by Jarek Krajka

Maria Curie-Sklodowska University,

Lublin, Poland
jarek.krajka@wp.pl

The summer issue of Teaching English with Technology provides all the readers with an interesting mix of ideas to reflect upon during the holiday. Some of the contributions touch upon issues that have already been addressed to a certain extent, such as Learning Management Systems (LMS), while others expand significantly upon the previously published ideas (an article on Communities of Practice). Finally, it is really great pleasure to host articles on the topics already unexplored in the Journal, even despite its five-year existence. In this issue such a topic is electronic portfolio, efolio for short, and its practical implementation in the academic setting. Thus, the highly diversified blend of ideas covered should satisfy both the needs of experienced CALL teachers as well as newbies.

The opening article "Electronic Portfolios and Literacy Development: A Course Design for EFL University Students" by Yuh-Mei Chen (Taiwan), provides a highly informative overview of the theory and practice of the implementation of electronic portfolio in the EAP setting.

In the Internet Lesson Plans section, Aiden Yeh (also Taiwan), a well-known member of Webheads in Action group, gives the ready-made lesson outline of a blended learning activity exploiting the idea of chat to promote the development of all four language skills.

Dafne Gonzalez (Venezuela) and Teresa Almeida d'Eça (Portugal), also active members of Webheads in Action and the authors of the contribution in "On the Web" section, provide a detailed description of how an online workshop called "Becoming a Webhead" was created, run and evaluated.

"Making Our Lives Easier: Using Free Learning Management Systems in the ESL Environment", the final contribution in the issue, was written by Stephan Langdon and Josephine Taylor (both from Colombia). The authors review a few different Learning Management Systems, pointing out to their advantages and limitations in the foreign language teaching context.

It is hoped that this mix of ideas and views will stimulate the readers to their own online or blended endeavours.

I wish you good reading.