Collaborative Website Review 6/07
Collaborative Website Review
CALL Summer 2007
Contributor
Website Reviewed
Erica Zimmer
Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab
Carolyn Mehrtens
National Public Radio
Amy Knight
NASA: Solar System Exploration
Kristin Roberts
Yahoo! Movies
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Collaborative Website Review 6/07
Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab
Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab is a free web site created by Randall
Davis who specializes in CALL, video technology and language teaching, teacher
training, and learner
autonomy. Students can
use this site for self study or
teachers can use it as a tool
to incorporate into a lesson
plan. It includes some nice
listening exercises that are
categorized by general
listening, academic
purposes, life tips, lesson
plans and long video
conversations which are then grouped by level of difficulty from easy to very
difficult. The audios used are meaningful dialogues or readings that represent
real life and sometimes everyday experiences. Most listening exercises are
multiple choice and once completed students can check their answers to get
instant feedback. All listening activities can be heard using Real Media or
Windows Media without problems and many activities have pre and post listening
exercises to activate prior knowledge and to help retain the information in longterm memory.
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Collaborative Website Review 6/07
The layout is basic and the presentation is clear and easy to use, but there
are very little graphics and the site is rather plain to look at. However, the site is
easy to navigate and find information. It has Ads by Google, but it doesn’t appear
that there are any pop up ads. There are links to Using the ESL Lab and links to
Randall’s Other ESL Websites. Overall I believe Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening
Lab is useful for teachers and students, but it lacks visual appeal and graphics.
I would use website evaluation guides or checklists in my teaching
because it is important that students can identify credible, reliable and
resourceful websites. They gather a large amount of information from the
internet where the sources are not always trustworthy and dependable.
Teachers need to encourage our students to critical readers and to question the
material they find online.
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Collaborative Website Review 6/07
National Public Radio Website
http://www.npr.org
The NPR site offers great practice for authentic listening. The content for
the listening practice is very practical for advanced proficiency young adult and
adult students who have an interest in current events, media, and culture. The
content is
intellectually
stimulating and
the listening
exercises could
be a nice basis
for conversation
activities or
project based
learning. NPR is a fairly comprehensive news source that might appeal to
international students who want to find ways to talk about the culture and current
events of their country in the classroom.
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Collaborative Website Review 6/07
The content of the
website is organized nicely and
allows students to navigate by
topics, such as politics and
news, health and science, arts,
books, etc. Students can also
navigate the site according to
shows, such as All Things
Considered, etc. Along with
the news broadcasts, there are over twenty-seven podcasts topics and many
stories that go with each topic. There are also links to other podcasts, such as
the BBC and HBO. I would advise teachers to help students with the navigation
when first using the website just so they know how the information is organized.
If a teacher were to use the NPR news stories for listening practice, she would
have to provide worksheets or guidelines for activities and projects as this site is
designed for the general public and not classroom use. One nice thing about this
site is that there are a lot of transcripts to go along with the podcasts and
broadcasts, which is helpful for classroom activities. However, the transcripts
cost $3.95 each or $12.95 for a monthly subscription.
Overall, this website is a good resource for authentic materials for
classroom practice and activities. The website is organized nicely and is fairly
eye-catching. The photographs that go along with the stories are helpful for
catching the interests of the students as well as clarifying some of the concepts
and scaffolding the language in the stories. There are also some wonderful
slideshows and videos to accompany some of the text.
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Collaborative Website Review 6/07
I would use website evaluation guidelines and checklists in the classroom
so the students would know what to look for when evaluating a website in terms
of copyright, authorship, etc. I would also use them to help me evaluate a
website more objectively.
NASA’s Solar System Exploration
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/kids/nasakids.cfm
Nine broad
categories to
guide your
search
This is a well designed website for teachers and students. The site offers
reliable, current information on the solar system and space-related topics from a
trusted authority, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Although there is an unbelievable amount of information and activities packed
into each subheading within the site, it is well organized and each of the topics
and activities is presented in a clear, concise manner.
