Beyond Vanity: Your Personal Space on the Web (Presentation at the MFLA Conference, October 16, 1998)

Claire Bradin Siskin
bradincl@pilot.msu.edu

How a Foreign Language Teacher Can Use a Personal Home Page

For you: Keep track of your own favorite and frequently-used links

For your students:

• Provide links for your students. Send them just where you want them to go!
• Provide some control over where they go and what they see.
• Guide them through the chaos of the Internet.
  • Provide information that they can refer to again and again.
  • Course description
  • Course syllabus
  • Class policies
  • Daily/weekly assignments
  • Web-related activities (provide the link to a website; put the activity on your page.)
  • Language exercises
• Student publications

Share information with colleagues

• answers to the same old questions
• handouts for conferences
• articles
• bibliography

Self-Promotion

• Put your resumé on the the web!

Examples of foreign language teachers' home pages and websites:

• Cindy Kendall's page (Spanish)
• Joanna Porvin's page (Spanish and French)
• Rosie Peter's page (German)
• Mary Sullivan's page (French)
• William Cline's page (Spanish) Check out his Generic Language Lesson Template
• J. Sanford Dugan's page (French) Check out his course "Using Technology in the Foreign Language Classroom"

Foreign Language Activities and Exercises:

• Web-Based Activities for Foreign Languages -- Patricia Pecoy's links to interactive language exercises
• Internet Activities for Foreign Language Classes -- Lewis Johnson's collection of lesson plans and other resources
• WAGNER FESTSPIELE BAYREUTH by Daniela Griffin (example of a web-based activity)
• French Agreement of Adjectives exercise -- at the French-Singapore Institute
• Juan Ramón de Arana's Spanish Language Exercises

Advice:

• Make decent web pages.
• Keep them simple. Avoid gimmicks.
• Make sure that they load fast.
• Make sure they are legible.
• Make sure they can be read by both PC and Mac users.
• Make sure they can be read by older versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer.
• Check your links as often as you can.

Useful Resources:

• How to Make a Successful ESL/EFL Teacher's Web Page by Charles Kelly
• HTML Crash Course for Educators by Andy Carvin

• Where to get free webspace:

• Geocities
• Tripod
• Free Homepage Center
• Schoolnotes.com -- Post your links and assignments here

Your Identity on the Web

• Writing Oneself in Cyberspace by Daniel Chandler
• The Presentation of Self in Electronic Life:Goffman on the Internet by Hugh Miller
  
  

Copyright 1998 Claire Bradin Siskin. Permission is granted to copy and distribute this text for educational non-profit use only. This text may not be mirrored (copied onto another website) without my permission.

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