German
Studies Trails on the Web |
German
Internet Project
Professor of German
Department of
German, Russian, and Japanese Studies
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
www.uncg.edu/~lixlpurc/webshops/TechTame.html
Taming the Technology
Tiger:
Language Teaching in the Digital Age
Abstract: By harnessing the multimedia capabilities of new instructional technologies, modern language learners can access a cornucopia of interdisciplinary study opportunities. The paper illuminates these virtual landscapes, and explores the promises and pitfalls of online technologies in the classroom. After introductory reflections on the impact of the digital revolution, the article focuses on instructional guidelines, and sample assignments involving cyber technologies in language and literature courses. The central section examines computer assisted scenarios to enhance language studies on all levels of proficiency. Concluding with a call for more online immersions in teacher training programs, the article proposes guided discoveries for the construction of linguistic knowledge.
Introduction: the Multimedia Revolution
More than any other teaching tool, multimedia technology has revolutionized modern language instruction inside and outside the classroom. Foreign language teaching in the Internet age has brought into focus more learner oriented methodologies, as well as more interdisciplinary techniques. This expansion of the educational envelope beyond the traditional boundaries (1) of academic disciplines involves the Humanities as a whole from art to anthropology, and from biology to psychology. With the advent of multimedia computing centers in the Eighties, instructional programs began to extend beyond classroom walls by offering virtual excursions (2) and interactive simulations in wired laboratories. In English and the foreign languages, the wealth of online materials available through the Internet, including radio and TV broadcasts, World Wide Web sites, electronic bulletin boards, virtual chat rooms, and user groups exposed students to new communicative scenarios which reached far beyond the scope of published textbooks, audio and video tapes.
More than any other technological innovation, online teaching tools have fostered more reciprocity and cooperation among students, and contributed to shifting more responsibilities from language teachers to language students. New models of self-guided learning evolved with more linkage between classroom instruction, cyber excursions, and long distance immersion, thereby diffusing the borders between modern language studies and the Humanities as a whole.
Young teachers entering the profession today face a broad array of cyberspace technologies ranging from electronic mail to network conferencing through Internet servers. Besides language proficiency and cultural competence, technological literacy now forms the third prerequisite for excelling in K-12 teaching careers. Most job openings now advertise the need for teachers familiar with operating multimedia software, building web sites, distributing electronic mail, creating class listservs, and virtual connections to long distance learning sites. Education majors need to master these computing skills in addition to gaining expertise in their academic fields, and applied teaching methods. The more our K-12 education programs embrace these paradigm shifts, the better future teachers will be prepared for taming the cyber tiger, and for excelling in the electronic classrooms.
Guidelines for Teaching with Technology
I. Enhancing Classroom Interactivity through Virtual Discussions. Good teaching has always involved establishing supportive classroom dynamics and personal contacts between teachers and students or between students and students. Principled use of technology can greatly enhance this interactivity by providing instant communication forums to exchange comments, ideas, information, and advice. Electronic mail postings can draw shy or reluctant students into the fold, whereas web sites, online bulletin boards and archives can provide classes with instant and inexpensive opportunities for extra-curricular studies, virtual immersions, and guided laboratory simulations. Quite often, students who prefer to remain quiet in class like to take advantage of these virtual connections which assure them more privacy and anonymity. (3 ) Like letters and post cards, E-mail messages, listserv discussions, and chat room entries do not require face to face interactions, and thus can provide reassuring frameworks without risking interference from peers who might otherwise dominate classroom discussions. Responding to e-mail messages through delayed or asynchronous communication channels (4) allows students to join class discussions at any time from any place. This virtual openness and independence provides many opportunities for networking among instructors and students, and for advancing class discussions outside the classroom.
