CALL and using Web tools in education are both a natural course of history: a necessary development of educational methods plus a much-to-be-praised tendency of any worthy teacher to bring teaching close to the reality in which she and her students live.

But CALL and Web-classes can be used by teachers of various “denominations”. I have read lesson scripts, based on the use of the Internet or totally dependent on other kinds of IT… state-of-the-art tools, but still extremely conservative in the philosophy of pedagogical approach: teacher-centered and engaging the traditional PPP model. Is it “autonomous” for the teacher to direct the students step-by-step in the WebQuest activity? How is it different from telling them summarily to open the book on page 57 and turn their attention to exercise 3? All together, all at the same time, without any choice based on an earlier reflection about their individual needs and likes – students follow the teacher’s instructions. Where is our precious autonomy?

Where I applaud and enthuse about the use of a variety of CALL techniques is a situation in which the tools contribute to the empowerment of a student in the pilgrimage to the “land of his/her identity”. Where the limitless world of Web-corpora gives them rise to exercise their own, albeit enlightened and self-aware choice (why 'albeit'?). Where we might eventually turn to using more conservative media, seeing as they lead us to the same place; or travel different ways, according to the individual decision of the participants; or reach some compromise, based on the assessment of the means possessed by all parties concerned.

Being an individual, whose personal use of the IT gets wider all the time, I am naturally inclined to try out all kinds of possibilities which open to a modern, computer-literate teacher. It all started two decades ago, when I bought my first laptop (one of the first produced, a Japanese Tandon, it resembled a medium-size suitcase and was a damned sight heavier) and started translating and writing with the ease and speed unrivaled by handwritten long-hand or a typewriter. Why should I ban students from handing in assignments typed instead of scribbled painstakingly; from using a Thesaurus or a spell-check which had helped me in reaching the decent level of language, indispensable when submitting articles to a British magazine? I admired homework made to look nicer by a sensitive use of such tools as are a part of any business presentation nowadays: PowerPoint-assisted, embellished with clips and WordArt graphics. Since the installation of a phone-line in my village my private and business correspondence has budded from a long-drawn-out, painstaking process of writing, sealing, visiting the post office and waiting for an answer to the quick-as-a-flash “an idea born at dawn gets a feedback before the night” (this reads a bit clumsily with "an idea... in this position) sharing of minds of an e-mail exchange. Why should I not encourage my students, who have craved a pen-friend but have been disappointed time and time again by the traditional pen-pal schemes, to use the same technique? I have joined a discussion list and derive such pleasure in reading and contributing at the world-wide forum! Some of my students’ reflections and suggestions would enrich any Internet community. Let them try their hands and minds at it.

And what about Web page building? My students visit pages created by their peers. Why couldn’t they (or rather we together) establish our own website, where they could present their projects?

And where will we find a more practical link for inter-cultural studies, for an international exchange, than websites like Kindlink or Culture Capsule?

And how can I better assist a talented student, who has sat bored through classes centered on an average student, than by presenting him or her with a variety of self-study websites, including the tumultuous – but rich in possibilities – Webheads, or introduce the famous Ruth Vilmi International Writing Exchange?

All that said and done, I return to my opening statement: Internet and CALL does not equal Autonomous Learning. It can assist – or it can chase autonomy out of the classroom.

Such were my concerns while sketching the plan for my first class based on the use of the Internet. Let me tell you about this enterprise, which I would still call an “experiment” – this tentative description refers more to my own level of comfort in the world of IT in EFL, than the attitude of my students.

The main component of the class was searching the Web for pertinent facts about the Viking community, its history and social structure. This task was to be conducted in pairs, but with the aim of compiling an extensive fact file in collaboration with the whole group. Additionally students would later read a text about Vikings in a traditional course-book and discuss the merits and drawbacks of both sources of information.

For this first computer-lab conducted class I chose an extra-curricular group of eleven students aged 15 in their fourth year of learning English (pre-intermediate/intermediate). The overall level of the group is medium high to high (four students have joined an additional group preparing for the First Certificate in two years’ time), the motivation level – high and very high.

Firstly, I made sure that the computer laboratory was in good working order and familiarized myself with its functioning. If the computer lab is configured in an intranet system, an EFL teacher assumes an additional role of net supervisor. Ideally all the computers are connected to the main unit, which has sole and full access to the server facility and can configure, re-configure and access any of the subsidiary computers. Our laboratory is thus equipped, but since I didn’t feel sure of my own expertise, I decided to adapt a simpler, albeit more cumbersome system, of which more later.

Secondly, I had to check the level of computer literacy of my students. The lesson plan called for the following skills:

• Moving freely in the Windows 98 environment
• Accessing and surfing a website
• Downloading from a website
• Working with the Word 2000 software – writing, copying and pasting
• Working with two documents simultaneously (within the Word software).

