Link |
Description |
| Southeast Asia Community Resource Center | The center is used by educators, students, and community members across California to learn more about the backgrounds, languages and cultures of refugees and immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (Incl. Mien and Hmong). This site is a goldmine of information about the countries and cultures of Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, with a focus on the Hmong and Mien. The Context Magazines in PDF format are a hidden treasure of information about newcomers to classrooms. Some of the topics in recent issues are Global Learning Networks, Human Universals, Year of the Snake resources, and When Reading is not Reading (4 characteristics of English text that affect English learners' reading comprehension. The Links resources are especially useful. |
| Beautiful Patterns, Common Threads | Avi Black's site. Avi was a teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District who was given a sabbatical in 1998 (I was impressed that some school districts still give sabatticals) to travel through Southeast Asia. Avi has always been one of the leading advocates fo rmore fully including SEA studies into California's H-SS Framework. On this site he explores the theme of "tapestry of tapestries," eight different textile patterns, each from a different country in SEA " |
| Ask Asia | This is the home page for the AskAsia site. I debated whether to include only sites focusing on SEA in the top twenty, but the AskAsia web site has such a tremendous wealth of information about Asia including SEA I had to include it. This is a well designed site and has numerous documents advocating the teaching of Asia/Southeast Asia in the curriculum. |
| Northern Illinois University's SEA Interactive site | Interactive Learning Resources for Southeast Asian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. A particularly good site if your interested in learning more about Southeast Asian languages. This is the only site, and I repeat, only, that has credible information about Lao language. Well done. |
| Asia Experts Site | The AsiaExperts database provides access to information on specialists in Asian culture, arts, history, and society, while The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR)'s AccessAsia project provides access to information on specialists on contemporary Asian affairs and policy-relevant issues. If your students have a particular question concerning SEA, it would be worth checking through their database and having the student email the relevant experts. I would appreciate hearing back if the experts respond to students' questions. |
| Asia Today | The best and only site for the current days news on what's happening in Asia. This site is divided into the following categories: Top News Stories, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, AustralAsia, Business and Economics, Technology, Social Issues, Arts and Culture, Commentary, Magazine Articles. If you want you can provide your email address and get a daily email with links to all the stories. During the summer I found it was hit or miss if I received an email, but I could always go directly to the site if I wanted. |
| AsiaSource- SEAAsiaPROFILES | If you are looking for specific information about one of the ten SEA countries (not counting East Timor) this site will provide links to each country. |
| Centers and Associations for Southeast Asian Studies | If you're interested in learning more about Southeast Asia, checking out the different centers of Southeast Asia Studies at universities and colleges both in the United States and abroad and seeing what courses they offer, their outreach classes and resources for K-12 teachers, and links to other SEA sources are fascinating. |
| Curriculum Units for Southeast Asian Studies @ University of Hawaii at Manoa | University of Hawaii at Manoa's Center has one of the best collection of curriculum units on Southeast Asia and the countries of Southeast Asia for a very reasonable price. I am especially impressed with the their "workbook for high school classes" on Thailand: Land of Contrasts. Not overly academic, a good read with well-thought out questions, activities, debate topics and library tasks. A 242 page workbook for $10...a steal. I've ordered other units and find that they have a "home-made" feel, all in folders, not binders, but the price is right and they should stimulate teachers to extend and modify the units for their own classrooms and schools. |
| SEASSI Southeast Asia Summer Studies Institute |
The Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI) is a nine-week intensive language training program for undergraduate and graduate students and professionals. Instruction is offered in the following languages at the first, second and third year levels: Burmese, Hmong, Indonesian, Javanese, Khmer, Lao, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese. SEASSI was established in 1983 to provide quality intensive language instruction in at least eight of the major Southeast Asian languages at one location during the summer. SEASSI is an integral part of a nationwide network of language teaching faculty from the institutions that are members of the SEASSI Consortium: Arizona State Univ., Univ. of California-Berkeley, Univ. of California-Los Angeles, Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, Univ. of Hawaii, Univ. of Illinois-Champaign, Univ. of Michigan, Northern Illinois University, Ohio Univ., Univ. of Oregon, Univ. of Washington, Univ. of Wisconsin, and Yale I attended the 1998 SEASSI at the University of Oregon, and was one of only two students studying Hmong. Inonesian, Thai and Vietnamese are the most popular languages, but it's inspiring to be around so many graduate students seriously interested in SEA. |
| Education about Asia | The only journal of it's kind devoted to the K-12 community about teaching Asia. It comes out four times a year and although the articles focus more on China and Japan, Southeast Asia isn't left out and the quality of the writng and focus on K-12 teachers make it worth considering. |