Sample Online Assignment: To jump-start class discussions involving reading assignments, articles, and online materials, electronic mailing lists provide excellent tools to distribute students' commentaries and essays. Such assignments are simple to organize, generate interactive exchanges among class members, and expand the academic discourse beyond the classroom. To provide a virtual forum for e-mail exchanges, a class mailing list needs to be set up, and all students enrolled in the course need to subscribe. Instructions: Students e-mail their comments on lectures, reading materials or web sites to course participants and the instructor at least 24 hours before the next class meeting. Each student responds via listserv to at least one essay posted by another class member. Students prepare to comment on their e-mail activities during subsequent discussions in class. Point deductions apply for late postings.
II. Amplifying Reciprocity and Cooperation. Course centered research computing can greatly enhance group dynamics inside and outside classrooms. If employed within a collaborative framework, network technologies can operate as equalizers among students as well as faculty. As partners in cyberspace, academic and social hierarchies tend to diminish in importance vis-a-vis online projects and protocols. Digital networking, and file sharing often present opportunities for informal patterns of cooperation and reciprocity. (5) Instructors who know how to capitalize on the networking potential of teaching technologies can further optimize the use of virtual media by encouraging group endeavors, and guided discoveries. This cooperation and reciprocity can extend to inter-departmental projects among faculty members who need to share computer hardware in classrooms and laboratories. By forging collaborative links across departments and disciplines, teaching technologies reinforce the values of educational team play beyond traditional turfs.
Sample Online Project: Individual students or small groups search online catalogs, electronic media, and Internet sites for course related study materials. All research findings are posted on a bulletin board system on the World Wide Web. (6) This interactive web site functions as online resource hub for exhibiting and distributing reference and research materials. It provides a highly visible method to communicate course information. Instructions: Students file weekly reports. Typing into ready-made text fields on the course's web page, students construct a virtual bulletin board which stays up for the duration of the course. This virtual interchange of ideas and discoveries requires something of an etiquette: Students keep the research focused on the subject. Personal matters are inappropriate for this discussion. Students are respectful of each other's discoveries and opinions, yet engaging in their contributions. The instructor will remove inappropriate comments from the web forum. Students with concerns about the site are free to e-mail the instructor directly.
III. Forging Selective Learning Techniques. As primary actors in this multimedia learning process, students face new expectations and responsibilities in classrooms as well as in digital laboratories. Virtual technologies present learners with diversified menus of educational choices, which prompt students to select topics, process information, and systematize knowledge. This mastery of active learning techniques allows students more control over their learning enterprises. Moreover, it forges learners to map their own progress through standardized outcomes and assessment tools. The incorporation of hypermedia technology also requires instructors to become more flexible by accommodating different study techniques and road maps for completing course work. In short, digital teaching tools necessitate multiple adjustments in pedagogical approaches, and encourage the disengagement from methodological dogma and dogmatic methodologies.
Sample Multimedia Assignment: For extra-curricular practice of foreign language skills, class members are given the choice to work with several technology formats in the multimedia laboratory, including online radio, international television, audio tapes, CD-ROM programs, World Wide Web sites, chat rooms, discussion lists, e-mail exchanges, writing or software applications. Students select the training tools which best matches their interests, and proficiency levels. Instructions: Class members work one hour each week in the lab, and report on their activities through oral or written reports in class. The exercise follows a circular structure: offline instructions, online practice, offline reports.
IV. Improving Advising and Assessment. Teachers with solid software skills can offer students a broad array of assessment, placement, advising, and career planning services. Instantly accessible through network servers, such programs can provide placement tests, scoring data, Internet connections, electronic syllabi, and course related web sites. Moreover, digital assessment tools can capture cumulative performance profiles of students on any language and proficiency track. By compiling placement, entry and and exit data, departments can diagnose remedies for individual learners, and also assess the strengths and weaknesses of their own programs. This integrated tracking system can focus on individual students or entire classes - both qualitatively by examining performance data, and quantitatively by generating statistical overviews.
The pedagogical advantages are obvious: By informing themselves about available choices and opportunities, students become more responsible for charting their progress, for improving their weaknesses, and for applying this knowledge to enter meaningful careers. By jump-starting the orientation, assessment, and advising process through digital channels, follow-up faculty counseling can become much more focused, accurate and efficient.
