A site for teachers of ESL at
colleges in Quebec
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VIRTUAL CONNECTIONS: ONLINE ACTIVITIES & PROJECTS FOR NETWORKING LANGUAGE LEARNERS
Author: Warschauer, Mark, ed. Hawaii: Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center, University of Hawaii Press, 1995, 413 pp., $30.00
Reviewed by: Sheryl V. Beller-Kenner, Ed.D.
Collège de Maisonneuve, Département des
Langues Modernes
3800 rue Sherbrooke est, Montréal, Québec,
Canada H1X-2A2
telephone: (514) 254-7131 ext. 4302
e-mail: kenner@videotron.ca
[This article has previously appeared in CAELL Journal ©1997]
According to LeLoup & Ponterio, 1995, co-founders of FLTEACH (an electronic foreign-language discussion forum), "Teaching is a relatively autonomous profession ... characterized and exemplified by such factors as isolation, lack of inspiration, singleton teachers in a district, burnout from repetition with no infusion of innovative ideas, and professional stagnation..." Teachers of languages that are foreign to the setting they teach in are especially vulnerable to these conditions. While the electronic universe is not a panacea -- in fact, it brings with it its own set of problems -- those who let this book take them to the world of online activities will feel well connected to the world of other professionals and energized by a tome of new ideas and materials.
Virtual Connections is a collection, edited by Mark Warschauer, of about 125 already-been-tried online projects and activities described by well over a hundred "experts" in the field. What makes these people "experts"? In this day and age when technology changes so rapidly, I consider a person who knows more than I do on any specific aspect of the technology to be an expert. The fact that each of the contributors invested a considerable amount of time to conceive of, implement, evaluate and share his/her own project (some which have been under development for over a year), gives him/her the kind of expertise that one can get only from experience. The wealth of this book comes from the collective experience of its contributors.
The book is written for teachers of any foreign or second language, but it would also be appropriate for content area teachers and native-language language arts teachers who are interested in using or having their students use electronic communication and the resources available through it. It can also be used by seocnd/foreign-language teacher-trainers and lab directors. Most of the activities described in the book can be adapted for children or adults, in non-credit or academic programs.
In addition, all of the activities can be done on any computers that have access to either internal or external networks, whether the machine runs on Mac, DOS, or Windows operating systems. With few exceptions, most of the software needed to do any of these activities is freeware or low-cost shareware, the biggest expense being the hardware and the cost of access to external networks. Many of the activities can be done even if a whole program has access to only one computer.
The amount of material included in Virtual Connections is extensive; in fact, it is the most comprehensive collection of electronic activities that I have seen to date. The book is divided into three main sections -- each sub-divided into chapters -- two appendices, and a short list of further readings (This was the only part of the book I felt to be unnecessary because of the hundreds of references already mentioned within each of the sections.). If you have not ever used electronic communication activities with your students, the titles alone will give you an excellent overview of the types of activities that you're missing.
In Electronic Communication in a Single Class, you will be introduced to: Teacher-Student Dialogue; E-mail Interaction; Bulletin Boards; Supporting Student Writing; Topics, Topics & More Topics; and Real-time Rapping. All of these activities are meant to be used on internal, or local area networks (LANs). Different ways of connecting students within one school to each other and to the teacher are explored. Most new computers come with a system or software that manages e-mail, and many different activities show how you and your students can take full advantage of this feature. My favorites in this section discuss the various ways that the interactive chat mode can be exploited.
