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school library, or even single computers located inside individual
classrooms.
However, such ideal Internet access through computer labs in education
is not uniform. Internet access tends to be greater in developed nations
than in developing nations, and within developed nations accessibility
tends to be greater in more a<uent urban areas than in less a<uent
outlying areas (see Murray 1999). As a goal for the future, educators such
as Murray have called for the Internet to be made much more widely
accessible to educators and their students, and an immense number of
educational authorities have already taken action towards this goal.
Widespread access to the Internet in education may not be unrealistic.
Whereas that level of Internet access in private homes may be decades
away (think about access to telephones and electricity, both basic
technologies that Internet access depends on), widespread, even
universal, access to the Internet in education is already an educational
reality in some areas. For data on Internet access in public and private
schools in the U.K., see the Department of Education and Skills’ latest
ICT Survey at http://www.dfes.gov.uk, and for data on access in public and
private schools in the U.S.A., see the National Center for Education
Statistics http://nces.ed.gov. In fact, when considering the low percentages
of the world’s population that have Internet access through computers in
private homes (worldwide 9.57%; United States 59.1%; United Kingdom
56.88%; Australia 54.38%; Spain 19.69%, according to data retrieved
from NUA Internet Surveys, http://www.nua.ie, on September 1 2002),
the data for access to the Internet through educational institutions and
other public facilities, such as public libraries and community centres,
o=ers a much brighter picture. The schools and other public services
function as levelling devices that put all citizens, including students, on
the same playing >eld: many schools and other public institutions
provide students with technology that they would otherwise not be able to
access.
Computer lab In spite of this optimistic view, another issue that is becoming more
availability prominent as Internet access becomes more widespread is the
availability of the technology. Even though a school or educational
institution may have ideally-connected computer labs, these facilities
may not be available to all teachers and students in a similarly ideal way.
Teachers of English, for example, may experience scheduling difficulties,
since many of these labs may not match class sizes, and therefore be
complicated to use. There are no statistics on computer lab availability vs.
accessibility, but anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that problematic
computer lab availability negatively a=ects teachers’ and students’ use of
Internet-connected computers located in school labs. I hope to help
practising classroom English teachers overcome both accessibility and
availability limitations of the situations in which they teach by outlining
networking possibilities using outside computers.
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Outside computers The Internet o=ers >ve basic possibilities for the networking English
and the Internet classroom:
Real-time communication with other network users (using the
Internet as a telephone or video conferencing device, Internet Relay
Chat, and others)
Deferred-time communication with other network users (email,
mailing lists, newsgroups, and others)
Source of information (text, images, voice, and sound, especially on
the World Wide Web)
Outlet for publication (text, images, voice, sound, especially on the
World Wide Web)
Distance teaching/learning.
Where computer facilities are unavailable for use during class time, the
Internet can still be used for information collection, publication, and
deferred-time communication. Computers may be available either inside
the school, in the form of walk-in computer labs, self-access study areas,
and the school library, or outside school in local public libraries,
community centres, or even in students’ homes.
Activities using These activities displace the physical presence of the student in front of
outside computers an Internet-connected computer in the computer lab during English
class time to Internet-connected computers outside the classroom and
class time. Students do all pre-computer and post-computer parts of the
activity in the classroom, while the on-computer parts of the activities
take place outside the classroom and class time. In all cases, students use
the Internet outside the classroom as a text-based means of acquiring
information (for example, gathering data about a certain topic, and
receiving emails) or as a text-based means of sharing information (for
example, sending emails and setting up web sites). They will also use the
English classroom for reading, writing, and talking about the texts.
Students should always work in small groups or pairs, and all pre- and
post-computer classroom work should involve talking about the text(s)
they read or write. Talking about the text(s) in pairs or small groups
allows students to develop a combined sort of literacy that not only
involves reading and writing, but also critical thinking, and a healthy
sense of purpose.
All of the following approaches are ideally suited for students aged 16
and up, at intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced levels. The
amount of class time needed varies from activity to activity, but as a
general rule most activities require between 8 and 10 hours of class time
to complete.
Activity one In this activity students conduct research on the Web using outside
computers, and bring into the classroom authentic data for speci>c class
projects or speci>c topics being studied in class.
When doing project work, or when studying content-based units,
students can supplement the material available in their textbook, the
school library, or other traditional sources, by gathering information
from the Internet. This type of research and data collection is especially
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meaningful and motivating when studying cultural contents, such as
current events, trends, and new developments in technology.