| Multiple Country Southeast Asian WEB Sites | It's too easy to link to pages with other links and sometime it can be a never-ending process to find something relevant, but NIU's site is well done and thought out and you can't go wrong in exploring these links in search of more information about SEA. Highly recommended |
| Teaching Resources on Asia for the Classroom | NIU's selection of teaching resources divided into K-12 and community college with teaching units, teaching modules and topcial overviews. Unlike the University of Hawaii's, these can be downloaded for free (but the quality is much less). |
| Southeast Asian News Links | Unlike the AskAsia Today News Site which provides direct links to each days news stories sorted by subject, this list of annotated links will take you directly to the news source web sites. While your searching may be more time consuming, it's fascinating to look through online newspapers from Malaysia, Inonesia, Thailand, etc. |
| CIA's World Fact Book | For some of the most up-to-date information about Southeast Asian Countries this is the site to check out. Go to country listing where all the countries are sorted alphabetically. You can also download the entire World Factbook if you want! |
| Hmong WWW page | The definitive site for any and all information about Hmong culture. Craig Rice's site was the first one on the web when there was nothing else out there about the Hmong and he is constantly updating it with current information that can be found nowhere else. There are a wealth of links here and I can't review them all, but Gary Yia Lee's articles and site in Australia cover topics in Hmong culture in a thorough and scholarly manner that are a must read if you're seriously interested in learning more about the Hmong. Unfortunately I just checked the web site and the link to Gary's articles doesn't work. But I searched on the web and found another link that does...welcome to the reality of accessing information on the Net! The link that presently works is http://www.hmongnet.org/hmong-au/garylee.htm |
| UNHCR's Refugee World | "REFWORLD" – a collection of full-text databases representing the most comprehensive and reliable refugee information resource available, drawn from the most current and authoritative sources. REFWORLD builds upon UNHCR's commitment to provide the most accurate and up-to-date information possible and to make it easily accessible worldwide. I think it is important to understand the world of refugees as most of California's Southeast Asian students' parents are refugees. |
| The Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale | The Cambodian genocide, in which at least 1.7 million people (20% of the entire population) lost their lives, stands as one of the worst human tragedies of the modern era. In Cambodia, as in Nazi Germany, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, extremist politics conspired with a diabolic disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale. The Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale is studying these events to learn as much as possible about the tragedy, and to help determine who was responsible for the crimes of the Pol Pot regime. Not an upbeat subject, but a legacy of Cambodia and SEA. |
| Standford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education | SPICE has produced over 100 supplementary curriculum units on Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the global environment, and the international political economy. SPICE's interdisciplinary approach draws upon simulations and role plays, debaates, readers' theaters, lessons involving the visual and performing arts, journal writing exercises, and cooperative group activities. Curriculum units I consider exemplary are Mapping Asia and the Historical and Cultural Importance of Rice. They have several units on Vietnam, but I would check out the Teach Vietnam Site below first, you won't be disappointed. |
| TeachVietnam: Echos from the Wall | This site is a must for any teacher interested in teaching
anything about the Vietnam War The design of their web site is a model
for all educational web sites. "The Vietnam War Era - a tumultuous period
in American history - continues to cast a lingering shadow on politics
and culture. Echoes From the Wall, an interactive educational tool, goes
beyond the histroy of that era, enabling every high school student to gain
a heightened sense of responsibility, leadership and global understanding.
This website will help create generations of enlightened historians and
informed citizens."
They also have a curriculum package with video that they have provided for free to all middle schools in California. I have one and it saves you having to download and print the pdf files. I think if you email them they'll send you one for free.A superb resource.I also highly recommend checking out the pdf file on inviting guest speakers under educational resources. There isn't a better guide out there for learning about using guest speakers as a powerful tool to teach and intrigue students. As it says in the H-SS Framework history is a story well told and guest speakers can bring a sense of intimacy to whatever you may be studying about SEA and so many of our SEA students' parents have powerful stories to tell. Check it out, it is an amazing resource. |
| AdVenture into Laos | I will be honest. This is my own web site, but if you're interested in checking out some of the best photos of Laos and learning more about this country from a more non-tourist perspective you can't go wrong... |
| Cambodian Links | Visit this new site on Dance, the Spirit of Cambodia, presenting classical and folk dance and music from Cambodia during a 12-city national tour. The site includes articles on The Dance (by Toni Shapiro-Phim), The Legacy of Angkor (by David Chandler), "Depictions of Dance and Drama on Ancient Cambodian Temples" (by Boreth Ly), "Dancing in Cambodia" (by Amitav Ghosh), and a historical overview by David Chandler, plus a photo gallery. The resource links page has many excellent links to Cambodian information, the best on the net. |