In Cross-Cultural Communication, you will see, Getting Going, Cyber-Surveys, Keypal Connections, Learning in Tandem, Class-to-Class Connections, Sharing Stories, Global Cafes, Looking At Language, Multi-Class Projects, MOOving Forward, and Electronic Courses. In this section, you can see how others connect their students (and themselves) to real people in other parts of the world. Foreign language students can make contact with native speakers as well as other students who are studying the same language. Through this contact, they are exposed to different cultures and points of view. Many of the projects describe how teachers can get their students to open themselves up to these differences (as well as the similarities) in the spirit of enriching their lives, increasing global harmony and promoting world peace. Many variations of pairings -- of individual students, of classes and of schools -- are described, and, in the different configurations, students who are separated by great distances have collaborated on goal-oriented projects of many types. Some of the suggestions are easy to implement and do not take much pre-planning on the part of the teacher, but others are very complex projects that require teachers to do intense planning and to stay in constant touch with one another in order for the strict deadlines to be kept. Again, there are many suggestions given in each description that will permit you to be able to modify most of the projects and adapt them to your own needs and circumstances.
In Using Online Resources, you will be exposed to Online News, Databases and Bibliographic Research, Traveling the World/Web, Net Navigation, Multimedia Via the Net, Teacher-Designed Web Pages, and Student Publishing on the Web. This section opens you and your students up to the unlimited amount of resources that one can find on the Web. Whether you are looking for serious reseach tools or for simple multimedia class resources, you will be pointed in many interesting directions. You will be able to read about and then visit Web pages that students have written in order to share their work with others. Wonderful things happen when students write for an audience other than the teacher, and the Web provides students with an audience unlimited by size or energy to respond to their work in ways that an over-extended teacher cannot even think of. And wonderful things happen when students see first-hand what other students produce; in most cases, it energizes them and motivates them in a way that no teacher can. As a colleague, I really appreciate the ways in which the contributors, and their students, exposed themselves to me and my students.
Each of the projects begins with a description of the context in which the activity was carried out, including the age level, the language proficiency level, and the location of the institution. The descriptions, some more detailed than others, describe the activity and types of assignments required. The evaluation includes discussions of how the project worked, where the weaknesses were, and what might be done to modify particular parts. Each description ends with a short description of the contributing writer and detailed contact information. Also included may be detailed references for any materials, software, or Internet locations mentioned in the description. This last part was extremely valuable, so much so that I wished that the editor would have included in his appendices a separate list of sites, contacts, and activities by language and/or skill. There were many times that a particularly interesting site was mentioned, and it was not easy for me to find the previous description of the other activity carried out at that site. I know a German teacher who might have liked to have a quick reference list of all of the German sites found, for example. The book is already long, but there is a lot of white space that could have been better used.
The greatest characteristic of this book is that you are introduced to these activities by hundreds of people who come from different perspectives, teach different languages at different levels (of proficiency, of education, of life experience) and focus on different skills. And each tries to include strengths, weaknesses, and variations, keeping in mind others who are in different situations. So, it doesn't take much imagination to figure out how you might adapt a particular activity to meet your specific needs, if it's possible.
The appendices that are included are very helpful and might have been more beneficial as a first chapter rather than an appendix. In Basic Internet Tools for Foreign Language Educators, the authors explain the concepts and features of electronic mail, mailing lists (LISTSERVs), telnet, gopher, file transfer protocol (ftp), the World Wide Web (WWW, W3, the Web), USENET newsgroups, internet relay chats (IRCs) in their various forms, and search tools such as Veronica, Archie and Lycos. While the information is current, it is also very important for those who want to use the book to its fullest potential and so could probably be expanded a bit. Both novices and more experienced users who have not yet used a particular feature would benefit immensely.
One caveat: through no fault of the editor, because the routes on the electronic highway change frequently, the addresses to some of the sites (like the ever-popular SchMOOze University) have already changed. Some of the old addresses point to markers to where the site has moved; others do not. If you experience any problems trying to contact a specific site, you might want to contact the person whose name appears at the end of the description of the activity. Chances are good that that person will be aware of the change and the new location.
I have already dog-eared over one hundred pages of sites I want to visit, contacts I want to make, and projects I want my students to embark on next semester. I have already referred some colleagues to some of the resources mentioned in the book, and I have already suggested some of the ways (mentioned in the book) in which my colleagues can get started with e-mail communication. Virtual Connections has already become a valuable resource for me; it will open up a new virtual world for you, too.
Chez Nous
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