I hadn’t heard much about Channel One  recently. I certainly had a bad taste in my mouth from when they first began bribing schools to show its news program filled with commercials in exchange for free televisions and video equipment years ago.

I recently discovered its website, and was actually quite impressed.  The news program it shows, though spoken too fast for most English Language Learners, is remarkably free of most advertising.  And the ads on the website itself are not bad at all.

I was also quite surprised at the numerous interactive features that were on their site that were accessible to English Language Learners (probably Early Intermediate and higher).  You can type the word “interactive” on their search box to find them all.

I’ve put direct links to several of their activities on various pages of my site.   You’ll find quite a few related to World War II on my Geography and United States History page under Problems at Home and Across the Sea including Remembering the Holocaust.

They have a good feature on 9/11 called 9/11 Then and Now (which I simply title “9/11”) on my same page under Challenges In Today’s World.

And they have a feature that’s quite good and called the Saving Africa Calculator, which I’ve linked to Africa category in the Geography section of the same page.

Again, I’m not really sure if Channel One has changed since their founder Chris Whittle sold it (though I hope it has), but clearly their website can be useful to English Language Learners.