Teacher Training

Integrated Use of Internet in ELT

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by Mirjana Ljiljak-Vukajlović
DOS at Lingva Language School - Valjevo

The workshop was held in the British Council Belgrade on 8 November 2003 to a group of 17 EL teachers from both state and private schools, and of mixed skills in CALL and the use of Internet – whereas most of them used teacher resources downloaded from the Inernet, only a few have conducted classes with direct use of the Internet by students. The event was officially opened by Nevenka Aleksic, Assistant Director of the British Council Belgrade, and Gordana Gaj, Chair of ELTA, who pointed out that this was the first activity of the newly formed association of English language teachers of Serbia and Montenegro, supported by the British Council. A representative of the American embassy, Vukica Stankovic, Cultural Affairs Consultant Assistant, who kindly presented each participant with an ELT Internet manual, also took an active part in the workshop.

The aim of the workshop was to present possible uses of the Internet as a resource integrated in developing language skills in students of different age. Teachers were shown how students motivation can be increased by extending the available teaching media. The suitability of the
Internet in implementing topic-based and cross-curricular approach and in the development of lexicon was also demonstrated. Participants were shown how the Internet can be teacher friendly.

Activities

The workshop consisted of two 90 minute sessions; the first covering the Internet use in Primary and Secondary, and the other in Young Adult and Adult ELT teaching.
The sessions included various aspects of integrating the Internet: Using ready-made lesson plans and materials and creating their own for cross-curricular web search and presentation/reporting, using students' creativity to make interactive teaching aids, developing an electronic class/school portfolio, authoring programs for creating interactive cross-curricular quizzes or grammar and vocabulary exercises, and guided search of domestic sites to improve skills in presenting/reporting on students' own environment.

Evaluation

The workshop was evaluated on a five point scale (excellent, very good, good, bad, very bad). Its content was rated as excellent by 14 participants (82%) and very good by 3 (18%). !3 participants (76%) thought that the workshop organisation was excellent and 4 (24%) that it was very good.
In the specific comments, even though some of the participants expressed doubts whether all teachers would be willing to use it in their class, most teachers stated that the workshop was helpful and applicable, that it was motivating, interesting and well-organized as it presented useful ideas that could be used in the classroom. One of the teachers without any CALL experience wrote that it is ''very revealing and that it encourages reluctant teachers to use the Internet'' and another concluded the following: ''Three hours ago I knew that computers could be used but I didn't know how. Now I do''. One of the teachers who are familiar with CALL and the use of the Internet stated that it was ''Very useful, practical. I'm looking forward to using and applying all the content of this workshop in my classes''.
As regards suggestions for future work the majority of participants look forward to attending follow-up or similar seminars in the future. The topics that were stated as the most interesting ones for the future events are making of power-point presentations and creating web-sites.

Conclusion

It can be stated that all of the above stated aims were met, ie the participants were instructed in the basic Internet skills of searching and downloding, demonstrated the ease of using an authoring program for interactive exercises and shown how this vast material can be integrated in developing language skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening. The participants were also given soft and hard copies of ready-made lesson plans and a Power Point project assignment that can be directly used in the classroom.

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