Sample Online Assessment: For assessment and diagnostic purposes, teaching majors take standardized online exams at entry, midway, and exit points of the teacher training program. Instructions: Students chart their progress through computerized assessment exams at the beginning and end of each academic year. Test scores are recorded and interpreted by the students in their assessment portfolios which are presented to faculty advisors at the end of the program.
V. Promoting Mentor Relationships. Educational technologies promote a shift away from lecturing toward individualized instruction methods by providing learners with quick and customized access to course related materials world wide. In the age of multimedia information and long distance instruction, foreign language teachers tend to function more as motivators, mediators, mentors, and designers of tasks rather than primary knowledge providers. Instead of monologue-style presentations geared towards linear transfers of knowledge, instructors can work more in their roles as professional advisors and navigators to new educational domains and online repositories. Wired classrooms establish much more intuitively textured environments in which presentations, lectures, and online tours are balanced by large group activities, small role play scenarios, online projects, independent excursions, and guided discoveries. This allows teachers to become more involved in conducting, directing, and individualizing student activities to foster an environment of expectation, possibility, and performance.
VI. Emphasizing Outcome Oriented Teaching: The common denominators among current theories of foreign language acquisition reflect notions of "interactive" teaching, "proficiency oriented" communication, and "cultural competence" . These learner centered standards (7) emphasize affective components in the language acquisition process, focus on communicative practices, and stress the study of authentic materials from the target culture. Within these guideposts, meaningful approaches to multimedia technology require that the presented information be contextualized, synthesized, and cross-referenced to other areas of the curriculum. (8) Virtual domains such as the World Wide Web, teleconferencing, and long distance education media are uniquely capable of performing these tasks. By immersing students in virtual realms, the pursuit of foreign languages, literatures, and culture studies becomes an interdisciplinary, proficiency oriented enterprise. Digital media which deliver such simulations permit a higher level of proficiency training driven by student query instead of teacher directive. This emphasis on outcome oriented language studies augments current developments in the Humanities as a whole which stress critical inquiries and interdisciplinary studies across the curriculum.
VII. Reinforcing Student Diversity. As much as technology can function to level social hierarchies by assuring equal access to learning resources, it can also be harnessed to reinforce individual talents, and enhance diversity in the classroom. Electronic conferences and the World Wide Web, in particular, offer class members a bonanza of different perspectives and opinions which otherwise might not come to the fore. (9) Because of their great potential for individualizing the learning process, cyber tools can accommodate many learning levels, paces, and styles. Software programs quickly adapt to individual preferences and proficiencies by offering online help when needed, and restructuring presentations to fit selected user options. By delegating various training modes to computerized instruction, technology frees instructors to spend more time with individual learners and their projects. This educational respect and tolerance of diverse ways of learning creates an atmosphere of trust and coexistence which complements the communicative agenda in the language classroom.
Sample Multimedia Project: In elementary language courses, students create two minute documentaries about heritage cultures in their region. Such cultural diversity projects can involve web slide tours, power point presentations, music tapes, videos, children's stories, popular games, and CD-ROM programs. For an example of this type, consult the Salve Regina University project site for Global Fun Day at http://198.49.179.4/pages/ integlia/nomin.html.
VIII. Tapping the Entertainment Potential of Technology. Perhaps one of the the most popular, yet least acknowledged functions of digital technologies in classrooms or laboratories centers on entertainment. The intrinsic lure of cyberspace and multimedia software adds a welcome thrill to foreign language courses today. Indeed, interactive language games, electronic chat groups, and other virtual entertainments can greatly enhance speaking, writing and reading skills. Similarly, foreign films, television hits, popular music, radio shows, CD-ROM simulations, and trendy Web sites hold great potential for familiarizing students with expressions of everyday life and popular culture across the globe. Rather than downplaying the entertainment functions of digital learning centers, it seems beneficial to guide and channel students' motivation to combine education with recreation, and thereby overcome stale stigmas and stereotypes often associated with foreign language studies. Turning language centers into attractive social spaces where students can explore virtual worlds, and use foreign languages in entertaining fashions can certainly enhance the educational dynamics within language departments.
