The Activities

The Online American Studies Activities are designed for Stranovedenije [Regional Studies] classes. They are WWW oriented and you need a computer equipped classroom connected to the Internet for your classroom work.

It is advisable to explain to students how to browse the World Wide Web, bookmark and save the pages before you proceed with the tasks.

All the information is available on the Help menu of your browser. A brief advice on handling the activities is also given here.

You should do this because not all students have practical knowledge and they need explanations. It would be nice if you seat them beside those who are savvy.

The activities may also be used for individual or team work beyond the classroom as a home assignment. Then the next class may take a form of a seminar.

If there are your own tasks or you are designing them you might use the proposed activities as steps to something bigger or whatever.

It is also possible if you take advantage of the links or activities only and for different purposes.

Most of the activities are based on the VOA Special English program which has a prolific number of text files accompanied by audio/video files. Another advantage is slow speed of narrations. It is excellent for students of all levels. The VOA files are open source and can be copied without permission or pay.

Integrating the Internet

Capacity of the Web (WWW) to store a great amount of multimedia information (audio and video, pictures, drawings) has allowed language instructors to tap its enormous resources.

The Web is a tool that brings authenticity and interactivity into the classroom and in many ways challenges regular classes.

But while counting all the benefits you should keep in mind that it is a complex, varied, and demanding source. And before leading others you have to walk all its relevant paths by yourself and become familiar with web searching, evaluating web pages, ways of integration of the Web resources (the links will open in new windows).

Those who are interested in how to integrate the Internet into the classroom, please, study "Integrating the Internet into Teaching Foreign Languages" in Russian. It is an online workshop that gives step-by-step instructions on the Internet application. The workshop is divided into three parts:

1. Search engines. Evaluating the Web documents;
2. Searching the Web for informative documents by yourself;
3. Filamentality. Developing a Hot List.

There is a print version of the workshop.

Presentations

If you are interested in how to use free hosts and RSS feeds in teaching English, please, access this link - Integrating Information Technology to Teaching. It is best to view the pages with Internet Explorer or Opera as there is an imposed ad. If you have suggestions and/or critical remarks you are welcome to express them here (Integranet Forum).