Стаценко Олена Миколаївна

Сумський національний аграрний університет, Україна

The Internet as a Resource Bank and a Classroom Tool

With this search techniques, and contact with other teachers through email, you should be getting pointers to great resources on a regular basis, and this should really be giving you some idea as to just how much useful material there is out there. Here's a quick word about saving a little time when looking for foreign language resources in particular.

As teachers have been working with the Net for quite some time now, they have both developed their own sites full of useful material, and come across many others made by colleagues around the world. If you are looking for useful foreign language sites, it makes sense to see if anyone else knows where they are before setting off on a journey through AltaVista, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. With this in mind, here are three addresses where you will find a lot of links to language resources on the Net.

Dave's ESL Cafe - http://www.eslcafe.com

Apart from having plenty of useful sections itself, Dave's ESL Cafe has an enormous collection of links to EFL resources on the Web. It's a big site, so make sure you have a lot of spare time before digging under the surface.

its-online - http://its-online.com

its-online is a web-based magazine full of excellent lesson ideas, discussion pages and links to resources in many categories.

Net Language - http://www.net-language.com

Net Language has a large collection of pages devoted to language learning resources on the Internet. They are divided by language, and then into useful sections.

Any school which has a handful of computers can very easily and cheaply connect them to the Internet. Not only does this make it easier for teachers to gain access, but it also gives them the opportunity of introducing students to it as well. This opens up a world of possibilities as far as teaching goes from giving students access to the 'world knowledge' they often don't have putting them in touch with other students of the same language around the world, taking part in collaborative projects on a global scale, to sending their homework to their teacher by email.

But all this technology can also spell disaster in the wrong hands, or in the wrong circumstances. This article is a brief look at some of the considerations involved in using computers and the Internet in schools and some tips to follow for a smoother experience.

Before you take your students along to do any class based around the Web or email, you should be very sure that you know the technology yourself. Hopefully, you have spent some time experimenting with the Net, you'll be feeling confident enough to introduce your students to it. Remember, apart from introducing your students to the Net, you may also be introducing them to basic computing skills as well. Before you start them on any kind of structured class, make sure they knew how to start and shut down the computers, how to run a program, even how to move the mouse round the screen, point and click. However you do it - and you may find that you want to combine it with basic word processing skills -you must make sure that they are relaxed and unafraid to try things out.

An Internet class needs to be as well-planned and structured as any other class. You must go through the material in advance and make sure that the language, content and presentation are what you want for your class. In adoption to all these considerations, there are some other skills and points -perhaps not quite the normal language teacher preoccupations - which need to be taken into account. It is rare for there to be one Internet-connected computer for every student in the class. As a general guide, one computer per three students works well for most Internet class activities, with each student taking a turn at 'driving'. For email penpal exchanges, one between two is better, and both students can be occupied at the same time by one dictating as the other types. Actually, it is often a bad idea to have one student per computer as this tends to discourse or inhibit conversation.

The archives of TESL-L for more information on TESL-1 have plenty of resources and records of past discussions dealing with ideal classroom layouts and classroom management techniques. Included in this part are two sample computer room layouts and considerations of their advantages and disadvantages.

Layout one has students working on a central table, with the teacher at the end equipped with a whiteboard and an overhead display of what they are doing, for students to follow. This has to be a reasonably big room with a table which allows for enough space between computers for books, dictionaries, etc. The biggest disadvantage to this layout is that students cannot readily see the people opposite them.

Layout two has students working round the outside of the room, then swinging in on their chairs to work together with books, dictionaries, etc. and to get instruction from the teacher. While this layout provides a clear break between computer time and time spent on other activities (and stops people 'fiddling' when the teacher wants more control), it is difficult for every student to see the teacher at any given time.

As I pointed out at the beginning of this article, Internet access can be very slow at certain times of the day. It's important to know this, as it can help you prepare for your classes better. If, for instance, you are going to do a class which involves lots of multimedia elements such as video clips and sound files, it makes sense to download them in the morning, and save them on your hard disk. Later, when you need to use them, you won't have to rely on having a fast connection because they will be stored on your computer.

To save (rather than view online) a multimedia file such as a video or audio selection, click on it with your right mouse button and choose the Save target as... option, then choose a directory on your computer and click OK. Remember where you save it!

Both Netscape and Explorer perform a function called caching. What this means is that when you visit a website, all the pages and images are automatically stored on your hard disk (you can see these files in the C:\Netscape\cache\ directory on your hard disk, if you are using Netscape or in the C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files directory, if you are using Explorer). These pages are stored for a certain amount of time (specified in days), or until they reach a certain size (in megabytes). You can change these settings to suit your browsing habits for more information on how to set these).

When you go to a website, the first thing your browser does is see if it has the site saved in its cache - if it does, it displays it instantly. Then it goes and has a quick look at the original site to see if anything has changed - if that is the case, it updates the changed elements. If it can't find the site at all in its cache, it will perform its usual job of retrieving it from the Internet.

What this means to you is that if you visit the sites you want your students to visit just before the class starts, they will all be saved in the cache. When your students return to these sites a short while later, they will all come up much quicker than if they had to go and get them over the Net. Inevitably your students will want to branch out and visit sites you haven't stored in the cache, but even a little preparation helps.

There is little point planning an Internet class around a particular website unless you are sure that the site in question has a good pedigree and has been in existence for quite some time. While most professional websites are reliable and long-lasting, you may find the perfect site for a class, only to discover three days later that this site no longer exists. This usually only happens with personal homepages, but it has been known to happen with larger sites. The secret is to find two or three sites which deal with the same theme, leaving the lesson plan adaptable. Then if the site that you really want to use is not working, or has disappeared, you'll always have a back-up.