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 Who are we? Aims of the ICT4LT project Philosophy of the ICT4LT project Target audience Entry level Complete list of online modules Questionnaire and ICT "can do" lists The ICT4LT Blog Learning tasks and discussion topics Assignments and workshops Working on- and offline: reading from the screen Copyright issues Dead links: linkrot News and announcements Visits to our site - some interesting facts Bibliographical referencing: how to refer to ICT4LT Disclaimer References Feedback Copyright notice Frequently asked questions	This is a project funded under the SOCRATES Programme of the Commission of the European Communities The EUROCALL website The ATW website The Sites for Teachers website
Who are we? Five institutions were responsible for developing the ICT4LT website: Thames Valley University, UK: Coordinating Institution University of Venice, Italy: Italian version of the website University of Jyväskylä, Finland: Finnish and Swedish versions of the website CTICML, University of Hull, UK*: Needs analysis and dissemination, Higher Education CILT, UK: Needs analysis and dissemination, Secondary Education *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: EUROCALL: http://www.eurocall-languages.org/ CALL@Hull: http://www.fredriley.org.uk/call/langsite/ LLAS (Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics, and Area Studies), University of Southampton: http://www.llas.ac.uk Scroll over to the right for information on the original members of the ICT4LT team. Here's the whole team in Finland in December 1999 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: http://www.celelc.org 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: http://www.solki.jyu.fi/tallent 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): http://www.tell.is.ritsumei.ac.jp/callejonline/journal/4-1/littlemore.html Philosophy of the ICT4LT project The ICT4LT website materials have been developed by practising language teachers who have many years of experience in using a wide range of technological aids in language teaching. The approach is pedagogy driven and the emphasis is on language teaching methodologies that can be implemented successfully with the aid of new technologies. The modules include references to new teaching concepts and methodologies that have emerged from new technologies (Levy 1997). Only one purely "technical" module is included: Module 1.2. This is in response to the large number of enquiries we received about the kind of hardware and essential software required for a CALL environment. Target audience The main target audience of the ICT4LT project is language teachers already in service, although parts of the syllabus are suitable for teachers undergoing initial training and for teachers following short intensive courses. It must be emphasised that ICT4LT is not an introductory course to Information and Communications Technology. Such courses are already available, e.g. The European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL): http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.5829 The ECDL for Education, which is designed specifically to help teachers, support staff and ICT coordinators develop practical computing skills for teaching and learning in the classroom and leads to an internationally recognised level of certification: http://www.educatorsecdl.com Entry level The 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: the basics of Windows 98 or higher word-processing using a Web browser using email software 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. ICT "Can do" lists 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: Trainers, to enable them to identify trainees' strengths and weaknesses in ICT. Language teachers undergoing training, to enable them to assess the development of their own ICT skills, experience and understanding. The document covers selected generic applications (e.g. Word, browsers, email software, PowerPoint) and software applications that are particularly useful for language teachers. Under the heading for each application there is a range of essential tasks that the teacher should be able to carry out in order to feel comfortable working with the software - a so-called "can do" list. The applications and the tasks have been selected according to their usefulness for teaching foreign languages. Feedback welcomed. The ICT4LT blog Visit the ICT4LT blog at: http://ictforlanguageteachers.blogspot.com This blog was started on 22 February 2007. 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: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/eurocall-members.html Linguanet Forum: http://www.mailtalk.ac.uk/lists/linguanet-forum.html Assignments and workshops 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: Reading from computer screens is about 25% slower than reading from paper. Even users who don't know this human factors research usually say that they feel unpleasant when reading online text. Be Succinct! Writing for the Web, Alertbox for March 15, 1997: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html 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 issues If 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: linkrot The 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 http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html We mention the topic of broken links in Section 6.3.3, Module 3.3. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as linkrot (see Glossary). Linkrot is a growing disease: see Jakob Nielsen (1998) Fighting Linkrot at: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980614.html 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 This enormous archive keeps records of revisions of websites at various stages in their lives. It is not 100% complete, but we have found it to be remarkably efficient at recovering old documents that we thought had been lost forever. 