TextReview:
Dave Sperling's Internet Activity Workbook
Glenn Evanish
IEC-NichibeiKaiwa Gakuin / Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology
With the phenomenal growth of theWeb in the past few years, it is only natural that Internet-based ESL textbooksshould appear. Many of us with access to computer labs connected to theInternet may have tried key pal exchanges, information searches, or web sitebuilding as a classroom activity in addition to English courseware, but DaveSperling has attempted to build a framework for a Web-based classroom thatincludes, as it says on the front cover, practice in all four macro-skills plusvocabulary building.
I'll reveal the recipe Dave uses,and you can judge for yourself whether you think this approach would be somethingthat both you and your group of learners would be comfortable with and benefitfrom.
Although it is common forthird-party manuals for popular software applications and othercomputer-related books to have accompanying web sites, Dave Sperling's InternetActivity Workbook (IAW) is the first English teaching textbook that I've runacross to have one. This is not his personal web site, the ESL Cafe, norPrentice Hall's corporate web site, but rather one that is totally dedicated tothe book. Therefore, when you buy the text book, you actually get the book andthe companion web site. This review, then, will necessarily be a review ofboth. As I see it, the textbook could be used just fine without the web site atall, so I'll first review the book and then discuss the extra functionality ofthe companion web site.
THE WORKBOOK
Introduction
The IAW begins with three pages ofInternet tips, beginning with "you'll need Internet Explorer or NetscapeNavigator." Dave also cautions that, "You must have a computer withlive Internet and World Wide Web access." He then goes on to includesections on searching the Web, sending and receiving e-mail, emoticons, andnetiquette. He gives each of these areas rather cursory treatment, as thespecifics are clearly outside the scope of the textbook. You, the initiated,almost certainly don't need any explanation on these topics, but if you arechoosing the book for classrooms than your own or if the learners are reallystarting from this level, some pre-teaching will certainly be in order.
Content and Activities
The textbook itself is topicbased, made up of 30 units arranged in alphabetical order. Topics included areAmusement parks, Animals, Architecture, Art, Astrology, Cities, Countries,Crime, Culture, Education, Family and Marriage, Food, Games, Geography, Health,History, Holidays, Literature, Money, Movies, Music, News, People, Science,Sports, Transportation, Travel, Weather, and Work. No surprises here, as theseare the general interest content areas found in different orders andcombinations in countless ESL texts. However, the IAW is not four color andheavy on artwork - short on copy as so many textbooks are these days, butrather a no-nonsense, grayscale collection of fill-in lists, matrices and checkboxes. It is a workbook to be filled in with information; the rest comes fromthe Internet.
The first chapter of the book isdifferent from the ensuing twenty-nine in that it is dedicated to securing keypals for the students, with the book giving space for registering six of them.This number may be the minimum to begin with, as many of us have recognized,I'm sure, that trying to keep the continuity of key pal exchanges can be achallenge. The key pal registration is an integral part of the course, sinceevery unit begins with questions to ask one's key pal and suggests a groupdiscussion of the responses. Although there are many sites on the web dedicatedto the matching up of key pals, it might be a good idea to use the companionweb site to find them for your class, as those who have registered here may beexpecting the questions on the twenty-nine topics that make up the book.Indeed, they may very well have asked them of somebody else themselves.
Moving on to the activities in thebook, what the students are actually asked to do is consistent throughout theunits, but the book is not totally formulaic. Each topic area naturally lendsitself to somewhat different treatments. I'll use Unit 9, the unit on crime, asa representative example to illustrate the activities, as follows.
1. Ask your key pal threequestions about crime in their area and discuss the answers. The questions toask are included in the text.
2. Find the birthdays, crimes, andother "interesting facts" about three infamous American criminals,and then add one more criminal of your choice. The three listed are JohnDillinger, Al Capone, and Jesse James.
3. Write the name, crimes, andrewards offered for the FBI's top ten most wanted list, then discuss whether ornot those crimes are common in your country.
4. Define five crime-relatedwords, finding the definitions in on-line dictionaries. Then discuss whetherthose crimes are common, whether the penalties should be more severe, etc.
5. Add five new words you learned from your reading and theirdefinitions. The definitions can come from on-line dictionaries.
6. Post your thoughts about crimeon the web site's bulletin board.
7. Add a piece to the URL puzzleclue.
You'll notice that most of thereading activities included in the IAW involve scanning for specific, statedinformation, although activity two above challenges the students to skim forsalient points and add other "interesting facts," a somewhatdifferent skill. Remember that the units are organized by alphabet, not bedifficulty, perhaps due to the fact that the skills needed to complete theexercises do not change very much as one works through
Activity seven warrants someexplanation. As a motivational device, Dave promises the URL to a secret website, and at the end of each unit is a bonus question with a set of blanks intowhich to write the answer. One of the blanks is circled, and these lettersreveal the URL of the site when they are all strung together. Unit Nine'squestion is “What human rights organization won the Nobel Prize in1977?" with the second letter of the answer circled. How much interestthis might generate in a group of learners is for each teacher to decide, butregardless of whether I would use it or not, I applaud the Dave Sperling'sinventiveness for adding this extra element in the book.
