Around the world in multimedia

LEARN NC offers a collection of more than 2,000 high-resolution photographs and audio recordings from Asia and Latin America, with historical and cultural context and related lesson plans.

Sample audio: Conversation in an Asian medicine store

Listen in on the street life of Thailand.

Learn more

• Teaching visual literacy Our collection of articles on visual literacy includes strategies for making photographs a meaningful part of any instructional activity.

Related pages

• I, the basket: Writing a first-person story as an inanimate object: In this interdisciplinary lesson for grade seven, students explore the first-person point of view through children's literature and images of Nepal. Students exhibit their understanding of first-person narrative by writing a children's story from the perspective of an inanimate object.
• Bounce into rubber: Natural latex from Thailand: This lesson for grade nine investigates natural latex rubber sources from Thailand. Students complete research and experiments to determine which plants from Thailand are sources of latex, and explore images and audio recordings of rubber harvesting in Thailand.
• Describing Japanese screens and scrolls through images: The second part of a larger unit on talking and writing about, as well as creating, Japanese screen and scroll paintings. The purpose of this unit plan is to introduce descriptive aspects of art criticism, while teaching the art and culture of Japan. Students create illustrations of classmates' descriptions of Japanese screens or scrolls.

Related topics

• Learn more about Asia, Latin America, audio, global education, photographs, and world cultures.

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LEARN NC offers a collection of more than 2,000 high-resolution photographs and audio recordings from Asia and Latin America. All include detailed descriptions or transcripts, and most include historical or cultural context to help you use them in your classroom. We’ve also developed slideshows that incorporate many of these resources, and we’re developing lesson plans around them that encourage higher-order thinking and develop visual literacy.

Finding and using multimedia

The simplest way to find photographs and audio recordings is to visit our multimedia library and browse by country, or search multimedia using the form in the banner of any page of the LEARN NC website. To include lesson plans and slideshows in your search, you can also search the entire website for a particular country.

If you’re looking for a particular media type — images or audio — you can use the advanced search form and select a media type. You can also use the format menu to narrow your search even further — for example, to photographs or maps.

Countries

We currently have significant collections of multimedia from the following countries:

• Cambodia
• Colombia
• Ecuador
• Indonesia (Bali)
• Malaysia
• Mexico
• Nepal
• Thailand
• Vietnam

Slideshows

We’re continuing to develop slideshows on various countries, which you can use as part of a lesson or ask students to use on their own. Each slideshow looks at a particular topic and offers a “virtual field trip” with historical and cultural background about the country and its peoples.

• Bali
• Cambodia
• Ecuador
• Venezuela
• Vietnam

When you’re looking at the record of an image that’s used in a slideshow, you’ll see a note in the sidebar: “View this image in context.” The link or links under that heading will take you directly into the slideshow.

The Ramayana

We’ve also developed a slideshow version of the Hindu Epic The Ramayana, told through paintings, dance, and even puppetry.

Lesson plans

We’ve published a number of lesson plans designed specifically around our collections of multimedia from around the world. Please contact us if you’d be interested in helping us develop additional lesson plans!

• World cultures lessons incorporating LEARN NC multimedia

And, of course, you’ll find many more lessons in our lesson plan collection that can be enhanced by adding photographs and audio.