|
The ICT4LT website is a free collection of training modules in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for Language Teachers, the outcome of a project originally funded by the European Commission. All the training modules are continually revised and updated. Please note: ICT4LT is not a full-blown course, and you cannot register as a student, but feedback is welcomed and will be carefully considered as we continually revise the contents of the modules. The ICT4LT website is now maintained on a voluntary basis with zero funding, so please do not approach us with requests for financial support. If you wish to send us feedback on any aspect of the ICT4LT site or ask specific questions relating to ICT and language learning and teaching, use our online feedback form by clicking here: Feedback. Contents
|
The EUROCALL website The ATW website The Sites for Teachers website
|
|
Who are we?Five institutions were responsible for developing the ICT4LT website:
*The CTICML has now closed. The University of Hull continues to host the ICT4LT website, but the CTICML resources have now been relocated at three different websites:
Scroll over to the right for information on the original members of the ICT4LT team.
Aims of the ICT4LT project ICT4LT is a transnational project that addresses the needs of European language teachers, based on information gathered over several years and a detailed needs analysis conducted in 1998 by the University of Hull and CILT. The original aim of the ICT4LT project was to design a syllabus and to provide Web-based training materials in ICT for teachers of Modern Foreign Languages. This aim has now been achieved. The project builds upon a number of national
and EC-funded projects which the partners have successfully completed,
in particular the New Technologies Sub-Group of the Thematic Network
Project (TNP1) in the Area of Languages, which was initiated by the
European Language Council: Two members of the ICT4LT project team, Peppi
Taalas and Graham Davies, were participants in the SOCRATES-funded
TALLENT project, coordinated by Angela Chambers, University of Limerick.
For further details see the TALLENT website at: See also Jeannette Littlemore's report on the
TALLENT course delivered at Birmingham University in 2001: Littlemore,
J. (2002) "Setting up a course in ICT for Language Teachers: some
essential considerations", CALL-EJ Online, 4 (1): Philosophy
of the ICT4LT project Target
audience It must be emphasised that ICT4LT is not an introductory course to Information and Communications Technology. Such courses are already available, e.g.
Entry levelThe ICT4LT website materials are aimed primarily at practising or aspiring language teachers, but the site is also relevant to a range of occupations concerned with languages and communication. It is expected that most visitors to the site will have qualifications that include a foreign language and a basic knowledge of ICT, i.e. including:
See the ICT_Can_Do_Lists document, which will help you assess the development of your ICT skills, experience and understanding. Access to the ICT4LT website is free of charge to all visitors and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Questionnaire and ICT "can do" lists Questionnaire When we initiated this project we designed a questionnaire for visitors to the website to help them to analyse their own situation and their ICT training needs. The questionnaire is still available here: Questionnaire. We are no longer gathering data about visitors to the ICT4LT website, but the questionnaire may help you identify your training needs. We are still interested in your views on the site: Feedback. A downloadable Word document containing a set of "can do" lists was added to this site in June 2002: ICT_Can_Do_Lists. It is designed for:
The ICT4LT blogVisit the ICT4LT blog at: Learning tasks and discussion topics Learning tasks and discussion topics play a major role in the ICT4LT website. Learning tasks and discussion topics are inserted at appropriate points in each module. If you wish to air your views, ask questions or discuss the materials posted at this website, please use the Feedback form. You may also consider initiating a discussion in one of the following discussion lists: EUROCALL: Linguanet Forum: Currently, the ICT4LT website is not intended to be a full-blown course in which participants submit assignments for marking by tutors, but it may be possible for a member of the ICT4LT team to run a workshop at your institution, focusing on one or more of the ICT4LT training modules. Ask us and we may be able to help: Feedback. Working on- and offline: reading from the screen Web guru Jakob Nielsen writes:
See also the references in Section 3.3, Module 3.2. For this reason, the Web is unlikely to replace the book as a means of presenting text. This is not to say that text on the Web is a bad thing. The Web is superb as a means of delivering text to its readers - which is one of the principal aims of the ICT4LT website - and it is quicker to search the Web for information than visiting your local library: see Module 1.5 and Module 2.3. It was interesting to read the story in The Times (29 November 2000, p. 9) headed King leaves Internet readers in suspense. Stephen King decided not to complete his Internet novel The Plant because - according to King - "it failed to grab the attention of readers on the Web". King found that a surprisingly high proportion of the readers accessing his site (75%-80%) made the "honesty payment" for being allowed to download chapters: "But", he said, "there are a lot fewer of them coming. Online people have the attention span of a grasshopper." The article points out "that digital publishing has a bleak future because it is an unattractive medium for reading long texts and it is difficult to stop breach of copyright". See: http://www.stephenking.com You should therefore not feel guilty about printing out any of the pages at this site and sitting down in a comfortable armchair in order to read them. It's the sensible thing to do - and better for your eyes. To print a page, just use the File/Print facility in your browser. Copyright issuesIf you download or print a copy of any material from the ICT4LT site, please pay due respect to copyright. See the ICT4LT Copyright notice at the foot of this page and on all other pages at this site, and see our General guidelines on copyright. Dead links: linkrotThe English language version of the ICT4LT
site contains around 1000 links to other sites. Checking these links
on a regular basis takes a good deal of time. Up to 5% of the links
that we list at the ICT4LT site move or disappear each month, but
we do a regular automatic link check using the excellent Xenu Link
Sleuth program, which is available free of charge at After we have identified broken links with Xenu Link Sleuth, they have to be retraced manually - mainly by backtracking to homepages and using local or global search engines, combined with a bit of intuition. If you come across a broken link and know where it has gone please let us know: Feedback. You may be able to retrieve the contents of
a dead link by entering its URL into the Web Archive (the Wayback
Machine) at http://www.archive.org A further problem that we have identified is
that domain names regularly change hands, especially when a site goes
dead. Unfortunately, this can lead to so-called cybersquatters
(see Glossary) grabbing the name and
using it for other purposes, e.g. for a site containing offensive
material. We have had two experiences of this, which Graham Davies
documents on the following Web page: Felix (2001:353) makes the following important points:
Wise words! Regarding the first of these points, we expected educational and government sites to be among the most stable. How wrong we were! In terms of stability, these are the worst offenders in our experience. Their webmasters simply cannot resist moving the furniture around every few months. Restructuring is a permanent process, it seems, and very few webmasters in educational institutions and government organisations leave clear indications of how their site has been restructured. We therefore make a special plea to these webmasters: Please leave redirection instructions at the old URLs for a period of at least six months. Commercial sites and sites managed by private individuals are likely to be the most stable in our experience. Regarding the second of Uschi Felix's points, please make sure you pay attention to copyright. Just because the material is on the Web it doesn't mean that it can be distributed freely to all and sundry. See Copyright issues. Regarding the third of Felix's points: This is where ICT4LT can help! News from the Languages ICT website (February 2007) Read the latest news about ICT and language learning at the Languages ICT website, which is maintained by CILT and the Association for Language Learning (ALL). The latest edition (February 2007) contains news about:
http://www.languages-ict.org.uk/news/ict_news_update.htm Recent publications Graham Davies, Academic Coordinator of the ICT4LT Project,
and Paul Bangs, Author of ICT4LT Module
2.5, were two of the contributors to the following publication,
which is available for downloading from the Languages ICT website: Graham Davies, Academic Coordinator of the ICT4LT Project,
gave a keynote talk at the UCALL Conference, University of Ulster
at Coleraine, June 2005, entitled Computer Assisted Language Learning:
Where are we now and where are we going? An outline of the talk
has been published on the Web: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/docs/UCALL_Keynote.htm Useful web links and bibliography Our Resource Centre contains a short
list of web links relating to ICT and Languages, as well as
a comprehensive blbliography. Graham Davies's Favourite
Websites page contains a larger list of web links that are regularly
updated: ICT4LT
website on CD-ROM General guidelines on copyyright As a reaction to numerous enquiries relating to copyright issues, we have added a page entitled General guidelines on copyright. All modules are regularly revised and updated. We are constantly looking for suggestions for new modules and revisions to existing modules. Feedback is welcomed. Visits to our site - some interesting facts Site visits: requests
for pages Order of popularity of ICT4LT modules The Glossary of Terminology and the Resource Centre are in constant demand, occupying consistently high positions along with the top five modules. These are the 16 modules in order of popularity.