Educational Roles of Hypermedia Technology
The addition of computer technology in modern language teaching blurs the lines between classroom instruction and multimedia excursions. Instructors now use wired laboratories for online presentations, virtual immersions into foreign cultures, and research ramps for course projects. The best insurance for successfully employing digital media is to start small, with simple scenarios in controlled settings. (10) Once a particular technique is mastered, other electronic components can be added to aid students with various course activities. Educational technology can play many different roles in in the electronic classroom from administrative tutor to multimedia distributor, and from discussion host to research exhibiter. (11) Listed below are some of the most rewarding applications of digital technology in modern language classrooms. Most of the activities are within the range of skills, teaching majors should master for a successful entry into the job market. The scenarios assume some familiarity with e-mail, listservs, web forums, online conferencing, and access to the Internet and its multimedia star, the World Wide Web.
1. Digital Course Hubs. The role of the World Wide Web as an interactive bulletin board allows students instant access to posted syllabi, announcements, assignments, handouts, notices about special events, and other administrative information. An efficient and popular use involves the Web as a distribution center or trading post for selected references, texts, articles, journals, reference collections, graphics, discussion threads, student links and more. A well constructed course web allows learners to research the subject field from many entry points, and provides class members with valuable study links to extra-curricular explorations.
Sample Online Hub: Consult Professor Jeutonne P. Brewer's web site which functions as the virtual hub for her course entitled English Studies Through Technology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro: http://www.uncg.edu/eng/courses/jpbrewer/eng514/. This course introduces English teaching majors to computer applications, including email, telnet, the World Wide Web, HTML and cgi-scripts to set up web documents, discuss Internet pages, design and evaluate hypertext and hypermedia electronic texts "vs." printed texts, etc.
2. Gateways to Interdisciplinary Immersions. The turn toward more discourse oriented, interdisciplinary studies was supported by the rise of multimedia technologies which gave students access to an unprecedented array of authentic materials. Not only grammar and vocabulary programs benefited from this development but also culture and civilization programs on CD-ROM, and, since the early nineties, the World Wide Web. More than any other technology, the Internet has become the most important immersion and simulation tool for modern language studies.
With its wealth of interdisciplinary archives, culture exhibits, research collections, and online texts, the web offers students resources for reading, writing, and speaking assignments on all levels of proficiency. The scope of cyber based activities is almost unlimited, ranging from virtual travel accounts to newspaper commentaries, and from oral reports to research essays. Such technology assignments typically involve a circular activity model (12) beginning with offline instruction in the classroom, followed by online excursions in the laboratory, and offline reporting in the classroom backed up by printouts of selected documents. Online activities can range from foreign field trips to museum visits, and virtual shopping trips.
Sample Online Assignment: Internet exercise for an elementary German course: With virtual Euros (new European money) in your pocket, students visit German, Austrian or Swiss restaurants on the web. They order lunch or dinner or daily specials of their choice. Using a list of German keyword engines, students search for good restaurants in central Europe. They answer five workbook questions using short German sentences. Instructions: Students visit the web workbook entitled Netzspiegel at this URL: http://www.uncg.edu/~lixlpurc/NetzSpiegel/7Essen.html. Students begin their online excursion by clicking on provided links to German restaurants and search engines. Students fill out online worksheet, print them, and bring them to class for discussion. Time frame for the exercise: 45-50 minutes on the web.
What makes such activities pedagogically relevant for language students is the fact that the web simulates a four-skill immersion in the foreign culture. Other than actual trips abroad, no other simulation environment can supply students with such educational benefits. Especially teaching majors can profit from this virtual immersion in target cultures to prepare for their roles as cultural ambassadors in foreign language classrooms. Multimedia laboratories provide great starting points to prepare for this experience.
