The recent deluge of media stories extolling the wonders of the Internet has left many wondering how much is hype, and how useful the Internet can really be, especially for language learning and language teachers seeking information on language learning. This article focuses on two areas: resources useful for teachers in their professional development and resources for use in the classroom.
Professional Development
Living in Japan makes it difficult to engage in professional activities and professional development. The following section demonstrates how the Internet can be used for research, how to purchase references to support one's research, how to search online for universities offering courses in continuing education, and how to find computer information and resources useful for work and home.
Research - Perhaps the greatest hurdle for teachers conducting research in Japan is discovering whether relevant academic references exist, much less obtaining them. Fortunately, a growing number of research libraries around the world are making their card catalogs of books and serials available online. These catalogs are searchable by author, title, and keyword. Unfortunately, most of the sites, such as the Library of Congress <http://www.loc.gov/> and university libraries such as LUMINA at the University of Minnesota <http://www.lib.umn.edu/lum.html> still use slightly confusing text-based interfaces based on telnet -- the software most often used to access the Internet before the advent of Web browsers. However, careful reading of the online instructions at each site and a little experimentation usually leads to success. You can use your Web browser to access most library sites and your Web browser will automatically load the telnet software as you need it. A list of university libraries can be found under the heading "Libraries" at Yahoo <http://yahoo.com> (follow the links "Reference," "Libraries," and "University" from the main page).
The ERIC and CARL databases provide free online access to searchable databases of periodicals. The AskERIC Web site is at <http://ericir.sunsite.syr.edu/>. If you email a brief paragraph describing your research topic to <AskERIC@ericir.syr.edu>, an AskERIC "information specialist" will look up your topic and send 10 to 12 references at no cost. The CARL Web site <http://www.carl.org/uncover/> indexes over 17,000 periodicals. At $8.50 per article, plus a $3.00 copyright fee and a $5 surcharge to fax the article to Japan, the cost quickly adds up, but once you know particular articles exist, you can search libraries in Japan, ask colleagues, or save a list until the next time you have access to a good research library.
At present, ERIC and CARL offer only abstracts of articles. The Electronic Library <http://www.elibrary.com> offers the actual text of many educational journals. You can search the database for free, or get unlimited downloading for nine dollars a month; (they are currently offering a two week trial period during which you may download as many articles as you would like at no charge). A search of the database on "cooperative learning" resulted in 30 entries from such diverse journals as T H E Journal, Educational Leadership, and School Psychology Review with publication dates ranging from January 1990 to February 1996.
Using Search Engines as a Research Tool - Perhaps the most useful research tools on the Internet are "search engines" -- searchable databases of many of the resources of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the Internet. (For more information on the WWW and how to access it, see the January 1997 issue of The Language Teacher.) Most search engines are free to the user, although you have to endure advertising at the bottom of your screen. Two useful collections of search engines are <http://www.search.com> and the omnibus All-in-1 <http://www.albany.net/allinone/>. For an introduction to search engines and how to use them, see <http://www.otan.dni.us/webfarm/emailproject/search.htm>.
A search engine called DejaVu (available on <www.search.com>) lets you search USENET discussion groups using key words. For example, a search on the two keywords "keypals" (i.e., online penpals) and "USA" found 550 messages. A search on AltaVista (also accessible on <www.search.com>) for "keypals," "ESL," and "USA" found 36 Web sites.
Finally, an updated, searchable listing of all Internet mailing lists is now maintained at <http://www.liszt.com>. A search for ESL found 61 matches.
Purchasing Reference Books - Online book companies such as <http://www.books.com> and <http://www.amazon.com> can special order academic books in addition to providing a wide selection of mainstream books at the same price you would pay in the U.S. or elsewhere, and can ship your order by airmail or sea mail. For example, I ordered six APA manuals, which cost about $20 apiece in the U.S., and received my order by sea mail within six weeks for a total cost of about $145 for the six books including postage. Anyone who has purchased books in Japan can see the potential for savings. There are conflicting opinions regarding the dangers of sending credit card information over the Net, but I've encountered no actual problems, and security is improving. For now, those who are reluctant to send their credit card information over the Internet can usually send the same information by fax.
Looking for Graduate Programs - Teachers in Japan who would like to continue their studies in TESL, either at the MA or the PhD level, can find a wealth of information on the Internet. The process I used to learn more about PhD programs is a representative example of how to conduct a search of the Internet: I contacted people by email, searched the TESL-L archives (mentioned in article No. 3 of this series), and did a search of the WWW using <www.search.com>.
One of the best sources of information is fellow colleagues. In my search for distance programs, I emailed a former professor and also posted a message to JALTCALL (see the November and December 1996 issues of The Language Teacher for more on mailing lists). My advisor pointed me to Lancaster University in England where there are professors researching in my area of interest. My request for information on distance programs to JALTCALL brought immediate replies from graduates of such programs, and a recommendation [jaltcall 4448] for a book by John Bear titled College Degrees by Mail published by 10-Speed Press.
My next step was to search the TESL-L archives. The providers of TESL-L have assembled messages from the TESL-L list on useful topics into separate, downloadable files. To get the complete index of these files, you send the command in line (1) in Figure 1 (being careful of capitalization) to the listserver address at
<LISTSERV@cunyvm.cuny.edu>. The files in the 96K index cover tips for teaching EFL, culture, plagiarism, and more. The description for the file TEAChrED in line (2) in Figure 1 looked promising, so I sent the command in line (3) to get the actual file TEAChrED. I've underlined the words from line (2) you need to use in line (3). The information in TEAChrED is mainly about MA programs, but there is also some information on PhD programs.