Essentially, this is a reading and writing activity, the objectives of which
are to >nd high quality relevant information for the project or topic, and
to rewrite the information. This activity assumes that the entire class is
conducting a project on a single theme, or studying a single topic. In the
class period before the next unit, ask your students to access the Internet
outside the classroom and (see Eastment’s guidelines below) print out
the best and most relevant material they >nd. If printing the information
is problematic, you can suggest other options for recording the material,
such as copying the text in longhand, or recording it aloud on a cassette
as they read. Ask students who have no access to Internet-connected
outside computers, or who would prefer not to use them, to gather data
from traditional sources of information, and to bring into the classroom
photocopies or other recordings of traditional material they have found.
In this way, all students will be equally involved in the information-
gathering stage, and no group of students will be singled out for either
additional work or additional learning opportunities.
In the classroom, the students now take the information they have
gathered, whether from the Internet or from traditional sources, and
make the information available to the other students by making wall
displays, writing reports, or making oral presentations in pairs or small
groups. The information on the walls, in the reports, or in the oral
presentations, then becomes available to all of the students to integrate
into the context of the class project or topic. Evaluation of this activity
would be based on the quality and relevance of the information they have
found, and how well they have rewritten the information for the wall
displays, reports, or presentations.
You must remind your students that it is standard academic practice to
identify their Internet sources properly by citing the name of the web
sites, the authors of the texts, the url addresses, and the date when they
retrieved the material. You must also speci>cally teach them to search for
quality web material at all times. Eastment suggests that every web site
and web page should be accurate, authoritative (‘Is it clear who wrote the
page and is there an email address for contact?’), current, and well-
presented (2001: 102). Students using these guidelines will be able to
>nd high-quality relevant material.
Activity two Here, students create a class web site, by determining web site content in
the classroom, and uploading the content from outside computers.
Just as web sites on the Internet provide extraordinarily attractive
authentic material for research and data collection, putting one’s own
web site on the Internet is also meaningful and motivating. Bicknell
(1999) has shown that current software and a little programming know-
how make creating a web site a very feasible activity.
Essentially, this is a writing activity, the objective of which is to create a
high quality class web site that other peer classrooms may >nd relevant
for gathering information, or for contacting your class by email. First,
have the whole class plan the web site content areas. Each of these
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content areas will be assigned a clickable button on the front page of the
web site. They may include an introduction to the class and the web site,
biographies of class members and the teacher, reports on recent
classroom projects, creative writing, humorous cartoons, jokes,
anecdotes, news stories about the school and your local area, contests,
trivia questions, quizzes, links to other web sites, a call for other classes
to contact yours by email, and so on. As a whole-classroom activity, have
your students brainstorm ideas and select an equal number of content
areas as the number of pairs or small groups you plan to break them up
into. Once the whole class has determined the exact content areas,
students working in pairs or small groups write a text for the area they
have been assigned.
When the web site contents have been completed, have one or several
students volunteer to do the technical part of the activity, i.e. the actual
o=-line web site design and the uploading of the site onto a free on-line
web site provider such as http://www.geocities.com. Have these students
include a counting instrument to see how many visits they get, and a
guest book to allow visitors to comment on the web site. Once the web
site is uploaded, have all the students make a ?ow chart of the web site
for the classroom wall. Their work will be evaluated on the quality and
relevance of the information they have decided to put on the web site,
how well they have written the information for it, and the ?ow chart
posted on the classroom wall. Students should be reminded that once the
site has been uploaded it is open for visits 24 hours a day from any
Internet-connected computer in the world. The content areas can be
changed or updated periodically throughout the year by simply repeating
the above activity for new content.
Though all students are involved in planning the web site content, and in
creating the web site ?ow chart, the student(s) who volunteer to design
the site and upload it onto the Internet may be perceived either as being
burdened with an unfair amount of work, or as gaining an additional
learning opportunity. In order to avoid this perceived imbalance, the
pair/group roles could be reassigned in an alternate way. Rather than
having all student pairs/groups—including the student(s) who will later
design and upload the web site—work exclusively on web site content in
the classroom, student(s) who will work on the web site design and the
uploading on an outside computer could be allowed to use the class time
to circulate from group to group, advising each of them on how to
approach the content area so that it will be technically viable and
attractive to visitors. In this way, the designing and uploading by
student(s) would not be overly burdened with writing content, and with
doing the technical part of the activity. While not having a direct
involvement with the computer side of the activity, groups working on
content only would none the less feel truly engaged, and would bene>t
from the know-how of the Internet student(s).
Activity three Students can correspond with ‘keypal ’ classrooms by email, or write
emails to individual experts, leaders, or webmasters, using the classroom
for writing the texts and outside computers for sending them.
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6. Page 10.qxd 11/19/2003 9:19 AM Page 15
Email is the Internet function which has been most used in English
classrooms, and is commonly considered to be the most valuable
approach to second language acquisition (see Warschauer 1995). One of
the most fruitful things you can do with email is to organize an email
(keypal) exchange, or to make inquiries of experts, leaders, or
webmasters. These are essentially writing and reading activities, the
objectives of which are to initiate and maintain a written correspondence
with a keypal classroom, or if possible to make an inquiry of an expert,
leader, or webmaster.
