From Static to Dynamic

Deborah Healey

Email Deborah.
http://oregonstate.edu/~healeyd

Molding the Internet to Our Purposes

Language acquisition is the goal
Teachers can use the Internet to

Provide comprehensible input
Present information for different learning styles
Take a constructivist approach

The task, not the tool

How Did We Get Here?

From PLATO on the mainframe, with complex answer-judging and feedback, including directing students to more exercises based on their answers	teachers could author within defined templates
to Apple IIe electronic workbooks with feedback like "Right, Juan" or "Try again, Ahmed"	teachers could program in BASIC, but not very well
to early Macintosh 512K with graphics and sound, enabling more interesting activities for language teaching	teachers could author only within defined templates
to IBM PCs with DOS - back to electronic workbooks with feedback like "Right, Juan" or "Try again, Ahmed" to slightly better Windows 3.1 (and sophisticated Macintosh language learning programs)	teachers could program in BASIC, but not well teachers could use interesting authoring tools
to (finally) Windows 95 with graphics and sound, now with voice recognition	teachers can author with templates and interesting authoring tools
to the World Wide Web with electronic workbook-style quizzes with feedback like X or check marks	teachers can author with simple templates
and now to somewhat better pedagogy with tools like Hot Potatoes	(teachers have better templates to use).

Links and More Links: general purpose pages

ESL Study Hall from C. Meloni: http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gwvcusas/
EL Easton's site: http://eleaston.com/english.html
Linguistic Funland: http://www.linguistic-funland.com/teslact.html
The English Zone: http://members.home.net/englishzone/
Churchill House: http://www.churchillhouse.com/english/index.html

Creating Static Pages

Web editors make it easy to do a page with links
Use Netscape Composer to turn your bookmarks into a page
Use MS Word to turn any document into a page - but watch out for bloat

Quizzes and More Quizzes

Students like workbook exercises -- but what do they get?

Recognition level of knowledge
Habit-formation
Comfort (Maslow's hierarchy: safety need)

Where is the context?

Geography http://www.pacificnet.net/~sperling/quiz/geo4.html
Body parts http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/quizzes/vm/m-body.html

What kind of feedback?

Look to see if you're right
Check mark or cross X

Role of the Teacher

Selecting material for comprehensible input
Creating material - Hot Potatoes and Quandary authoring
Setting tasks for different learning styles
Bringing it back to the classroom and the curriculum

One-computer Classroom - a few possibilities

Famous Personages from Tom Robb's students: http://www2.kyoto-su.ac.jp/information/famous/
Pizzaz from Leslie Opp-Beckman: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~leslieob/pizzaz.html
See and solve: http://www.MysteryNet.com/thecase/see/see011/main.shtml

In the Lab

ESL Independent Study Lab from M. Krauss: http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html
ELC Study Zone: http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/index.htm
Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/introduction.html

Integration into the Curriculum

Do pre-computer, on-computer, post-computer activities
Have a method for sharing finds and files to avoid reinventing the wheel

Constructivist Approach

Students create their own meaning from directed projects
Students are active and engaged
One-computer class or lab
From learning to acquisition - internalizing information
More about constructivism