The Endangered Languages Project: Supporting language preservation through technology and collaboration

Google has a new project it is a part of: The Endangered Languages Project: Supporting language preservation through technology and collaboration that is pretty cool. The Endangered Languages Project, is a website for people to find and share the most up-to-date and comprehensive information about endangered languages. It is a way to try to preserve over 3000 languages that are on the verge of becoming extinct. Preserving these languages, and the cultures that go with them, is an important project.

The project is working to make recordings of people speaking the languages, as well as documenting as much as possible about the languages. Through the site, people can upload and access research, advice, information, resources, manuscripts, videos, audio and more.

This is a great resource for our world, and also for teachers and students to use to learn about these languages and cultures, as well as contribute to the project.

Here's more about it: http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/

Language Immersion for Chrome - helps you learn a foreign language

Language Immersion for Chrome is an extension for the Chrome web browser that helps you learn a foreign language through immersion. It will switch certain words and phrases on websites you visit from English into your chosen language. You can get a more contextual and realistic experience of the language you are trying to learn.

There are 64 differently languages supported, there are different skill levels (novice to fluent), you can click on a translated word to switch it back to English, and you can roll your mouse over the word to hear it pronounced.

As it is still an experimental extension, Google warns that some translations won't be 100% accurate. However, that could actually help people learn the language as they check the translations.

This would be a great resource for anyone trying to learn a new language, including students in foreign language classes and ELL students. Since the words are part of the context of something else, students will be able to figure some out and see how they are used in language and not just an isolated vocabulary word.

It's free from the Google Play store: http://goo.gl/i3fGX


Here's a video that shows how it works






Related:

Google Chrome Web Browser revisited

Essential Apps and Installs for Windows, Chrome, Android
Have Chrome read any website to you (or your students)
Google Chrome now available on Android - the perfect combo