Internet: Source of Information

[5.1] How to study this unit

[5.2] How to evaluate/assess websites: do and don’ts

[5.3] Useful websites for ESL Classrooms:

Online Publishers, etc.

[5.4] Internet regulation for minors and its use in the classroom

5 UNIT
 ICT Tools Applied to the Learning of English Language

Key ideas

5.1. How to study this unit

To study this unit, you need to read the following articles about the Internet and its use
in the ESL classroom:

Anderson, Paul, “What is Web 2.0? Ideas, Technologies and Implications for
Education”. The article is available in the following link:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.108.9995&rep=rep1&type=
pdf

Hargadon, Steve, "Educational Networking: The Important Role Web 2.0 Will Play
In Education". It is available in:

http://es.scribd.com/doc/24161189/Educational-Networking-The-Important-Role-
Web-2-0-Will-Play-in-Education

As a teaching-learning tool, the Internet has much to

offer both teachers and students. It is clear that we,
as teachers, cannot reject its use as our students have
become native users of technology.

What we need to do is to change to some extent

our teaching practice and incorporate that technology to enhance our
work. Technology is an ally when it comes to authenticity, realism and education.

In this unit we are going to learn how to evaluate websites which can help us in
deepening our teaching and we are going to deal with special ESL websites we can
find on the Internet.

UNIT 5 – Key ideas

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5.2. How to evaluate websites: do’s and don’ts

First of all, using websites to teach may be of the easiest ways of starting with
technology in the classroom. There are thousands of resources on the web, different
levels of knowledge and with an amazing amount of topics. Even we have the
possibility of choosing what kind of material we want, i.e., authentic or adapted
to ESL. Even more, webs and searching for webs could be used as a window on the
world outside the classroom setting which can help your students to experience facts
and images they may not be able to feel or experience in their daily life, i.e., seeing a
National Park from the USA, how kangaroos live in Australia, etc. Thus, Internet is
an endless resource bank for authentic material.

As it is endless, it may help to establish a team with

other teachers at your school. That collaborative
effort, as we explained in previous topics, is one of
the main tenets in technology so, why not using it also
when working at school? Every teacher has their
favorite websites and many teachers have already
been using websites in class or have downloaded material and adapted it to the ESL
teaching. Therefore, try to organize informal meetings with other teachers to
share that knowledge: how to use material, a website, organize collaborative
projects between classes, etc. As the resources, the flow of ideas when using web
material can be enormous.

When you look for websites on the Internet, you need to assess how useful and
appropriate are for your teaching practice. Not all the websites have a clear aim
or pedagogical goal and not all the material included on a website can be the core of a
lesson. Therefore, which are the criteria we need to follow in order to
evaluate a website? Some of them could be the following:

Accuracy

One of the most important points as the learner may use the information to write a
project or are taking notes.

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To be able to test, we need ask ourselves the following questions:

 Who wrote the page?

 Is this person an expert in Check qualifications, experience of the owner
the subject matter?

The most reliable sources of information for students are

resources that end in .edu since they come from academic
institutions. Also excellent sources are government
repositories (.gov) and organizations (.org) such as
 Who sponsors the
website? museums, libraries, and galleries. Web sites that have a ~
in the URL should be approached with caution since they
are maintained by private individuals, while .com sites are
commercial in their nature

 Is the page content Do some cross-reference with other websites and

reliable and factually encyclopedias
correct?

As a language teacher, we should bear in mind linguistic accuracy especially when

dealing with websites for young learners: Look for slang words, offensive words or
too mature language.

Currency

Reference material can become outdated very quickly. As in printed material, Internet
articles have a copyright date which tells students when the work was published. By
checking the Site Map or About This Site page, students will be able to determine if the
information is current, when it was last updated, and if anyone is responsible for
monitoring the site.

Is the content up-to-date? Check information against

other sources

When was last page last updated?

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 ICT Tools Applied to the Learning of English Language

Content

Ease of use and interest are taken into account. Also, appropriateness and which levels
the web is suitable.

 Is the site interesting and

Consider your learner’s point of view
stimulating?

Is the material pedagogically sound?

 Does the material have a clear teaching aim?

 Is it attractive and easy to

Colours, links, visual structure
navigate?

