1. creative collaboration for teachers globally
eLanguages
creative collaboration for teachers globally

2. What is eLanguages?
An online collaborative online tool for teachers globally, developed by the British Council and Rages Ltd for the Department for Education and Skills
Multilingual (English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Italian, Japanese, Punjabi, Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati and Hindi versions)
Free at the point of use
Enables teachers create and/or use collaborative resource-based projects
Offers each project 100 MB of space
No notes for this slide

3. Showing some eLanguages features
homepage, please point audience to the categories and to the model projects
language versions including Chinese
Structure project pages. Project page with five defined stages.
Hello page, a tool for each member to introduce her/himself, their school, their class and their town to the world
Project categories. All resources and projects within the system belong to a project category

4. What are the benefits? Students… Teachers… Cultural awareness
Present their work to the world
Learn from authentic resources
Connect with and learn from peers
Become global citizens
Collaborate and create school links
Access and use authentic resources
Involve their students
Feel confident and in control B
Cultural awareness
Language skills
ICT skills
International dimension
Student-centred learning
Professional development

5. Why use eLanguages for school linking?
It is a site specifically designed for school use
Only verified teachers are allowed to have an account for creating and editing pages
As the account holders are trusted, they are given a higher level of admin rights than similar sites
Teachers are able to ensure that the site is 100% safe for students to use
The site has a wide variety of tools under one roof, rather than having to learn the environments of a number of sites that only have one or two useful tools
It has an effective search tool enabling teachers and students to quickly find the resource they need rather than drilling down a number of links
Most significantly the site’s navigation tools and wizards are translated into the user’s native language making training much simpler

6. Access & participation
eLanguages membership
students exchange resources with peers
teachers collaborate
teachers benefit
students benefit
teachers…
…browse through or re-use existing resources
…join an existing project idea
…start their own project
This slide demonstrates that non members can sill access resources but will not be able to collaborate or add resources to the platform
Members are allowed and can collaborate or involve their students
yes no
teachers decide

7. How does it work? 2 1 find a partner teacher or join a project teacher
How can I internationalise my classroom activities
class
find a partner teacher or join a project 2 1
re-use existing resources
collaborate on a project and create resources
Visitors or members can either use eLangauges as a source of resources or they can find a partner and start their own project and add their own resources

8. Browse or re-use resources
الصبر مفتاح الفرج
… such as presentations, movie files, audio files, text files, in your own lessons
no membership is required

9. Join existing projects
… find an interesting project, and join the project to create a school link and collaborate with a partner

10. Start your own project
… create your own project idea and invite others to join your project

11. Student contributions
Create forums to enable students to quickly and simply communicate a message without requiring an account
Use forums to enable students to read and compare the answers of a variety of students at another school without the need for accounts
Add a drop-box for students’ work
Add comment boxes for peer feedback on work displayed

12. Example 1: What does that mean project
one form is required to start a new project
Read the title and the proposal, the fields required for setting up a new project

13. First we ask the teachers to define project stages… 1 2 3 4 5
the exmaple with the defined stages

14. a comprehensive range of resources can be added to the project stages (movies, sound files, pictures, galleries, text, polls, web links)
resources are added to the project page by teachers but can be created or sourced either by teachers or students

15. eLanguages project
Class 1
Class 2
Second the teachers and their students add and exchange resources

16. الصبر مفتاح الفرج Stage 1 Arabic and English Phrases Arabic phrases
What do they mean

17. 2 Student Interviews 3 Meaning of Phrases 4 Usage of Phrases
Open the videos under student interviews
Open the audio file under meaning of Phrases

18. eLanguages project page
the complete project with resources added to each stage
Open the project page by clicking on the screenshot

19. Example 2: From our own correspondent
This project uses video files from the BBC archive, a tool avaialble for UK teachers.

20. From our own correspondent resources
Class 1
The stages
Class 2
The story
The research
Composing the script
The narration
Combining video and audio &
Sharing the results

21. User feedback

22. “It’s brilliant. I’ve been looking for a set of web tools for school links for the last two years. Even better, the instructions on how to use it are in the native language of the user. This means that the schools in Ariège I am currently working with will easily be able to put up pages with a minimum of training.”
Alex Savage, Advanced Skills Teacher, Norfolk

23. “Through my studies I have come across a large number of platforms recently and what I have learned about eLanguages in the workshop makes it the best online platform I have seen so far.”
Sabine Huber, Munich Germany
about to complete her doctoral dissertation on the use of eLearning in English Language Teaching

24. eLanguages workshops We organise eLanguages workshops to:
Address the international dimension in education and introduce the Global Gateway portal
Introduce the eLanguages tool
Show-case digital tools (how to use audio, video and Internet as powerful resources in your classroom)
Hands-on experience: participants plan and build their first eLanguages project and use the digital tools to create media-rich resources

26. “The eLanguages workshops were absolutely stunning
“The eLanguages workshops were absolutely stunning. They certainly exceeded all my expectations. I had hoped to enjoy the visit but it has gone far beyond that. It has given me enthusiasm and I can’t wait to continue and do more projects.”
Mary Rick, Class Teacher Bonington Junior School

27. Contacts For further information please contact:
Your local British Council office or contact:
The eLanguages team:
Neil Shaw:
Ralph Genang:
Or visit the eLanguages website: