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Lesson study is a simple idea. If you want to improve instruction, what could be more obvious than collaborating with fellow teachers to plan, observe, and reflect on lessons? While it may be a simple idea, lesson study is a complex process, supported by collaborative goal setting, careful data collection on student learning, and protocols that enable productive discussion of difficult issues.

The Online Language Environments (OLE) Board is a web based threaded discussion instructional tool that utilizes voice, video and text to replicate the functions of a language lab. OLE is used for, but not restricted to, oral practice, listening comprehension, speaking practice and reading and writing practice. The OLE Board can be used to supplement instruction in face-to-face classes as homework assignments, and can be used in entirely distance classes. CERCLL support provides assistance to improve the technological capabilities and establish the pedagogical strategies of the OLE Board, which has been successfully piloted in French, Arabic, various Indigenous languages and ESL. Specific deliverables for the OLE Board project include templates and pedagogical strategies with examples for Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese; online and print user and instructor documentation; lesson plans and use case scenarios; usability studies for further desired improvement; piloting of multi-institutional usage. We also provide for the protocols necessary to integrate the OLE Board for use with course management systems. The OLE Board is being developed as an open-source product that will be available to the wider language instruction community.

ANVILL (A National Virtual Language Lab) is a speech-based toolbox for language teachers. Like the language lab console of old, it's focused on the practice of oral/aural language, but at its core are very modern web-based audio and video tools from duber dot com: Voiceboards (an asynchronous speech tool), LiveChat (a 4-way conversation tool), and Voicerecorder (a widget for instant recordings). Each really opens up the scope and sequence of spoken language tasks. Creating media-rich lessons in ANVILL is simple and straightforward. There are templates for audio, video, and image tasks; there are also tools for text-based discussions like blogs and forums. ANVILL's assessment tool,Quizzes and Surveys, gives teachers an easy way to assign and respond to spoken language tasks. In addition, ANVILL is a course management system. Teachers who are doing distance or hybrid courses have a simple means of managing their students as well as their curriculum. We think you'll find that ANVILL is quite flexible, and permits the kind of extra listening and speaking practice that language students need so much. ANVILL is a project of the Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon. These tools are currently in use at UO and at a select number of K-12 sites around the Northwest. Thanks to our National Foreign Language Resource Center partners at CASLS, we are able to offer ANVILL to educators at no cost. Here is an overview of its features. If you think it would be helpful to you and your students, contact us to set up an account. Our two-year pilot study has just gotten underway and we're looking for language teachers at all levels to use it and tell us what they think.