Functionality

Check the technical part of the website: broken links, missing information.

Are there any broken links? Follow the

 Does the site work well?
links you intend to use

 Does it use more Check how quickly it loads, applications

applications such as Flash you may need to watch videos or listen to
or PDF Adobe? sounds

Other tips you need to take into account

Visit the websites you intent to explore in class and make sure you know your way
around the websites, the structure of the website, the steps/links you need to
follow/click. Visit them regularly especially if they are created by individual people
as they may change the URL or may have disappeared.
Make notes of the websites: either write down the full URL address or save it
on the computer in the Favorites options or Bookmarks options for later use.
Always have a plan B in case the Internet connection is slow or has broken
down.
Don´t discount simple text-based websites. They may be useful for your
activities.

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Pairwork/Group work: Don´t let your students to work

alone on computers. If they get used to working in small
groups it will encourage oral communication and students
will start developing their sense of collaborative effort.

There always advantages and disadvantages when dealing with

websites, however, which are the Do’s and dont’s of teaching
with Web-based materials:

DO…
 Use the Internet to access primary source information and to stimulate critical thinking.

 Encourage students to work on collaborative projects for classroom presentations.

 Incorporate technology into lessons when it makes instruction better.

 Instruct students about plagiarism and copyright issues.

 Require appropriate citation of electronic sources for all papers and projects.

 Make students critical users of electronic resources.

 Provide students with addresses of major historical indices, libraries, archives, and
museums.

DON'T…
 Eliminate books and printed material from instruction.

 Encourage blind Internet searches.

 Use technology unless it improves instruction.

 Use the Internet as an electronic worksheet for simple retrieval of factual information.

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5.3. Useful websites for ESL classrooms: online publishers, etc.

Finding a good and reliable website is not a task that can be done in a light way. As
we have seen in the previous part of this unit, teachers need to take into account
different criteria. Our students, especially in the early stages of their education, are very
easily affected by flash images and sounds, but, is that our purpose?

The following question, although obvious, needs to be revised: Do we know how to

search on the Net?

Searching efficiently consists of knowing how to scan through the million of

websites in the fastest and most effective way to find what you and your learners need.

The most popular search engines are:

Google Yahoo MSN

The task is simple: introduce the words which describe the information you
are looking for. The search engine produces a list of websites which content fits more
or less your criteria.
If you want to refine your search, you need to add some techniques:

Placing the + symbol in front of a word means that word

1
needs to be on the web page

2 Placing the - symbol in front of a word means that no web

pages with this word must be included in the results

3 Placing and OR between two words means the results must

include either words or both

Placing a phrase within double quotation marks means the

4
search engine must look for the exact phrase

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Once we are familiar with those techniques, you will need to spend some time searching
until you find what you are looking for.

If you are new to using websites in the classroom and you do not know where to start, it
is time to look at specific examples of websites teachers may find really useful for
the teaching practice:

1. Institutional websites

British Council - Kids

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/

Cambridge ESOL Teacher Support

https://www.teachers.cambridgeesol.org/ts/

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2. Publishing/Editors websites

One Stop English

http://www.onestopenglish.com/

Teachers’ club: Oxford University Press

http://elt.oup.com/teachersclub/?cc=cz&selLanguage=cs

3. Individual websites

Boogles World

http://bogglesworldesl.com/

Busy Teacher

http://busyteacher.org/

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5. 4. Internet regulation for minors and its use in the classroom

As teachers, our main role is to keep control not only

on the appropriateness of the material we see, produce
and/or search on the Internet but also to keep control
of the possible dangers our students may face when
surfing the Net. We need to remember that Internet is
a potential environment for everybody, but especially
for our young learners.

When navigating the Net, teachers should be aware that students can get access to
material which is not suitable for the classroom, or it may link to spam or
links not suitable for our students. To avoid this, there are two ways of
approaching this issue, according to Gavin Dudeney in his book The Internet and the
Language Classroom:

The Software Approach The Practical Approach

1. The Software Approach

Using several and varied tools/programs to filter content and images. Pages
are analysed and checked for a certificate issued by an authority before they are
displayed. These certificates gives information about what kind of content they websites
have and the audience it is suitable for. Other programs checked for words in a
database (usually related to sexism, racism or violence). These databases are pre-
configured with a set of words but users can add their own as well.