You can set up a keypal exchange fairly easily through an organization
such as Intercultural Email Classroom Contacts at http://www.iecc.org, or
through the call for other classes to contact yours by email on your
classroom web site (see Activity two above). Once you have found a
partner classroom, you will have to co-ordinate the exchange carefully
with the other teacher. You and your partner teacher will have to divide
your classes into the same number of groups, have each group open up
an exchange-speci>c email address on a free server such as
<http://www.hotmail.com> on an outside computer, and begin to
exchange these email addresses with each other. Then, in the classroom,
each group will write the text of an email to a keypal group. The emails
should be short (75–100 words maximum) and contain not only
information statements but also questions. Then, from an outside
computer, each group will send the email (and a carbon copy to you for
evaluation purposes) to its corresponding keypal group. In order to
lighten the load of the Internet-connected students, who have to type the
email message on the outside computer, you can have students share the
burden of typing by dividing up the task. Students who have access to a
computer of practically any kind outside the classroom, whether it is
connected to the Internet or not, can type out the email message and
store it on diskette for the Internet-connected students simply to cut and
paste into the body of an email. The students voluntarily access the
Internet outside of the classroom to check the exchange address at an
agreed periodic interval, and to bring these emails into class. Try to
continue the email exchange throughout the school year.
Your students can also consult experts, leaders, and webmasters, by
writing them emails in relation to class projects or speci>c topics being
studied in the classroom. You can ask your students to come up with a
list of relevant names and email addresses of scientists, politicians, or
webmasters, by voluntarily searching the web outside the classroom (see
Activity three). Then, in the classroom, each pair or small group writes a
text containing one or more inquiries, and one member of each pair or
small group voluntarily sends the email message (again, with a carbon
copy to you) from an outside computer. They can set up a speci>c email
address for this, as above, or they can use the volunteer’s personal email
address. Although the people these inquiries are addressed to are often
very busy, they are generally responsive, so each email message should
be kept very short, and contain very speci>c questions. The students
voluntarily access the Internet outside of the classroom to check for
email replies, and then bring them into class. The original inquiries, and
any replies received, can then be posted on the classroom walls for
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7. Page 10.qxd 11/19/2003 9:19 AM Page 16
everyone to have access to the information they contain, as in Activity
one. Students should follow up with a courtesy ‘thank you’ message.
In both of the above cases, students are evaluated on the quality of their
written emails, and on how well they understand the replies received
from their keypals, experts, leaders, and webmasters.
Caveats This series of guidelines assumes that teachers have a reliable
connection to the Internet, and feel comfortable using the Internet
themselves. Teachers should always be able to do the exercises they ask
their students to do, and so, at a minimum, they should have such basic
knowledge as how to conduct information searches on the web, how to
set up a web site, and how to send and receive email.
Before proposing these activities, which require the accessibility and
availability of outside Internet-connected computers, teachers should
assess what realistic possibilities are at their students’ disposal. If you
suspect that students stand a very low chance of using outside
computers, you should suggest activities using outside computers only
as a complement to classroom activities otherwise based on traditional
classroom resources, and on traditional outside sources of information
and communication. Using these exercises in such a complementary
fashion, teachers and students who work and live in areas of the world
where access to computers is very limited can still bene>t from some of
these activities, particularly from Activity one and from the second
activity proposed in Activity three. In any case, you should always ensure
that students are aware of the time and resource demands that they may
assume in doing these activities, and remind them that while their use of
outside computers is always voluntary, classroom participation is
mandatory.
One of the main problems with information available on the World Wide
Web is that there is no control over information quality. Therefore, as I
have mentioned above, students should check on the quality of the
information provided on any given web site, and determine the person,
entity, or organization responsible for it. Though much of the
information on the Web is very commercial, very super>cial, and of very
doubtful quality, much of the information on the Web is also of high
quality, current, and free. Distinguishing between the two is a skill that
we can foster through the application of Eastment’s guidelines, and
through the repetition of Internet-based activities, as this skill comes
with time.
Conclusions The value of the Internet for English language teaching is undeniable. As
a source of authentic material, a place for publication of material
produced in the classroom, and a tool for intercultural communication, it
is particularly useful when doing project-based and content-based work. I
hope that all practising classroom English teachers, especially those in
less-than-ideal teaching situations, will feel more encouraged to use the
Internet in their teaching. The solution proposed here—using outside
computers—and the approaches suggested here, might be a good place
to start.
Revised version received September 2002
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The Internet in every classroom? 17
