Category: Free online resources

Digital learning and playing space in Somali for children

Finnish National Agency for education (Opetushallitus) has published a new, playful learning platform to support Somali mother language teaching at schools. The platform is open for all and it includes alphabet exercises, short stories, songs and interactive vocabulary exercises for children between ages of 5 and 13.

Multilingual Month congratulates the creators of this excellent learning platform!

We tested the platform as non-Somali speakers and noticed that the platform offers a possibility also for non-Somali speakers to learn basic things about Somali language in a fun way.

 

Hyperlink:
Somali language learning material from Finnish National Agency for Education

Link:
https://testi.mobirox.com/OPH/somali1-3/#home

Previous Somali language material (2014) from the Finnish National Agency for Education
http://www11.edu.fi/somali4/sisallys

(Tip: if you have problems with entering the 2014 platform, you can pass the username and password request with any word)

 

 

Pictures in this post: screenshots from the learning platform; Copyright: Finnish National Agency for Education

Sano se saameksi – Say it in Sámi

Say it in Saami features the first online Saami phrasebook on the Internet containing informal language, and its goal is to help the endangered languages. You can listen to the phrases in North, Inari and Skolt Saami. The website also features five short documentary films, a quick guide to Saami culture and a soundboard in North Saami.

The website and online dictionary have versions in Finnish, English and Swedish.

The Say it in Saami project began is a collaboration of Finnish documentary filmmaker Katri Koivula and Saami poet Niillas Holmberg.

Picture: from Say it in Sámi -website
illustration: Lille Santanen

Active Library

Active Library  programme of Jyväskylä University searched for educational tools to support the growth of young students towards multilingualism and multilingual identities.

You can find materials and exercises both in Finnish and English on the Active Library webpages.

The project was carried out in two phases between 2013–15 by Finnish teachers and classes. In the first phase about 12 multicultural and plurilingual mother language teachers in Jyväskylä developed authentic language learning material based on fairy tales, stories and literature from their own culture. The material was made by e.g. Arabic, Dutch, English, German, Russian and Swahili learning groups. The page still offers materials in these languages.

In the second phase primary school teachers / mother tongue teachers (Finnish) with their L2-learners took part in the project creating libraries of their own. They collected texts and books and developed exercises from specific themes like scifi, recycling, authors (Tove Jansson and the Moomins). The main aim was to create internet data base libraries and share experiences about this way of act in language/literacy learning.

Active Library in English

Active Library in Finnish

International Library, Stockholm, Sweden


The International Library is part of the Stockholm Public Library and it is in central Stockholm. It has a multilingual collection of books in around 200 languages. People living elsewhere in Sweden can order books from the international library to their local libraries.

The library´s website has language versions in Swedish, in Arabic, in English, in French, in Chinese, in Persian, in Russian and in Spanish.

In the webpage of the International Library you can also find interesting archives related to multilingual issues, like the interview archive and book recommendations for and from readers in different languages, apart of the previously mentioned at least in Polish, Bulgarian, Portuguese and Urdu.

The collection includes books in the following languages: Acholi, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Ashanti, Azerbaijani, Baluchi, Bambara, Basque, Bemba, Bengali, Berber language, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Buli, Burmese,  Catalan, Cebuano, Chewa, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dari, Edo, Efik, English, Greenlandic, Estonian, Ewe, Fanti, French, Fulani,  Galician, Geez, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrean, Hindi, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Kikuyu, Kirgisyan, Kongo (Kikongo), Korean, Krio, Kurdish (Kurmandji and Sorani), Kymric (Cymric/Welsh), Lao/ Laos,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Danish Library Centre for Integration, Copenhagen, Denmark

Danish Library Centre for Integration, Copenhagen, Denmark
The Danish Library Centre for Integration (SBCI) lends books, music, and films to Danish public libraries. Most of the collections are in Arabic, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu. They also host Verdensbibliotek, a digital library with online access to music, films and e-books from all over the world.