Job Discussion Forums

Serious_Fun · Joined: 28 Jun 2005 Posts: 1171 Location: terra incognita

greetings to all:

What software applications are you using in your school(s)? How are you using them?

Could you please provide age group(s) also?

thank you! Cool

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

This posts sounds vaguely familiar (and overly general).

What purposes are you referring to for software?
Teachers' PC's?
LL rooms?
CALL rooms?
Libraries?

Why do you want to know this information?

Serious_Fun · Joined: 28 Jun 2005 Posts: 1171 Location: terra incognita

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

Go to the Teacher Discussion Forums; there's a CALL forum.

Look at the links page.

Serious_Fun · Joined: 28 Jun 2005 Posts: 1171 Location: terra incognita

Serious_Fun · Joined: 28 Jun 2005 Posts: 1171 Location: terra incognita

I didn't know that this website allowed so much spam in the forums!

The "software" forum over on the Teacher's Discussion side is comical...within the first 15 threads I found 8 self-promoting posts (references to products which are developed/sold by the poster). Laughing

oh well...it was worth a try. Thanks again for the tip.

I'll stick to the Job Discussion Forums, and continue to use other teaching sites for legitimate software reviews/educator comments.

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

The software forum is not where you should go anyway. Go to the CALL forum (computer assisted language learning).

Aside from anything you glean from that, there are tons of EFL/ESL software out there -- free and for sale. Which do you want?

Serious_Fun · Joined: 28 Jun 2005 Posts: 1171 Location: terra incognita

Julieanne · Joined: 18 Mar 2004 Posts: 120

I liked to use Dillbook when I was in Mexico.

Sgt Killjoy · Joined: 26 Jun 2004 Posts: 438

On a different note, GCompris is a very good suite of learning tools. It's open source and my kids just love it. I had it on the computers for some of the younger kids in Thailand and they enjoyed it.

thelmadatter · Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 12:42 pm Post subject: other forums

The other forums dont get the traffic that this one does. I havent been over to the CALL forum for ages for exactly the reason stated... little participation.

I run the school's lab/self-access center and I will tell you to forget the Focus on Grammar series.... Despite its name, its exercises are good (with listening and reading exercises as well as grammar) but getting the workbook (to monitor and grade student work) function to well... function has been impossible.

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

It often amuses me that the main purpose of student software appears to be to allow management to exercise its control freak proclivities. The idea that a student is quite capable of monitoring his own progress is anathema to them, so you end up with bloated software that lets management micromanage how much time the students had the computer turned on.

thelmadatter · Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:41 pm Post subject: self access

I hear you Stephen but I got to face reality as the director of the lab here. Without such capability, most teachers here will not assign such a task to their students and the software sits unused. If students are not required to go the the lab, they don�t go. Most students, too, are used to having every little thing they do monitored and feel that the teachers and school are being lazy if that is not the case.

This is one of the main problems with concepts like autonomous learning (and by association self-access centers) ... culturally, most schools are just simply not ready for the pure concept as the British Council promotes.

If the software sits unused, for whatever reason, then it is useless.

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

The easiest, and probably the only, way of ensuring the students do the work is to walk around the lab and zap anything the students are looking at that is not work related. If the programs don't require access to the internet you can lock them down, though the job is far from easy in Windows. The latter won't stop them staring blankly at the screen whilst daydreaming about their girlfriend, but will marginally increase the possibility they will do something relevant.