Figure 1. Accessing files in TESL-L Archives
(1) INDEX TESL-L f=mail
(2) TESL TEAChrED TEM OWN V 80 1257 95/06/06 10:00:03
(3) GET TESL TEAChrED TESL-L F=MAIL
One of the universities listed in TEAChrED was Lancaster University -- also recommended by my advisor. I then conducted a search on <www.search.com> using the words "university" and "Lancaster" and found a Web site for the graduate school at Lancaster with information about the university, the linguistics faculty, and contact information. An email message to the admissions secretary brought further information by mail and email within a week.
Professional Organizations and Online Journals - Many professional organizations now have Web sites. For example, the 1997 JALT conference already has a Web site http://www.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp/JALT/JALT97.html, as does TESOL96 <http://raven.ritslab.ubc.ca/tesol.html>, while KOTESOL maintains a Web site at <http://www.ncmc.cc.mi.us:443/esl>.
Many professional journals also publish online Web editions which often include supplemental information to their print versions. The Language Teacher Online offers a selection of feature articles and other information each month, including this Internet series (and you can click on the Web sites mentioned in this series to go directly to them).The Chronicle of Education <http://chronicle.com/> is uploaded to its WWW site the week of publication. Other journals worth mentioning are The Modern Language Journal <http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/mlj/> and Syllabus <http://www.syllabus.com/>. Some journals are solely online, such as TESL-EJ <http://violet.berkeley.edu/~cwp/TESL-EJ/index.html>, and the excellent Internet TESL Journal <http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/index.html>, which also offers an extensive list of links to other Web sites.
One final all-purpose Web site with a great set of ESL-related references on the Internet has been compiled by Prof. Kenji Kitao. It includes references to email lists, publishers, organizations, online journals, keypals, and literature. This site can be accessed at <http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/visitors/kenji/teij.htm>.
Computer Information - Many teachers in Japan find themselves asked to research software and hardware for new school computer labs. Computer magazines in English in Japan are expensive and hard to obtain in some areas. Most major computer magazines for the Mac and the IBM platforms and the Internet, including MacUser, Macworld, PC World, Internet World, and NetGuide, have complete searchable archives of previous issues available online, and again, supplemental information not included in the print version. Computing Japan <http://www.gol.com/cj/>, the only English language magazine about computing in Japan, is also available online.
Most software companies maintain Web sites and even allow free downloads of upgrades of their software (between major upgrades). Obtaining free upgrades is very easy using Web browsers. I have upgraded a commercial word processor, communications software, and many utilities online. A comprehensive list of hardware and software vendors and online computer magazines can be found at <http://guide.sbanetweb.com/>. A great deal of shareware software (noncommercial software which you can download for a free trial; you pay the author a small fee only if you decide to use it) for the Mac and IBM, much of it rivaling professional software in features, quality, and support can also be found online at <http://www.shareware.com>.
Finally, the publisher of NetGuide now has a site with help on a range of common computer problems from basic installation to hardware problems. This site can be found at <http://www.techhelper.com>.
Teacher Resources for Classroom Activities - The next article in this series will discuss classroom activities using computer labs with full Internet access, but even teachers without this level of access can use their personal Internet accounts to download information, Web sites, and graphics for use in noncomputer classrooms -- either for discussion or for student projects. There are Web sites on the Net on almost any subject and these can be used for educational purposes -- newspapers (Japan Times, <http://www.japantimes.co.jp>), CNN <http://www.cnn.com>, and more. The extent to which the Internet can be used in the classroom is limited only by teacher creativity.
If teachers and students do have access to a computer lab but no Internet access, material collected by the teacher could be provided on a designated "Internet computer." Most Web browsers provide a basic way to copy Web sites from the WWW (on Netscape it's "save as source"). Depending on the teacher's willingness to download sites and copy them to the computer lab, a program like WebWhacker <http://www.ffg.com> for the Mac or the IBM can be used to "whack" (download copies of) entire sites or as much of them as desired. These downloaded sites can then be copied to the designated Internet computer. WebWhacker resets the links on the downloaded pages so that interaction on the "Internet computer" seems exactly as it would "live" on the Net. In fact, the interaction is even faster since the pages are stored on your computer's hard disk. Netscape Gold provides similar features to WebWhacker.
Here is one example of how to make use of information from the WWW even without Internet access. A sister school in England where my university has a summer program and the surrounding towns all have Web sites with information which students may find useful in preparing for their study abroad. These Web sites and answers to frequently asked questions could easily be placed on the designated Internet computer -- either as part of student projects or by the teacher -- as a resource for other students.
Conclusion
Having Internet and World Wide Web access can be extremely useful for language teachers in Japan. Of course, once teachers start "Net surfing," it's very easy to get caught up in the wonders of the Net, but as with any resource for teaching, the actual use by the teacher is more important than the resource itself. Searches on the Internet don't always lead to useful information, and just like in the library, searches on the Internet sometimes lead to "informational wild goose chases." However, as users become more experienced and as more of the ever-expanding resources of the Internet are catalogued, time and effort will produce increasingly useful results.
In the next article in this series, Tim Newfields will focus on the Internet from the student and classroom perspective.