3. Opening Intercultural Communications Channels. Another motivating role of technology targets students' reading, writing and speaking skills through e-mail and listserv exchanges with native speakers abroad. Various mailing lists maintained by private and government groups around the globe allow students at all age levels to link up with counterparts or "keypals" in other countries. Electronic correspondence can be carried out in groups or in private, and can involve academic or mundane subject matters. Concurrent classroom assignments focus on oral or written reports about these information exchanges, or better yet, encourage students or entire classes to continue their virtual exchanges in extra-curricular settings.
Sample Online Project: Groups or entire classes register at an e-mail exchange service, entitled Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections, at their web site http://www.iecc.org/. The Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections mailing lists are provided by St. Olaf College as a free service to help teachers and classes link with partners in other countries and cultures for e-mail classroom, pen-pal and, project exchanges. In 1998, there were more than 6500 teachers in approximately 70 countries participating in at least one of the IECC lists.
4. Multimedia Research Ramps. Utilizing the web as a research tool encourages students to become savvy curators of interdisciplinary information. Numerous search engines provide users with well-marked tracks for keyword hunting and gathering, all of which are very simple to use. The results of these multimedia inquiries can be posted online in the form of linked bibliographies where they can be examined by class members and visitors alike. The display function of the web allows students to develop online research portfolios. The frameworks behind these project portfolios resemble digital showcases where visitors can explore exhibits at their own pace. If the design of the research sites allows for posting reader responses, class members as well as instructors can add online commentaries, suggestions and critiques.
Sample Online Research Ramps: Historical documents for European culture courses are available at http://library.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/ homepage.html. The web site includes selected transcriptions, facsimiles, and foreign language translations involving texts from 27 nations. Instructions: Students consult the Internet library of Richard Hacken, European Studies Bibliographer at Brigham Young University: http://library.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/homepage.html. Students select and download primary documents which shed light on one key historical happening within a target culture or country. The printouts are then presented and discussed in class. As an extension of the online project, students create their own web pages dedicated to a key historical, cultural or literary movement in the target country.
5. Student Publication Forums. Two formats are currently available for electronic publishing of students' works: class listservs or digital conference forums, and the World Wide Web. To jump-start classroom discussions on reading assignments, and literature selections, class listservs and electronic communications provide excellent means to disseminate students' papers and commentaries. Such assignments are simple to organize, generate ongoing intellectual exchanges among class members, and expand the academic discourse beyond classroom walls. To provide the forum for such exchanges, class listservs and conference bulletin boards are set up through campus servers, and all students enrolled in the class become subscribers. Assignments require students to post their compositions on the listserv well ahead of the next class meeting. This allows course participants to read and respond to each other's essays. At the next class meting students are already familiar with each others opinions and perspectives, and can continue their discussions and commentaries on a higher plane.
Publications on the World Wide Web require students to create their own Web sites, and format their papers as HTML documents. Instructors provide links to the pages through Web directories which allow course members to read and critique each other's texts. This interactive, public format motivates writers to revise and refine their papers for final online publication. As students work on articles, they can post preliminary abstracts, outlines, and drafts on the Web. Final papers are posted at announced deadlines or during the end of the course.
By publishing their texts on electronic bulletin boards or the Internet, and by exposing their work to public scrutiny, students get motivated to perform better, and take their own endeavors more seriously. E-mail and listservs can be particularly useful in larger courses where discussion in the classroom is hard to begin and sustain. Of particular value for generating discussions is the instructor's encouragement to respond to other students' compositions. (13 ) In this way, the act of writing is geared toward a larger audience, and becomes a meaningful exercise in peer communication. This scenario allows the teacher to become more of a mediator and collaborator, and less of a critic or judge.
Sample Online Student Pages: Students become web authors by publishing their own pages, constructing hyperlinks, incorporating images and sounds, and designing tables and frames. These points are illustrated from the works of English students taught by Professor George L. Dillon at the University of Washington. Student web sites can be accessed at http://weber.u.washington.edu/~dillon.
6. Showcase and Entertainment Functions. This use of digital technology is geared towards public relation purposes, infotainment and leisure functions. The Web is ideal for this role since it can easily provide a variety of relevant and entertaining links. Presentations can involve work samples in network galleries or on the Web. Departments and individual teachers can create digital course portfolios and yearbooks (14 ) to present outstanding work or online showcases of previous projects for public view.
