If you are curious regarding how this collection came to exist, this is the story.
For many years, Annenberg, a well-known philanthropic organization funded development of educational content, including language learning series. Most of the content was available free of charge on the Annenberg-Lerner website, including Destinos, French in Action, and other series.
The Beginning
My name is Tom, and I have been a Spanish student for many years. Destinos was part of our curriculum. To help follow the dialog, I typed a transcript for each episode. To share the transcripts and other Destinos resources, I developed a Destinos companion website. But the videos were only available on the Annenberg-Lerner webpage.
The End of Annenberg-Learner
One of my former instructors sent an email early in 2026. She had visited the Annenberg-Lerner website and saw an announcement that the site was going to no longer be available after July 1, 2026. I realized that Destinos would be lost unless I took action. So that was what I did.
Just Destinos
When I confirmed that Annenberg-Lerner was really planning to “turn out the lights”, my first step was to reserve the web name (URL) destinostelenovela.org. The name that I wanted, destinos.org, was for sale for $8,000 which was out of my price range. I then developed the website that you see today. There were other tasks. Many of the original text and workbook pages on my website were poorly scanned, so I spent months rescanning content. I did not actually add the videos to the new site since they were already available on Archive.org. I just developed the theater page and “pointed” to the videos on that site.
“What about French in Action?”
After launching the Destinos website, I received an email from a French instructor. She visited the Destinos site and that prompted her email to me. Her email simply stated: “What about French in Action?” – that was it. There was nothing else in her email. I didn’t know what to make of her email. I had never heard of FiA even though I studied French in school many years. I initially ignored her email. But from time-to-time the memory of that email came back to me. A few weeks later I mentioned the email to my wife. She said that I should try to figure out why I received it. In doing so, I learned that French in Action, a series similar to Destinos, would also be lost when the Annenberg-Lerner site was gone.
I decided that I should do for French in Action what I had done for Destinos. I acquired the frenchinaction.org website name, purchased a number of affiliated books and materials, and created the site. This second project was fun, but also a lot of work. There are 2,000 audio files, and I had to create a link to each one. As with Destinos, I created a theater that “pointed” to the videos on the archive.org website.
Moving to a Streaming Service
Once these two series were available, I started receiving complaints from a few users that the “theaters” were not working and they could not watch the episodes. This problem needed to be solved. After investigating and conversing with my various AI partners, I realized that relying on Archive.org to stream the videos was no longer a reliable solution.. The alternative was to move the videos to a streaming service., which added to the expense of running these sites. Expenses include: hosting service (Hostinger); software development license (Elementor); website names (URLs); purchase of resources including texts and workbooks; and the video streaming service. Moving to Bunny.net was the correct move. There have been no video streaming complaints since doing so.
From Destinos to Language Classics
This has not been an individual effort. A fantastic English friend shared high-quality Destinos and French in Action video and audio files! Paul’s involvement shifted this project from recovery of a couple of series to a more extensive preservation initiative. Paul willingly shared videos for other amazing series. Other series were downloaded from YouTube. Hopefully, over time, this site will live up to its promise of being a one-of-a-kind language classics archive.
What It Takes
Adding a new series involves a surprising amount of work — some might call it blood, sweat, and subtitle transcription tears. Here’s a summary of what’s involved:
- Locate the videos. Paul has been a great help, but some series have to be located from other sources. If a series is on YouTube, the videos can be downloaded using software utilities.
- Locate the subtitle files. To turn subtitles on or off requires a subtitle file for each video. YouTube subtitles can be downloaded, but often are “computer generated” and have many quality problems. Some series do not have subtitle files. Many hours (often two hours per video) are spent creating or improving subtitle files.
- Create a “website” for a new series.
- Locate and purchase series resources (texts and workbooks).
- Scan the resources and add them to the series website.
A Labor of Love
And that’s our story — so far. We love this project and spend countless hours preserving these remarkable programs so they can continue helping language learners for years to come. I hope you enjoyed the story and would be happy to answer any questions. Send them my way.
And if you have suggestions for other series, or if you find issues with the current ones (e.g., subtitle files that have problems), I would also like to hear from you. With your help, we can continue improving these language learning resources.
TK, Punta Gorda, FL, Oct 2026.