The five most popular downloads
Countries of origin of our visitors - continually updated How do people find us? Using the Google and Yahoo search engines mainly,
but a number of other sites refer visitors to us. These are the sites
that regularly refer visitors to ICT4LT. You may wish to have a look
at these sites to see what they have to offer to language teachers:
Bibliographical referencing: how to refer to ICT4LT Several people have written to us asking how they should present bibliographical references to the ICT4LT site. Hard-and-fast conventions regarding the bibliographical referencing of Web pages are only slowly emerging. This is what we recommend: 1. If you refer to the English-language version of the ICT4LT website in general you should reference it thus: Davies G. (ed.) (2007) Information and Communications Technology for Language Teachers (ICT4LT), Slough, Thames Valley University [Online]. Available from: http://www.ict4lt.org [Accessed DD Month YYYY]. 2. If you refer to a particular module at the ICT4LT website, e.g. Module 1.5, you should reference it thus: Walker R., Hewer S. & Davies G. (2007) Introduction to the Internet. Module 1.5 in Davies G. (ed.) Information and Communications Technology for Language Teachers (ICT4LT), Slough, Thames Valley University [Online]. Available from: http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod1-5.htm [Accessed DD Month YYYY]. The publication date of the printed versions of Modules 1.1 to 1.5 was 1999. Modules 2.1 to 3.5 were published in their printed versions in 2000. Module 4.1 has not been printed. The Web version of every module is updated at least once a month. If you are citing the Web version of the ICT4LT site look for the revision date and information regarding copyright and bibliographical referencing at the bottom of each page. See our Copyright notice. The ICT4LT website contains numerous links to external websites containing information that we consider relevant to ICT and language learning and teaching. Some of the external sites are managed by educational institutions and some are managed by commercial enterprises. We make every effort to check that the links to external sites function correctly and we also check that the contents of the sites to which we make the links are appropriate to the aims of the ICT4LT project, but we cannot ultimately be held responsible for the contents of external websites. We will remove immediately any links to sites that are found to contain inappropriate or offensive material or to sites that appear to be in breach of copyright. If you are a website owner that does not wish a link to your site to be made, please contact us and we will remove the link. Feedback in this connection is welcomed. Felix U. (2001) Beyond Babel: language learning online, Melbourne, Language Australia. Reviewed at: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/FelixReview.htm Levy M. (1997) CALL: context and conceptualisation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Feedback If you wish to send us feedback on any aspect
of the ICT4LT website, use our online Feedback
Form or visit the ICT4LT blog
at: The Feedback Form is accessible at the bottom of every page at the ICT4LT site. Copyright noticeDocument last updated 5 May 2008. This page is maintained by Graham Davies. © ICT4LT Project 2007 under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.
The ICT4LT homepage was designed by Graham Sedgwick at Electric Easel: http://www.electriceasel.co.uk Please cite this Web
page as: You are welcome to link to the homepage of this site at http://www.ict4lt.org. Downloading or linking to any page at this site other than the homepage implies acceptance of these conditions. See also our General guidelines on copyright. |
These were the individual members of the original ICT4LT team:
Graham
Davies (formerly TVU)
Roberto
Dolci (University of Venice)
Peppi
Taalas (University of Jyväskylä)
June
Thompson (formerly CTICML)
Fred
Riley (formerly University of Hull)
Eric Brown (formerly CILT): Educational Adviser to the ICT4LT Project, Secondary Education sector.
Paul Davey (formerly CILT): ICT4LT Publications Officer. |
|