Tapping into the far reaching and rewarding function of digital technology involves utilizing its foreign language entertainment potential. This conversion opens interesting extensions rather than distractions from the educational purposes of the new media. Online conferences, long distance chats and many other forms of virtual interactions are inexpensive and exhilarating ways to practice foreign languages. Encountered in authentic communicative scenarios, idiomatic expressions and popular phrases thus become more memorable and meaningful to students.
Diffusing the lines between formal and informal language studies is bound to boost the reach and popularity of departmental programs. Given the freedom to co-determine the diverse instructional functions of digital laboratories, students will use their own resources and imaginations to develop the space according to their needs and preferences. This will help anchor computer facilities as one of the fixtures in the educational and social life of language departments. Instead of restricting the use of their entertainment features, laboratories should open them as extra-curricular attractions. Turning language centers into interactive spaces where students can discover resources together, explore new applications of technology in collaborative environments, and use the target language in entertaining fashions can certainly enhance the educational dynamics of the entire operation.
7. Encouraging Open-Ended Explorations: Modern language instruction with the Web and other multimedia technologies can be as innovative and diverse as the instructor's imagination. As the Web becomes the dominant virtual vehicle for distributed and long distance education, more models become available concerning the roles teaching technologies can play. The net itself presents the most updated showcases and exhibits illuminating the latest projects for enhancing instruction through multimedia technology. (15) Good starting points for further information can also be found through Internet search engines employing such keywords as "multimedia teaching", "distance education", "educational technology", "foreign language studies", "virtual classroom" and "virtual university".
Conclusion: Towards Guided Discoveries
Digital technologies provide modern language students with fascinating gateways to other cultures and traditions. The media's reliance on communicative proficiencies, interdisciplinary immersions, customized learning models, and authentic resources establishes a climate conducive to guided discoveries. This learner oriented methodology recognizes the value of allowing students to proceed at their own pace while working on their own projects, thereby constructing experiential and conceptual knowledge. (16)
Long distance learning, project based learning, and learning generated by guided discoveries in multimedia laboratories, however, stand in stark contrast to traditional classroom procedures. At first, it can be very frustrating or time consuming to augment the familiar teaching modes of lecturing and story telling with interactive technologies for conveying and constructing information and meaning. Worse yet, when employed outside constructivist and cooperative classroom paradigms, teaching technologies tend to amplify mediocre pedagogy, and thus impede rather than enhance student learning.
Computer mediated instruction needs to rely much more on collaboration and interaction between teachers and students than do traditional delivery methods. The innovative use of teaching technology requires a good deal of pedagogical insight and intuition. On the other hand, it offers more discovery options and learning opportunities. As students and teachers turn into collaborators in the construction of knowledge, technology can ideally support this partnership by providing equal access to databases, resources, and information along the path.
Instructors who embrace this new partnership role, and who take the time to define the goals of their digital enterprise can ride the technology revolution to fascinating new worlds. By harnessing the almost unlimited capability of multimedia technology, instructors can tap into a cornucopia of interdisciplinary resources around the globe. Language teachers have long known that exposure to such authentic realia fosters students' motivations for mastering second languages. Unlike textbooks and tapes, the culture bound resources offer more holistic learning experiences involving all four realms of language proficiency. In this intertwining practice of reading, writing, listening, speaking and research skills lies the great potential for deepening students' involvement in language, literature, and culture studies. (17)
Footnotes
1 Ryding, Karin C. Foreign Language Departments as Leaders. ADFL Bulletin, Vol. 29, No. 1, Fall 1997. p. 26-27. Holquist, Michael. A New Tour of Babel: Recent Trends Linking Comparative Literature Departments, Foreign Language Departments, and Area Studies Programs. ADFL Bulletin, Vol. 27, No. 1, Fall 1995, p. 7-12. See also Claire Kramsch, Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
2 Boettcher, Judith. The Journey to the Web: Simple Adaptations or New Curricula? Syllabus. Vol. 11, No. 5, 1998. p. 48. Ervin, Gerard L. Cruisin' the Information Superhighway in My '57 Chevy: Farewell to Rte. 66? CALICO Journal, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1994, p. 79-92.