The software usually used is the following:

SurfWatch NetNanny CyberPatrol CyberSitter

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As well as these ones, in recent years antivirus software have included especially
designed applications to protect children from the dangers of Internet surfing at home.

At this point, you should weigh the difference between censorship, restriction and
trust. Use your common sense and make sure you visit pages your students will find
free of danger. Thus, before using a new website you encounter on the Net, assess the
way your students may feel about it and the contents they will se, as we have learnt in
the previous parts in this topic.

2. The Practical Approach

Measures you can take to ensure your students are using the equipment in the right
way and just for educational purposes:

Make your students understand the equipment is a tool to be used and

appreciated, not to be abused or to be used to abuse others.
You are the only person setting up passwords.
Scan the equipment searching for .jpg or .gif images.
Configure emails, if you use it in the late stages of Primary Education, to reject
messages over a certain length.
Watch out for students laughing or giggling nervously when working with the
computer.
Watch out for computer suddenly crashing or re-starting when you approach.
Check the browser’s temporary Internet Files directory for suspicious files.
Involve the IT department in the supervision of Net services.

In Spain, through INCIBE (Instituto Nacional de Ciberseguridad) online safety

is defined and regulated in order to warn parents, students and teachers in the dangers
and risks of Internet surfing.

https://www.incibe.es/

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In Depth

Using Web-Based Language Learning Activities in the ESL Classroom

Jeong-Bae, Son. “Using Web-Based Language Learning Activities in the ESL

Classroom”. International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, 4 (4), pp. 34-43.
August 2008.

This article looks at ways of using Web-based language learning (WBLL) activities and
reports the results of a WBLL project that developed a Web site as a supplementary
resource for teaching English as a second language (ESL) and tested the Web site with a
group of students in an ESL context.

The article is available in the virtual classroom or in the following link:

http://www.apacall.org/ijpl/v4n4/IJPLv4n4_article3.pdf

Teaching in the Digital Age

Naomi Moir, an Oxford University Press Teacher Trainer, talks about the use of
technology in the English language classroom.

The video is available in the virtual classroom or in the following link:

http://youtu.be/zqBr7Q6ai4E

UNIT 5 – In Depth
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The Internet TESL Journal for Teachers of English as a Second Language

The Internet TESL Journal published articles from 1995 through 2010. This website is
now an online resource book for teachers who can refer to our published articles on
teaching techniques and other things of interest to EFL and ESL teachers.

The information is in the virtual classroom or in the following link:

http://iteslj.org/

BETTER INTERNET FOR KIDS

Insafe is a European network of Awareness Centre promoting safe, responsible use of

the Internet and mobile devices to young people.

https://www.betterinternetforkids.eu/

UNESCO, ICT in Education

The UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE), based in

Moscow, specializes in information exchange, research and training on the integration
of ICT in education while UNESCO’s Bangkok office is strongly involved in ICT for
Education in Asia and the Pacific.

https://iite.unesco.org/

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Free Technology for Teachers

Free resources and lesson plans for teaching with technology. Written by Richard
Byrne.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

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Test

1. Surfing the Net is safe as there is no danger for our young learners.
A. True. You can leave your students working alone on the Internet.
B. False. There are always danger and you need to “police” not only what they do
when working online but also check the websites you may visit to do the
activities.

2. The criteria to follow when assessing a website:

A. Accuracy and Functionality.
B. Currency and Content
C. All the above

3. For both teachers and students, searching on the Net is a solitary exercise:
A. Working in groups and doing pairwork on the computer/Net enhance
collaborative work and improves oral communication in our students.
B. Teachers may find useful and fast sharing material, resources and impressions if
they collaborate when and how to use technology.
C. All the above.

4. Teachers …
A. Must eliminate any printed material from the class. They are old-fashioned.
B. Use Internet as the only resource in class, no matter what we are teaching, how
and where.
C. Incorporate technology into lessons when it makes instruction better.

5. The computers or computer lab do not need special software to filter websites:
A. True. Children are mature enough not to enter not appropriate websites.
B. False. We may have special software to help us to keep under control what our
students see on the Net as well as our guidelines and help.

UNIT 5 – Test