Tools for Teaching or Discovering the Mid East

I just returned from the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) annual conference, which was held in Denver this year. I am still digesting all that I learned there. While attending a meeting of an affiliate group within MESA called Middle Eastern Outreach Council, I learned about three websites that are fabulous resources for anyone studying the Middle East, including regional languages.

Center For Near Eastern Studies is a project funded by the U.S. Department of Education and UCLA is a language site to help entice high school and college students to study Farsi, Arabic and Turkish. Unique features of this language learning website includes videos of Turkish, Farsi and Arabic speakers talking in their native languages and alongside their images are transliterations that highlight the phrases the speakers are saying.

Another resourceful site is Fifteen Minute History, Not Even Past, developed by Christopher Rose, Director of Public Engagement at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin. This site features pod casts of graduate students and other professionals about the Mid East. The topics meet Texas cirriculum standards for classroom but the interviews are meant for a wider audience.

More to come about this conference...