Companion Web Site
The companion web site isprofessional looking and tastefully done in general, with judicious use offrames, animated gifs, and image rollovers. The splash page has help andorientation links for users, and a pop up menu that leads you straight into thepage of the unit you seek. Each unit's page has the following components:
Activities
One of the functions of thecompanion web site, is to "dumb down" the Internet experience tofacilitate the execution of the exercises, so that frustration and chaos may bekept to a minimum. It is this "Activities" section of the web sitethat could potentially be of most valuable to the classroom teacher, especiallyin the early stages of the course or with groups of students who areinexperienced at using the Net. The activities of each unit are displayed ashypertext links, and clicking an activity's link takes one to a web sitecontaining the information sought, completely eliminating the need for searchengines.
As a result, the students mayspend less time searching for answers and more time reading relevant material.This may also lower frustration levels and result in more uniformity ofresponses among the students.
To illustrate, let's return to theunit on crime once again. Activity four directs the students to search the Webto find the definitions for four crimes.Words to look up are fraud, kidnapping,burglary, and treason. Clicking the link provided for the activity sends allstudents to The Electric Library's on-line encyclopedia. Entering fraud in thesearch box offered on the home page, the student finds that fraud is"Willful misrepresentation intended to deprive another of someright." If you choose to use the textbook in this way, it can all be avery controlled exercise, with all students looking up the same words in thesame dictionary.
Still, not all links are so cutand dried. Most links lead to home pages that do not make the next step obviousat all. Rather than take the students into the bowels of a site, Dave insteadchooses to drop them off at the front door. From there, they might have to do akeyword search, scan a content list, etc.,so that even with the standardizing effect of the activities page, they ofcourse may find themselves in some unpredictable, and interesting, places. Thisarticle may have been finished much sooner had it not been so!
As I began to become familiar withthe site, some things I appreciated, and others I did not. I appreciated thefact that the all external links on the activities pages are coded as pop upwindows, so that when the students inevitably follow links that take them farafield, they can easily return to their original activity page simply byclicking the top window away. Dave is waiting patiently below. I did notappreciate that some major elements of the sight, such as the Electric Librarysite mentioned earlier, are free sections of pay sites. The sites soon startmaking their sales pitches. Try to back out of the sites and the students willhave pop up ads filling the screen, pitching book sales and on-line brokers.Granted, these ads are common on the Internet, but I'm not sure Dave could nothave avoided them when choosing his links. Either way, I found that gettinginto the habit of clicking the sites away and starting over, rather thanbacking out of them, helps to alleviate the problem.
Key Pal Exchange
As I mentioned before, the key palexchange is an integral part of the textbook, so there is a page forregistering oneself as a potential key pal. The information solicited islimited to e-mail address, age, gender, and country, however, without theoption of adding a few lines of self introduction that many other such sitesprovide. Dave Sperling may have thought, since the activities of the bookincluded "canned" questions to ask one's key pals, that this furtherinformation was unnecessary. The lack of such autobiographical information,however, makes key pal selection (even) more of a gamble than it alreadyinherently is. I gave my students a choice of two key pal exchange sites, thisone and another with self introductions included, and later asked them whichone they had used. Every one of them had used the site with the personalmessage.
Still, a good number of peoplehave registered as key pals. You can search through the data base by country,further narrowing your search by age group and gender if you wish. There seemsto be a fair distribution of ages, so that high school, university, and evenadult education classes could find key pals in their age bracket. To give you afeel for the number of key pals registered, here are some numbers ofunrestricted searches by country. Bear in mind, though, that some of these aremistakes, duplicates, and gags. The Japanese and non-native speakers of Englishresiding in the US seem to be well represented.
USA 1,093
Brazil 50
UK 15
France 23
India 2
Thailand 96
Japan 1,225
Since not all people who register,especially those who register as part of a classroom assignment, would like toremain active for long periods of time, I would suggest that Dave add key palregistration dates, as well as the opportunity for a few lines of selfintroduction, in the future. The registrations may automatically expire after acertain time, but this is not explicitly mentioned anywhere.
