Setting up a Gmail account: Video Tutorial in Spanish

More and more children these days have email accounts of their own, but, and perhaps more importantly, many of the Latino children that you serve will be bilingual, but their parents may not be. These bilingual children often serve as helpers and translators for their parents. In either case, this video tutorial in Spanish on how to set up a Gmail account could be a valuable resource to share with your Spanish-speaking patrons, children and adults alike.

Click here to see the Video Tutorial.

More Día Resources

This was posted on the REFORMA email list:

For all libraries planning to celebrate El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Día), also known as Children’s Day/Book Day. Several Día partners are currently offering a free poster or special discounts on books purchased for Día celebrations.

*Tricycle Press is offering a free poster, featuring tips and resources for celebrating Día (while supplies last).

Offering special discounts on book purchases are:

*Arte Publico Press
*Charlesbridge Publishing
*Children’s Book Press
*Cinco Puntos Press
*First Book
*Lectorum Publications, Inc.

For further information, see http://www.ala.org/dia. Then click on Partners/Sponsors.

Rare Spanish Songs go Online!

I just received this article, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, and thought I would share it. Although this collection is not aimed specifically at children, many of the songs could be fun additions to a Spanish story time or bilingual family hour. As a teacher in my previous life, I often used music as a way to connect children with different traditions and cultures. Enjoy!

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3683/archive-watch-rare-spanish-songs-go-online

March 27, 2009

Archive Watch: Rare Spanish Songs Go Online

Over 41,000 Spanish-language songs that go back to the early 1900s were placed online this week by the Chicano Studies Center, a research unit at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The recordings are from the Arhoolie Foundation’s Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings, the Los Angeles Times reported. It is the largest repository of Mexican and Mexican-American vernacular recordings in existence. The early works, the archives say, “is the foundation for Latino music today, since the singers and musicians who made these records helped popularize and propagate a number of traditions, including regional Mexican, Tejano, Chicano, and Mexican American music.”

If you are not physically at UCLA, however, don’t expect to hear all the music. Due to copyright restrictions, only campus computers get full access. Off-campus users can hear 50 seconds of each song, see images of the record labels, and read background information about the recording. —Josh Fischman