri.org/esquare/index.html and click on Computer Center. Also don't forget to browse the other centers along with E2 and E3.

Do your students get frustrated while typing because they mistype? Microsoft's FilterKeys may help. FilterKeys is an accessibility option that adjusts the keyboard response so that inadvertently repeated keystrokes are ignored. Using FilterKeys, you can also slow the rate at which a key repeats when you hold it down. To find out how to access FilterKeys, go to: www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsxp/filterkeys.aspx.