Bulletin Board
Dave has set up a forum for publiccomments on each of the subject areas of the text. The bulletin board has beenlittle used, however, with the great majority of the subject areas containingno more than Dave's welcome message. One of the few posts was dated April, 1999(I'm writing this in November, 1999), so since there has been so littleinterest in the bulletin board considering the sizable number of key palsregistered, I'
Student Writing
Student newspapers have long beenused in writing class to broaden the intended readership of student compositionsand give them legitimacy beyond the scope of a homework assignment. It seemsthat Dave intended this to be a type of international student newspaper for"publishing" student compositions longer than what one would post onthe site's bulletin board. This section of the site also remains inactive.
URL Puzzle Page
If the students think that they'vecome up with the correct URL for the "secret web site," they canenter it here. No, I don't know what it is, but since it is just another pageon the IAW's site, chances are good that it says, "Congratulations! Youare a Master Surfer!" or other similar message.
Teacher Forum
This chance for teachers toexchange information has gone unused. There were only two short comments.
Syllabus Manager
This area gives instructors theopportunity to post their syllabus and course requirements. Students use anon-line search for their instructor's name so as not to scroll throughpotential lists. If your institution does not have a server for such purposesor you do not put this information on handouts or a personal web site, you canmake it available through the Syllabus Manager.
Mailing List
With the inclusion of a mailinglist on this web site, all bases have been covered it would seem, with thepossible exception of an on-line chat. Considering the underuse of the otherareas of the site, I didn't sign up to see if anything was being talked about.
Objectives
Descriptions of the activities inthe most general terms. Objectives for Unit Nine include "discussing criminalbehavior" (Speaking/Listening) and "reading about infamouscriminals" (Reading/Writing).
Summing Up
My experience with the material isnot extensive, having worked only on Unit 9, but I can offer the followingobservations. Although the book promises practice in the four macro skills, thevery nature of the medium would seem to dictate that most of the actual classtime be spent reading. There are writing activities included, e.g. the studentsare invited to write a paragraph describing one of the gangsters' criminalactivities. I might ask for this assignment in handwriting, as this couldbecome an exercise in plagiarism even more easily than usual, considering theadded facility of cutting and pasting material straight off the Web. Althoughthere are links on the site for downloading RealPlayer and Shockwave plugins inthe anticipation of encountering multimedia on the Web, listening and speakingcomponents largely come down to Dave's suggested group work activities, e.g.the "Are any of these crimes common in your country?" and "Whichcriminal do you think is the most dangerous? Rank the fugitives in order"questions in Unit Nine.
The thirty units of the book couldtake a long, long time to do front to back. My small "AdvancedReading" group of engineering students, working with no computer lab chaosat all, needed forty-five minutes just to fill in the required information onthe Infamous American Criminals. For a classroom meeting once a week, likemine, you could be very selective in choosing the units and activities, knowingthat most of the book would go unused anyway, unless you assigned net surfingas homework! Although any student-centered activity almost necessarily meansthat groups or individuals will be ending at different times for follow-upactivities, the vagaries of computer and Internet usage and varying levels oftech savvy in the students seem to magnify this situation. In other words, it'snatural for students to end any activity at different times, but there seems tobe a much wider spread in the time needed to do searches than the time neededto, say, answer ten comprehension questions over a reading. This maynecessitate new organizational and classroom management skills on your part.
Also, it's possible to forgetthat, as interesting as the Web can be, it isn't written with non-nativespeakers in mind. The activities in the IAW are largely just scans for specificinformation, but I would still caution that if you would not ask your studentsto do exercises using authentic texts, such as the day's newspaper, then usingthe IAW is probably also unrealistic.
Finally, as I mentionedpreviously, each unit of the IAW starts out with key pal interchange and groupdiscussion of the responses. That doesn't mean that you should actually do theactivities in that order, or at all, for that matter, considering human nature.
Thirteen students of mine sent outemail introductions to four key pals each from a different listing, and to dateonly four have gotten replies. Your experience may be different, but you may dowell to give the key pal exchange of each upcoming unit plenty of lead time tomake sure that there is something to discuss.
Summary
Dave Sperling has combined an abundance of web searching activities with some engaging and informative links. My students seemed interested in the tasks, and a quick opinion check confirmed that they enjoyed doing web research. Several of them gave me quick responses when I asked them what new vocabulary words they had learned while doing the exercises. All in all, I think that Dave Sperling has put together a useful framework for an Internetbased classroom, and I would recommend that you consider it if you think you have the right learners and facilities.
Dave Sperling's Internet Activity Workbook. ISBN 0-13-010325 Web site: http://www.prenhall.com/sperling
To obtain an examination copy of the book, contact: Pearson Education Japan Longman ELT Department Nishishinjuku KF Bldg 101 8-14-24 Nishi-Shinjuku Shinjuku-ku, Japan 160-0023