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Web 2.0 Tools for EFL ESL Teachers This has been a pretty busy week for me, mainly because I delivered my first online technology training presentation (8th September 2009) using the Adobe Connect Pro platform. I have to thank Jürgen Wagner and Verena Heckmann, e-learning specialists at the Landesinstitut für Pädagogik and Medien in Saarbrücken Germany, for offering me this opportunity to get online and promote and share some of the technological tools and activities I believe can be so helpful to EFL and ESL teachers.

A monthly blog from EFL Classroom that gives you ideas, resources, and a place to set up your own online classroom. Links to video talks, new online resources, ongoing discussions and blogs, student-created content, ideas for current seasonal holidays, and their own Diigo Group, et al. EFL Classroom has developed well over the past year or so, and is well worth following.

The TeachingChannel has some beautiful, professionally edited videos on how to teach different things (not specific to ESL/EFL) - the techniques are what is important. Each video has discussions by the teacher, classroom shots showing the students at work, and excellent Lesson Objective and Questions to Consider in the sidebar. Very valuable for teaching training in techniques, classroom management, and ways to approach subject matter in a student-centered approach. These would all be very adaptable to ESL/EFL environments.

"Whether you are looking for teaching activities, worksheets, lessons, games, ideas or articles, you've certainly come to the right place. The pages at Teach-This.com are designed to direct you quickly and easily to the ESL/EFL teaching resource you are looking for. You will find lots of new teaching ideas and activities to keep your classes imaginative and interesting." Created by Paul Adams, this crowd-sourcing site collects lesson plans and activities from teachers and lets other teachers download pdfs and use them. Categorized roughly by themes and grammar structures, there is a lot of helpful cross-referencing. Each lesson has a designated level (intermediate, elementary, etc.) and a brief abstract. Most lessons are for teens/adult learners. It's up to you what pedagogy or approach is going to work with your students. It's free -- add your own lesson!

Thousands of online exercises and activities for all the language skills, constantly revised, improved, and added to by the geniuses, Charles & Lawrence Kelly.

This web site is for people studying English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL). There are quizzes, word games, word puzzles, proverbs, slang expressions, anagrams, a random-sentence generator and other computer assisted language learning activities.

This looks like a great FREE series of modules to develop your EFL teaching skills. From the Texas Language Technology Center. Select any of the modules, or start at the beginning and go through at your own pace.

"The Newseum displays these daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form. Some front pages may contain material that is objectionable to some visitors. Viewer discretion is advised." This would be very handy, and easy to use, for adult ESL/EFL, social studies classes, or cross-cultural study: What is considered important in each location? How is the same news story treated differently in different cities or different parts of the world? Excellent for visual learners.

This would be very useful for h.s. social studies or an adult ESL/EFL class where students can compare how the news is presented in different newspapers, or compare what is considered important in different cultures.

All videos tagged poetry in EFL Classroom 2.0. Nice additional respurces that allow students to hear as well as read poems.

ongoing student work/collaborations: This wiki contains resources for educators interested in podcasting and language learning and teaching. Although the primary focus is on English Language Teaching (EFL & ESL), it also applies to (and contains examples of) podcasting and MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) teaching and learning.

ongoing student work/collaborations

This is a nice version of Alice. You can have students conduct a chat--they type, and Alice answers orally. There is also a pull-down menu of questions and replies to use. You can allow students to "get crazy," or ask them to try to make a coherent "conversation." A nice way, potentially, to practice "polite conversation" before trying it out with a real human. From EFL Classroom 2.0.

Linked from More Poetry Resources: Videos, blogs, and other resources from EFL Classroom 2.0. Free to join. This particular link has at present 3 YouTube videos of poets reading poems. Nice to watch and listen while reading the text.

Articles, Research Papers, Lessons Plans, Classroom Handouts, Teaching Ideas & Links A huge compendium of things for students to do online, as well as articles for teachers on pedagogy and lesson plans. practical focus and strong ESL/EFL orientation. --EHS

"Here you can start thinking about what you want to do with the rest of your life. This Web site was built to help you plan for the future. What will you do after high school? Will you work? Go to college? Live in a place of your own? By using this Web site, you can plan for your future right now!" Uses polls and questionaires as well as bulletin boards for teens to communicate. Not specifically oriented to ESL/EFL, but of interest to a difficult age group.

I hate lists, but this is a good one and is categorized by subject. Not specifically for ESL/EFL.

Check out the extensive list for topics of interest to EFL/ESL teachers. These are interesting and professional-looking, each about 30-40 min. on embedded video.

These are inventive ideas for working with EFL/ESL adult learners.

"CK-12.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to education. Their website offers a large collection of resources for students and teachers like Brain Genie which I previously shared. The bulk of their resources are math and science centered where students can learn about chemistry, physics, algebra, and geometry just to name four. They also offer resources for other content areas as well including history, English, and SAT prep. Their website is free to join and offers a wealth of learning resources and activities. Their site offers articles, quizzes, interactive lessons, videos and students can keep track of their learning as they complete lessons and activities and members can upload their own resources to the site as well. " This looks like a good attempt to crowd-source materials for K-12 in the U.S. Could have uses for ESL/EFL, particularly with content- and project-based learning.

"Why do many students have difficulty transitioning from ESL programs to the mainstream curriculum? One reason is that many of them don't understand what is expected in U.S. colleges and universities. To address this problem, I decided to create a video series that gives students the opportunity to practice with authentic examples of the courses they will soon enroll in. Also crucial would be devising accompanying materials that would help students learn from the examples provided. It's one thing to watch a YouTube lecture from Yale or MIT, but quite another to understand a class within the context of academic norms in the United States. " Excellent advice for getting EFL students ready to study online or in the U.S.

"What you see here are candid submissions from people who have engaged in a little exercise. Here's how it works. Think about the word Race. How would you distill your thoughts, experiences or observations about race into one sentence that only has six words?" This National Public Radio blog makes the perfect starting point for a multicultural lesson for ESL/EFL students. The entries are sheer poetry and give a great deal of content to think about the issue of race and one's place in society, for better or worse. Each 6-word "poem" makes us, as one contributor said, "Look past race to underlying humanity."

"The Common Core standards don't just suggest novel technology use as a way to "engage students," but rather requires learners to make complex decisions about how, when, and why to use technology-something educators must do as well." Thoughtful and precise blog article with quotes from the Common Core. This may be useful for EFL as well as ESL teachers both inside and outside the U.S.