In my quest to find and review online publishing tools (i.e. sites that will organize your students’ content like a magazine or newspaper) I’ve come across quite a few online magazines designed for our primary audience – middle and high school students. You can find anything I’ve found by looking at my Delicious tags under wandermami or musicuentos.
Whether you’re asking your students to freely explore authentic content or looking for something with a specific topic in mind, authentic e-magazines for teenagers can be a great place to start. Find out everything that’s going on in fashion, pop music, movie stars and more with Tú magazine, which you can subscribe to at the rate of 12 digital issues for $16 or check out their various app downloads, or sign up for their free newsletter (this begs to be a homework choice option).
Older teens can explore more fashion, music, beauty, and movies at 15 a 20 – and definitely check out their surveys (vacation topic, anyone?). **Edit – see comments below for cautionary notes about 15 a 20** Somos jóvenes is a magazine with an interesting history and interesting content designed to publish the perspectives of the Cuban youth. Zinio is a Publishers Clearinghouse of Spanish-language digital magazines for you to look at and purchase.TweenTribune, the free current-event quizzing site, is also available in Spanish. You sign up as a teacher and create a classroom with student log-ins. Weekly, the site publishes age-appropriate current content with accompanying quizzes (again, begs to be a homework choice option!).
VeinteMundos is another site designed for language learners with study tools as well as magazine content categorized as intermediate or advanced. They offer a ton of content on a variety of topics.
The Taconeras group of websites offers blogs related to magazines like Seventeen and Tú. The short, punchy nature of blog entries makes them better authentic content for lower-level learners than full magazine articles might be.
I hope your students enjoy some authentic magazine content soon!
One or two clicks into exploring Tú magazine and I was face to face with an article that surely could have gotten me fired if it showed up in my classroom (about the benefits of female masturbation).
I know that the best solution is simply to teach my students appropriate tech skills (which includes filtering) and, well, perhaps teach in a community that does not view sexuality as a major taboo. In reality, however, it only takes one sensitive student and an active parent to cut short a promising career. The normal advice to preview content, taking into consideration the community that you serve, simply cannot be followed since e-magazines are updated frequently.
Oops, I see that I made a mistake. The article I was referring to appears in 15 a 20.
These are amazing possibilities…as always, I am most grateful for all that you share!
@Mike WHOA – thanks so much for pointing that out to me. Just clicking on the home page this time brought up an article/photo that I wouldn’t let my students view just on principle, much less that it would get me fired (which is for sure!) – some business with girls in thong-like bikinis photographed from the back. :-/ So I completely withdraw my recommendation for this site with the possible exception of the surveys – but even then some of the surveys were absolute trash! Perhaps I’d use one directly (like “¿Qué haces cuando estás aburrida?”) but I think it’s probably wiser just to steer clear of this one. Thanks again for the tip – I obviously did not investigate that one enough.