3 O'Donnell, James J. "Better Communication." [http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ ~jod/teachdemo/bettercom.html]. University of Pennsylvania, 1996.
4 Mayadas, Frank. "Asynchronous Learning Networks: A Sloan Foundation Perspective." [http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/issue1/mayadas.htm]. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Vol. 1, Issue 1, March 1997.
5 Pusack, James P. and Sue K. Otto. Instructional Technologies. Research Within Reach II. Vicky Galloway (ed.). Valdosta Georgia: Southern Conference on Language Teaching, 1995, p. 27.
6 Such Internet bulletin boards (BBS), threaded discussion lists or web forums are generated with simple cgi-scripts. For more information on the design and use of bulletin board systems, consult the following examples on the net: Professor Robert Langenfeldt, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, English Course BBS: http://www.uncg.edu/eng/courses/relangen/cgi/wwwboard/wwwboard2.html; Academic Bulletin Boards: http://www.cmu.edu/acs/user-serv/Postman/acadbb-info.html; Bulletin Boards Main Page: http://207.140.18.6/exchange/discussion/groups.htm; Interactive Classroom Bulletin Boards: http://www.suu.edu/WebPages/ ContEdu/boards/boardintro.html
7 See the Web site "A guide to aligning curriculum with the standards." [http://www.educ.iastate.edu/currinst/nflrc/stds.pub.html]. National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, 1997. The "National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project" was developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Inc (ACTFL), New York, 1996.
8 Fennell, Barbara. The Interaction of Language Acquisition Theory and the Technology of Language Teaching. Language Laboratory: Issues and Practice. Pegge Abrams and Barbara Fennell (eds.). A publication of the Duke University Language Learning Center. Durham 1993, p. 8.
9 Creed, Tom. "Extending the Classroom Walls Electronically." [http://www.users.csbsju.edu:80/~tcreed/techno3.html]. St. John's University, 1997.
10 Creed, Tom. Extending the Classroom Walls Electronically. William Campbell and Karl Smith (eds.), New Paradigms for College Teaching, Edina, MN: Interaction Book Co., 1996.
11 Gilbert, Stephen A. "Web Plays Different Roles". [http://www-bcs.mit.edu/~stephen/em96]. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996.
12 Lixl-Purcell, Andreas. "Creating Web Exercises". [http://www.uncg.edu/~lixlpurc/publications/GAtech5.html]. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1997. See also my articles on German Studies with the Web in Virtual Connections: Online Activities and Projects for Networking Language Learners. Mark Warschauer (ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1996.
13 Boettcher, Judith V. and Rita-Marie Conrad. Distance Learning. A Faculty FAQ. Syllabus, Vol. 10, No. 10, June 1997, p. 14. [http://www. syllabus.com/]. 1997. see also James J. O'Donnell, "New Tools for Teaching." [http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/teachdemo/teachdemo.html]. University of Pennsylvania, 1996.
14 Sutherland, Richard. [SutherlandRL.DFF.USAFA@usafa.af.mil]. "POSTING: Electrify Your Instruction: Virtual Schools, Digital Yearbooks, Multimedia Portfolios, Off-Line Internet." In Foreign Language Teaching Forum. [flteach@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu]. 18 March 1996.
15 For current information, consult the Web site "Distance Education Clearinghouse." [http://www.uwex.edu/disted/home.html]. University of Wisconsin-Extension, 1997.
16 Laurillard, Diana. Multimedia and the changing experience of the learner. British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1995, p. 182.
17 My web page for this article which includes active hyperlinks to all Internet sites mentioned in the text and footnotes can be found at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro at this URL: http://www.uncg. edu/~lixlpurc/publications/TechTame.html
Andreas Lixl, UNCG, 1998