A tutorial to accompany a Certified Professional Development Workshop delivered by Randy Gonzales at the Language Centre Annual ELT Conference 2006.

www.randygonzales.com

Objective

This workshop aims to present participants with a student-centered approach to CALL exercise development. The workshop has the dual focus of introducing participants to Internet-search activities designed to produce usable content and to giving participants the skills and tools to turn this content into corresponding CALL exercises.

Overview

Developing content for exercises can be very time consuming. The teacher has an investment in the content, but students often do not and can find the content uninteresting. Internet-search activities can be utilized to have students write exercise content and gain an investment in that content. In this workshop, participants will learn about different search activities and will do an activity, going through the process to create an html product. The workshop will also expose participants to a variety of CALL exercises, including some designed to correspond with particular search activities. Participants will be taught how to create exercises with the provided html-based generators and will create their own CALL exercises.

The Activities


This workshop focuses on three Internet search activities, "Internet Shopper," "BioData," and "Quiz Question," that were originally designed for false beginners. These search activities were designed with some basic principles in mind.

  • The activity's processes should be clear and focused.
  • The activity should have a goal that is attainable.
  • The students must be allowed to make choices regarding their searches.
These principles can be applied to any activity, but are especially important when designing activities that use the Internet since students can easily lose focus and wander away from the activity. Designing Internet-based activities can be difficult since the content students access is beyond the teacher's control. Therefore, it is important to choose websites carefully when designing an activity, and when possible to limit the websites students are required to access. You should identify websites that:
  • have predictable content
  • have a uniform display
  • have enough content to give students choices
  • have authentic up-to-date content
  • are active

Internet Shopper BioData Quiz Questions
Content students will encounter product information and prices biographical data factual information
Websites used amazon.com or bn.com answers.com / google.com answers.com / google.com
Goals of the activities gather prices from an online venue gather biographical data for a famous person and complete an html template create a multiple-choice quiz from information gathered on the Internet
Skills used to complete the activity typing, scanning typing, interpreting searches, scanning, reading typing, interpreting searches, scanning, reading
Computer skills required to complete the activity browser control browser control, html editing browser control
Students should have the Internet skills to perform simple searches on a single website. a simple search with a single search engine. multiple searches and to identify relevant search results.

The Exercises


Each activity has a corresponding exercise that was designed to give simple practice in a target area. The following table identifies the targeted skill, focus and goal of each of these exercises.

 
Exercise Comparison Shopping ParaMatch QWord Quiz
Skill Grammar Reading Grammar
Focus Comparatives Model biographical paragraphs Question words
Goal compare the gathered prices to those of Good Deals match sentences to a person in order to create biographical paragraphs identify question words and answer quiz questions

Evaluation


The following table evaluates the activities on the authenticity of content; on the level teachers can predict content and control processes; and the level of difficulty students face in completing the different tasks.

Internet Shopper BioData Quiz
high med. low high med. low high med. low
Use of authentic content      
Instructor's ability to predict type of content students will encounter        
Instructor's control of  processes      
Degree to which students can successfully complete the activity with basic English skills      
Degree to which students can successfully complete the activity with basic computer skills        
Degree to which students can complete the activity with basic Internet skills        
Degree to which students can successfully complete the exercise with basic English skills