You may notice that the title of our website has changed, to indicate our new focus on Homeschool Spanish. This doesn't mean that our program can't be used by anybody who is learning Spanish, but we are adding some exciting new features to the Members Zone that will be geared towards families who are homeschooling.  This is in addition to the materials that we already have, so if you are a grown up interested in using our system, don't worry - nothing has been taken away.  But as we are spending a lot of effort preparing the system for homeschool Spanish, I thought it was time to change the website title as well.

As we are considering homeschooling our own children (actually parents of toddlers are all homeschoolers!) - it has taken us into a whole new world, and I saw that there is a huge need in the homeschooling community for an easier way to manage Spanish teaching. I'll post more soon about this soon - hope you are all having a lovely holiday season!

I'm still battling to find time to work on the websites - but I did manage to get some time this week and looking over the stats, I see that a lot of people have had trouble figuring out how to access the Members Zone. The combination of Joomla and Moodle appears to be too complicated - so I found a much easier membership program that allows people to login and access everything in just 1 click - with the classes still in Moodle, but part of that system instead of Joomla.

I had to reset all passwords for previous members that joined the paid subscription service before today - you'll see that information on the Members Zone page. Please note this does NOT affect the FORUM logins - which is a free service. The Members Zone is a paid service that offers software programs and classes, whereas joining Insta Spanish as a free member just gives you the ability to post on our forum. To post on the forum, for now you'll need to login to the main page at Insta Spanish with your same old login. Other than that you should just find the new system a lot easier to navigate. I'll be attacking the Moodle course next - filling out the Beginning Spanish through Music section. I hope to get a newsletter done this weekend as it's been a while!

I'm sorry to anyone who has emailed in the past week - we went into labor late last week and had the baby this weekend, spent a few days in the hospital, then a few days trying to adjust to life with a toddler and a newborn! I'll be answering emails today, and if there are problems I'll try to solve them as quickly as possible. Thanks so much for your patience during this time.

Baby Julia Marie Reiman - born 9/19/08, 9 lbs 12 ounces in Anchorage, Alaska

We finally have a new newsletter and podcast up - with just a couple of weeks before the new baby arrives, I've been a bit in overdrive this week :)

I'm adding a new the format for these newsletters - a video slideshow that will be available only to subscribers of the Members Zone. The quizzes will be part of our online system within each slideshow, so that you can track your progress - and there will be an archive of all video newsletters, as well as downloads for each one. As this is a lot of work I can only offer this service to subscribers of the $9.99 a month service - but the non video newsletter will continue to be free. This weeks' edition is a freebie! To see the interactive video newsletter for this week, click here or on the image below.

download podcast mp3 here
download ipod video here
download full video slideshow executable for Windows here