Email The most simple form of electronic communication. Students can send email in the target language to each other, to pen pals in countries where the target language is spoken, to their instructor(s). Advantages include its wide-spread availability (students can get free accounts through yahoo or hotmail, or from their school)and the fact that students can access their email accounts on their own time. Since communication is asynchronous, students have time to compose their questions and responses. Also communication is fast. Disadvantages include some of the above. Here are some ideas for finding electronic penpals.
IECC "Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections is a free service to help teachers link with partners in other countries and cultures for e-mail classroom pen-pal and project exchanges. Since its creation in 1992, IECC has distributed over 28,000 requests for e-mail partnerships. At last count, more than 7650 teachers in 82 countries were participating in one or more of the IECC lists." Includes participants from elementary school through higher ed.
Franceworld A free international service to find individual email penpals.
Check out the list of schools at Web66 and look for email addresses of teachers to contact.
The very best way to arrange electronic penpals is through teachers who are friends.
Bulletin Boards There are a variety of free bulletin boards, such as Beseen.com available. Disadvantages include the fact that many of the free bulletin boards disappear after a certain amount of time if they are not used. It is also difficult to advertise to other teachers that one has a bulletin board. Also, many are not private and one may get prank messages. (Usually, there is a way for the adminstrator of the bulletin board to remove those prank messages.) In addition, the companies providing these free services are going out of business left and right. One successful example of a bulletin board for English learners in France disappeared recently. Advantages include being easy to use, free, and easily accessible. Users do not necessarily need an email account.
Le forum français de Cyrano This bulletin board was set up by an instructor for his students at the Lycée Astier in Aubenas, France.
MOOs (Multi user domains, Object Oriented) allow real time communication between users. They can be difficult to use because of the commands one must learn to use them. But they have more functionality than electronic chat environments. Users who are programmers can create places that other users can visit. Users can express emotion, can "look at" their surroundings. Often a MOO facilitates the creation of a community of target language learners and users. Disadvantages include difficulty with commands and programming. Advantages include the rich environment and the opportunity for real communication with other target language users.
Check out the following pages.
Writing Projects on WWW Writing Projects can be published on the WWW. Advantages include increased motivation on the part of students for the project and the possibility of interaction with other users of the target language. Students can also gain a new skill by making their own web pages if your school has the facilities. Disadvantages include the added time to make the web pages. This can be done by talented students, or as in the case of one high school class, the project can be combined with learning an html editing program (see SI French 3 pages below.) Other disadvantages include the time lapse between the making of the pages and the feedback from viewers. Some instructors have combined email exchanges with the cooperative construction of web sites.