Next I prepared the laboratory: having surfed the Web for useful websites (an activity calling for a specific skill, “website evaluation”, of which every teacher attempting to use the Web must become an adept) I teleported them to a CD. Teleporting is a process whereby the whole website (with its internal links, graphic and sound elements etc.) gets downloaded to the chosen hardware, a very useful safety device for laboratories equipped with a slow connection to the Internet. Breakdowns in the access to the Web are considered among the most infuriating hindrances to the smooth flow of the Web-based class. A prudent teacher, having teleported as many websites as necessary, can change her “server” (the main computer of the intranet) into a quasi-Internet provider. In an intranet environment students can browse and download any site from the server as if accessing the real Internet – free from the obstruction of sudden disconnection from the Web. As mentioned earlier, I did not trust myself enough – and I wanted to limit the number of websites available to students. This last was partly dictated by the scarcity of time. I knew that ideally the class I envisioned should run through the 90 minutes period, while all I had was the traditional 45 minutes. The other consideration derived from one of the basic tenets of the teacher’s profession: allowing students too much “unlimited freedom” in the choice of corpora is contrary to the effective learning processes. I came to the conclusion that three to four websites are quite enough to give them the taste of independent choice, while assuring a fair chance that they will not get lost and will be able to fulfill the task successfully. Each pair had a choice of the area of research.

Below is the lesson plan:

Warned by others, more experienced in the use of the IT in EFL teaching, I realized the importance of discipline and honestly, inspired by me, the students did the same. The simple device of switching off screens instead of computers assured their undivided attention during any tasks not using the computer, while providing an easy return in need. They had no difficulty working in pairs. As a matter of fact this system turned out very effective, with one person skimming or scanning the text for relevant information and the other concentrating on the mechanics of operating the software, highlighting paragraphs and pictures, downloading, pasting etc.

For the warm-up I found a delightful jewel of a multimedia presentation: sent to me by a teacher friend from Spain, it is a graphic collage of slides to the accompaniment of the well-known song “Starry, starry night”. Additionally, the lyrics are superimposed on the slides, so it is both a pleasure and an educational benefit to watch. I showed it to my students, secretly hoping someone would be inspired into producing a similar presentation. Alas, they were appreciative, but not enthused into action.

Due to the tight time control on the Web-searching task the students did not manage to produce a finished table (as I have already mentioned, it is ideally a 90-minutes lesson plan), so that became a kind of collaborative homework instead. There was one more change in the lesson content: the discussion about the differences between the written documents and the Web-found information got so heated, that we decided to skip the grammar explanatory period (“A Pinch of Grammar”, as we call it). A very courageous step for the students, who knew very well that they were going to write a round-up test, as this class closed the cycle.

Therefore we could on the spot discuss the merits and limitations of such lessons and decide whether we wanted more Web-assisted learning in the future.

The outcome was not totally anticipated: three of the nine students were ambiguous and one was definitely opposed to the idea of learning a foreign language in a computer laboratory, preferring a traditional chalk-and-blackboard setting. Reasons? Quote: “we have computers at home”. Parried by her colleague: “Not all of us!” Undeterred, the girl continued: “traditional lesson is better because we get more of a student-teacher contact” (to paraphrase: eye-to-eye interaction is a powerful motivating force in the learning process, which framework is still based on the human relationship structure). Another student observed at that point, that in the computer-laboratory setting good pair work seemed more crucial to the outcome of the task. Counter-feint: “that was because we were more aware of the passage of time”. Curious. Why all of a sudden such sensitivity to time? 45 minutes is 45 minutes, in a classroom or a computer lab.

But mostly students were appreciative to the scope of choice presented to them (as I predicted, two or three websites were more than enough!). They commented on the different skills and added that such skills will be more important in their future careers. One of the ambiguous trio remarked about the possibility of negative influence of “too much information” on the effectiveness of work for less disciplined students. Fishing for compliments, of course – I obliged, giving them their due.

Asked whether they wanted more of such activities in future, they voted “yes” with just one vote against. But asked whether they would like to construct their own websites all applauded enthusiastically. Alas! Here’s the case where “the master must master the trick” before attempting to pass it on…

But I guess this will be my next foray into the world of the Internet.

As to the differences between the written texts and web-delivered corpora all students noticed that in perusing texts on the web the foremost important skill is that of noticing key-words, without which it is impossible to find one’s way in the labyrinth of hyper-links. They commented on the mental discipline (“not forgetting the objective”), necessary to focus on the task in hand. One student noticed examples of a truncated sentence structure in some texts on the Web, another pointed out: Dear teacher, do we really need all those “a’s” and “the’s”? On the Web people forget them all the time!

The comment on the artificiality of the written text as opposed to the authenticity of the websites was obvious, since we worked with a course-book and it does not add to the essence of the discussion.

In the Diary Note they were asked to recapitulate the gist of the discussion and their own opinion.

Lastly, I would like to analyse the autonomous learning elements of this lesson. The topic itself was dictated by the course-book structure (but the course-book itself had been chosen by the students!). Nevertheless, in the previous class we had talked in an unstructured way about the Vikings and as a result created a “Research Areas Poster”. The pairs could then choose their field of Web-based research from the self-made list of topics.

During the class itself the discursive element proved to be of utmost importance for both the students and the teacher. It was almost as if all traditional learning tasks were leading to the real core – the reflection, conducted in the group and then re-inforced in the individual Diary Notes (for once no-one grumbled about the necessity of writing one!).

No need to remind the readers that we did not forget the basic pillar of the classroom democracy: negotiating the future learning mode.

The use of IT was just a tool, presenting its own challenges and thus changing the focus of learning activities, but certainly not becoming a decisive factor in the structuring of the learning processes.

Zofia Grudzińska 2002