websites for the language teacher

How do you keep up-to-date?

Diana Eastment

You have probably read about Second Life, the 3-D virtual world where youcreate a cartoon-like character (‘avatar’) and interact with objects and otherusers. Harvard Law School is there, and Dell Computers (you can puttogether a virtual machine and have a real one delivered to your door), anda Swedish Embassy (operated by the Swedish government). And languageschools are starting to spring up—the most outstanding to date is certainlyGavin Dudeney’s EduNation. Teachers and students can move around inclassrooms and resource areas, listen to podcasts together, read onlinedocuments, and talk to each other via Skype or similar software. They movejerkily, for sure, but it is a compelling world and highly motivating forthose taking part.

Second Life is only one of a range of Internet phenomena which gounder the heading of ‘Web 2.0’—dynamic, interactive, highly involvingapplications where the user is not just a reader but an active participant.Video blogs, shared wordprocessing, social networking sites such asMySpace and FaceBook, student-created podcasts, all these are impactingupon education far more dramatically than the conventional word-filledweb page.

But how do you keep up-to-date with what is going on? There is still roomfor paper-based information (as I hope this column demonstrates) but forup-to-the-minute news you need to turn to the Internet.

For accessible articles about new technologies in general, the Guardian’sTechnology section takes a lot of beating. It tends to focus on major players inthe industry, and review mainstream software from Microsoft and Apple,but it is worth looking at its Special Reports and the technology blog.

One way into new technology with a more educational focus is viaShambles, a site aimed at schools in South East Asia but with internationalrelevance. In addition to its many other facilities (it has well-maintainedlinks to thousands of websites, for example), Shambles has an excellentpage of links to articles and reports on the impact of Web 2.0 on education ingeneral.

CiLT, formerly the Centre for Information on Language Teaching, nowre-branded as the National Centre for Languages, has a website specificallyfor ICT in Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) teaching. Languages ICThas a series of documents in PDF format covering areas such as ‘What isText Chat?’ and ‘What are MP3 Files for MFL?’. They are only a few pages

ELT Journal Volume 61/2 April 2007; doi:10.1093/elt/ccm016 187ªª The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.

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long, written with minimal jargon, and include classroom suggestions aswell as technical information.

Blogs and Journals There is no shortage of blogs on the impact of technology on education.Steve Hargadon is one of the best, packed with MP3 interviews witheducators who are actively involved in using the new gizmos. Surprisingly,there are few good technology blogs for ELT. Eric Baber has been bloggingsince early 2006, mainly in the form of short descriptions and thoughtson articles or websites he has come across in the area of ICT and languageeducation, but he posts only occasionally. More useful to the enthusiast isGraham Stanley’s BLOG-EFL, packed with ‘observations and commentson the use of weblogs, emerging technologies & e-learning tools’. Thecontent is technical, and packed with jargon, but it is full of news andgood links, and sparkles with enthusiasm. Check out the comprehensiveset of links to EFL and technical blogs at the foot of the page.

For teaching ideas, the best online journal for the new technology isLanguage Learning and Technology. This refereed journal is now overten years old, and appears three times a year. It carries articles, shortcommentaries, and wide-ranging reviews of books and software.

The monthly Internet TESL Journal is less academic, and is aimed at theclassroom teacher. Just as useful as the articles (which are by no meanslimited to technology) are the regularly updated links to ESL-relatedwebsites. It is worth keeping an eye on the Journal’s ‘Recently SubmittedLinks’ section. The BBC/British Council Teaching English site hasa collection of technology-related articles in its ‘Think’ section. The articlesare concise and clear, and currently include podcasting, webquests,concordancers, and ‘blogging for ELT’.

Google UpdateGadgets

Readers with personalized Google (click on Sign In at the top right of anyGoogle page to register) will know that you can select all sorts of useful little‘gadgets’ (mini-programs and sources of information) to embed in yourGoogle page. The latest of these (and a prize winner in the latest gadgetcompetition) is the ‘MapMyWord’ dictionary. This allows you to type ina word and get (of course) the definition and pronunciation. But it alsocreates a tiny mind-map with colour-coded representation of wordrelationships. It has vocabulary lists, spelling suggestions, and examplesof usage. I am not sure how useful it is in actual practice, but it is fun toplay with and certainly livens up the page. Details of the full version ofthe program are at the MapMyWord website.

Google Co-op Another advantage of having a personalized Google is that you can nowcreate your ‘own’ search engine. Google Co-Op lets you specify whichsites (or types of site) you wish to search, and which not, or add labels belowyour search box for different categories. You could, for example, set it upso that when you typed in ‘ecology’ and clicked on your ‘Newspapers’ label,Google would only search the Economist and the Guardian, whereas if youclicked on the ‘Universities’ label it would confine its search to materialoriginating from tertiary level sites. You can call your new engine whatyou want, and put it in your webpage or blog, or just allow Google to hostit. Well worth a look for anyone who does a lot of searching.

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Second Life www.secondlife.com

Edunation www.theconsultants-e.com/edunation/edunation.asp

MySpace www.myspace.com

FaceBook www.facebook.com

Guardian Unlimited – Technology technology.guardian.co.uk

Shambles – Web 2.0 www.shambles.net/pages/learning/ict/web2edu/

Languages ICT www.languages-ict.org.uk/

Steve Hargadon www.stevehargadon.com

Eric Baber’s Blog ericbaber.com/blog/

BLOG-EFL blog-efl.blogspot.com/

Language Learning and Technology llt.msu.edu/

Internet TESL Journal iteslj.org

Teaching English www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/think.shtml

MapMyWord www.mapmyword.com

Google Co-op www.google.com/coop

Diana Eastment is author of The Internet and ELT (Summertown Publishing) andco-author (with Scott Windeatt and David Hardisty) of The Internet (OxfordUniversity Press). She teaches at the State College of Education in Vienna.Email: diana@eastment.com

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