As seen in the screen shot above, the site is broken down into nine
categories and within each of these links the information is engaging and eye
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Collaborative Website Review 6/07
catching. For instance, if a student chooses the NASA website to research Mars,
he/she will click on the “Planets” button and then on the “Mars” button. The
student is then given a choice of five tabs: overview, moons, gallery, facts and
figures, and kids’ eye view, each of which contains information relevant to the
Red Planet. Within each of these subheadings, the information is written in short
succinct sentences or bulleted without a lot of extra “fluff”. For students who find
language, reading, or mathematics challenging, it would be more effective to
gather information from the “General Overview” page. The information is
presented in simple sentences without any of the abbreviations such as m/hr, km,
kg, etc. that the reader will face when gathering information from the “Facts and
Figures” page. Numerous helpful illustrations that are fast loading and colorful
are purposefully placed throughout.
An outstanding component of this website that makes it a unique
educational resource and sets it apart from other sites is the access it provides to
online videos and interactive tools. Students can learn about charges and then
play games that test their
skills and knowledge
operating an ion engine.
As seen in this screen
shot, they can embark on
a virtual exploration of
Mars. They can “flip the
pages” of an online
storybook on gases,
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Collaborative Website Review 6/07
Earth, robots, and many other space-related topics. They can watch video
footage of Iraqi oil fires as seen from the Space Station.
The opportunity that NASA Solar System Exploration offers viewers to not
only read information, but also see it (through the numerous graphics) and
experience it (through the interactive tools) is what makes it an excellent resource
for educators and students who are English language learners. The more senses
a student engages in learning, the more likely they are to comprehend and “own”
the information. Not only can a regular education science teacher use this site to
supplement their normal lecture time by projecting the site with the use of an LCD
projector, ESL teachers can reference it with students either during study hall or
during small group instruction to further augment the learning process for their
students who are taking science in the mainstream setting.
On a final cautionary note, on a few of the general information pages
within this website there is a fair amount of supplemental information in the
sidebars. This could be challenging for some students to decipher which
information is relevant as well as how the information is related to each other. It
may be beneficial to students to have an educator provide a brief tutorial on how
to navigate through the website prior to asking students to gather research
independently. It also may be beneficial to have students use a website
evaluation checklist to review and familiarize themselves with the site prior to
beginning their research. Happy Travels! It’s a very fun site to explore!
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Collaborative Website Review 6/07
Yahoo! Movies
There are several movie trailer websites, all varying slightly in
content. Yahoo! Movies provides movie trailers and clips from an
extensive collection of films, new and old. The purpose of the website
is to advertise the films, but it can be used in the language classroom
for several types of listening activities. Teachers could develop several
different listening comprehension activities based on viewing the
trailers and clips. Also, it might be the basis for speaking activities if
teachers chose to use these clips as a listening model.
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Collaborative Website Review 6/07
Yahoo! Movies is extremely easy to navigate and I did not
experience any problems with pop-ups. It starts at the homepage
where you can click on some of the newer movies advertised by the
site, or you can choose a letter and see a list of movies whose titles
begin with this letter. Then, you can choose any of these films to see
a clip or trailer in another window. For example, I chose “H” and
clicked on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
This is a nice site for teachers to use in class and for them to suggest
to their students for extra practice with listening. This is a good
alternative to taped dialogue listening exercises that students and
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Collaborative Website Review 6/07
teachers may become bored with. One concern with the site,
however, is that several of the trailers are mostly music and graphics,
with little speech. These would not be helpful for listening exercises.
The teacher will need to choose clips and trailers carefully for this
reason as well as to cultural sensitivity that some of the films might
violate.
Using the criteria for web-site evaluation really helped me to look at this
site objectively. I think that having these types of checklists and sets of criteria
are helpful to teachers in weeding through the many, many sites available
regarding ESL. They help to keep the important factors in mind and the
perspectives of the students and teachers when suggesting web-sites for class or
using them in class.
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