Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi there! I'm planning on making some ESL activities for online use, and was hoping to get some input on educational technology from those using it in the classroom, regardless of the age of your students and not limited to the free stuff online.

I'm looking for great CDROMs and/or downloadable software that you currently use in your classroom. What are you using with your young learners and/or your adults?

Can you share why you like it?

When it comes to computer games/activities, what sort of skills do you look to practice? Does the software you're currently using utilise those skills?

Do you employ communicative techniques when you use the software?

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts.

I think despite all the buzzwords like "interactive" and "communicative", computers can't really do much in the way of input except for matching mouse clicks, text input to preset answers, and a few can recognise short, set, scripted verbal phrases.

What computers are good for is controlling media. Whether you're using audio, text or video, they're great for students to do in-depth listening, reading or watching and checking their comprehension.

So far, most of what I've seen only tests students and I don't think that the people writing this software have really got to grips with the idea of using it for teaching/training/informing them, apart from obvious stuff like electronic "flash-cards" with pronunciation exercises.

"Rosetta Stone" comes close to actually teaching but it's prohibitively expensive.

The BBC has some great stuff for upper-intermediate and advanced students. It's well worth checking out.

I've managed to create a few "teaching" interactions in Flash but I'm still working on coming up with something really good for teaching English to students. They work well for practice and testing with immediate feedback and I've seen a fantastic dictation exercise on New English File Intemediate's CD-ROM but I don't think teachers are gonna lose their jobs any time soon!