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: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/DodgyLinks.htm Our research indicates that this is a growing problem. We check all links when we add them to this site, but constantly checking what they contain is very time-consuming. We apologise for any oversights on our part. You can help by notifying us if you discover any links that contain anything you find offensive: Feedback Felix (2001:353) makes the following important points: …care needs to be taken when other people's sites are included if malfunctions are to be avoided. We therefore suggest the following precautions: Only stable and frequently updated resources are worth considering. If they are used frequently, the possibility of downloading the entire resource on a local intranet or creating mirror sites should be negotiated with the author. Teachers need to be fully versed in the use of the resources. 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 and announcements 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: BECTA's report (2007) on the Impact of ICT in schools QCA report (2007) on The use of ICT for teaching and learning languages a review of the 2007 BETT Show ...and much more. 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: Davies G., Bangs P., Frisby R. & Walton E. (2005) Setting up effective digital language laboratories and multimedia ICT suites for Modern Foreign Languages, London: CILT: http://www.languages-ict.org.uk/managing/digital_language_labs.pdf 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 The keynote has been presented at two other venues and has been recently updated. 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: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/websites.htm ICT4LT website on CD-ROM A CD-ROM version of the ICT4LT website is available. The CD-ROM contains the complete current English language version of the site, offering instant access to the ICT4LT resources when an Internet connection is not available. Click here for further details: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/ict4lt.htm 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 In the course of the last year the ICT4LT site has received an average of over 1200 page requests per day. A peak number of requests was reached in March 2007, an average of 1756 per day. 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. Module 2.2: Introduction to multimedia CALL Module 1.4: Introduction to CALL Module 2.4: Using concordance programs in the Modern Foreign Languages classroom Module 4.1 Computer aided assessment (CAA) and language learning Module 1.5: Introduction to the Internet Module 1.3: Using word-processing and presentation software in the Modern Foreign Language classroom Module 3.1: Managing a multimedia language centre Module 1.1: Introduction to new technologies Module 3.4: Corpus linguistics Module 1.2: Introduction to computer hardware and software Module 3.5: Human Language Technologies Module 3.2: CALL software design and implementation Module 2.5: Introduction to CALL authoring programs Module 2.1: CALL methodology: integrating CALL into study programmes Module 2.3: Exploiting WWW resources online and offline Module 3.3: Creating a WWW site The five most popular downloads Philippe Delcloque's History of CALL Mark Warschauer's introductory article on CALL Our general guidelines on copyright Our software and website evaluation forms Our "can do" lists: check your ICT skills 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: Our own blog: http://ictforlanguageteachers.blogspot.com Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_language_learning Thames Valley University: http://www.tvu.ac.uk/prospective/Short_courses/Online_courses.jsp ByTeachers website: http://www.byteachers.org.uk/sites.htm E-learning Europa (European Commission): http://www.elearningeuropa.info/index.php Languages ICT (CILT/ALL) website: http://www.languages-ict.org.uk BBC Languages website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/tutors/internet/nocomputer/index.shtml Fred Riley's CALL@Hull website: http://www.fredriley.org.uk/call/innovation/langs.html Language Learning & Technology online journal: http://llt.msu.edu/vol8num1/net/default.html Spartacus website: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REVlanguages.htm The Education Forum: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php Times Educational Supplement (Staffroom/Modern Languages): http://www.tes.co.uk 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. Disclaimer 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. References 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: http://ictforlanguageteachers.blogspot.com The Feedback Form is accessible at the bottom of every page at the ICT4LT site. Copyright notice Document 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: Davies G. (2007) ICT4LT Homepage. 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_home.htm [Accessed DD Month YYYY]. 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: Hamid Momtahan (formerly TVU) Coordinator of the ICT4LT Project Graham Davies (formerly TVU) Academic Coordinator of the ICT4LT Project. Editor of the English language section of the ICT4LT website: Graham's CV Roberto Dolci (University of Venice) Editor of the Italian language section of the ICT4LT website Peppi Taalas (University of Jyväskylä) Editor of the Finnish and Swedish language sections of the ICT4LT website June Thompson (formerly CTICML) Educational Adviser to the ICT4LT Project, Higher Education sector Fred Riley (formerly University of Hull) ICT4LT Website Administrator. Fred is now working at the University of Nottingham Eric Brown (formerly CILT): Educational Adviser to the ICT4LT Project, Secondary Education sector. Paul Davey (formerly CILT): ICT4LT Publications Officer.