This document discusses tools for developing language course materials in a digital age. It begins by outlining typical tools like blogs, wikis, social networking and podcasts. It then describes three example activities: 1) Using online resources to prepare for an in-class activity on planning a trip to Australia. 2) Extending classroom writing lessons by having students continue practicing on Facebook. 3) Bringing in speakers from other countries using video conferencing to make lessons more engaging. The document emphasizes selecting materials that meet learners' needs and are accessible on technologies they commonly use.

1. LANGUAGE MATERIALS
DEVELOPMENT IN A DIGITAL AGE
prepared by:
Safiah Almurashi

2. OUTLINE:
• Typical tools for courseware development and
choosing the right one for your needs.
• Selecting and assembling suitable materials.

3. TYPICAL TOOLS FOR COURSEWARE DEVELOPMENT AND
CHOOSING THE RIGHT ONE FOR YOUR NEEDS
• The range of tools that we have available has exploded in recent years.
• This is partly as a result of the move in the digital world from what has been termed
Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, or what is more commonly referred to as social media .
• It is also partly due to the development and proliferation of hardware that is both
versatile and highly portable.

4. A mobile smartphone is capable of a great many things that would have required several
expensive and large and bulky pieces of equipment in earlier materials design.
This opens up a large range of possibilities for the teacher (and the learner), but at the
same time can be a daunting prospect mostly because there is so much choice and it is
difficult to know where to start

5. A useful way of categorising social media is what Poore refers to as ‘the big
(2013: 41): blogs, wikis, social networking and podcasting ;
 A blog :is essentially a diary, which is usually created by an individual and can be
commented on by others.
 Teachers often use blogs to deliver material to their learners, or perhaps
to get learners to post material that others comment on.
 A wiki: is an interactive web page that anyone can contribute to; it has a
‘memory’ of the edits that have occurred.
 Wikis are commonly used for collaborative writing or project work.

6. Social networking tools :may include blogs and wikis, but the most commonly cited
example is a tool like Facebook, which allows people to post and comment on a
of materials and interact as a community, thus helping to develop the affective in
language learning.
Podcasts: can be audio and/or video. Tools like YouTube and the TED Talks have
revolutionised the range of available material for use in class and have also enabled
more exciting video-based project work to be undertaken and displayed.

7. If we use the big four( blogs, wikis, social networking and podcasting )in
conjunction with a smartphone for capturing material (pictures, audio and video, plus
potentially finding or creating text), we have a powerful starting place for the design of
our materials.
o We have both ways of creating materials and places where they can be utilised and
evaluated.

8. SELECTING AND ASSEMBLING SUITABLE
MATERIALS
A typical teacher is likely to be engaged in a world where the needs of their learners are likely to feature some form
of digital technology. What is increasingly likely is that a teacher will be looking to extend their teaching of a textbook
with technology.
• This might mean that the teacher asks learners to look at something in advance, which is then used as the lead-in
to a lesson. It might be that some of the supplementary activities are located on the Web in a virtual learning
environment.
• It might be that a lesson is built around a reading app that is found on a tablet. Perhaps the learners will be asked
to bring into the class examples of how they use English online to communicate with other English language users
elsewhere in the world – via a digital game, for example. It may be that the teacher uses their own connections to
bring in someone from outside of the classroom, perhaps by using a tool like Skype or Twitter.

9. SELECTING AND ASSEMBLING SUITABLE
MATERIALS
• Activity 1: Preparing in advance.
• Activity 2: Extending classroom activity.
• Activity 3: Bringing the outside in.

10. ACTIVITY 1: PREPARING IN ADVANCE
The range of materials that are available on the Web that can be used to link to the
existing course book is very extensive .They are attractive to learners because :
they are authentic and up to date.
They can add realism to course book material and make good links between the
classroom and the real world.

11. Let us consider a course book lesson with the theme of travel. A typical lesson for a
group of teenagers might focus on a trip that the group might take to an English-
speaking country. Let’s propose a group of Japanese learners in a secondary school
are asked to plan a two-week visit to Australia. This activity is set two weeks before the
main activity that the learners are going to do in class. The class is divided into smaller
groups: each is given a particular topic, for example travel to and from Australia;
possible places to visit; types of accommodation and costs; eating and drinking; or
other activities. The planning in class will involve the different groups presenting their
ideas and then as a class they will agree on itinerary, activities, types of
accommodation and so forth. It will depend on the class and the level, but this work
could be managed by the teacher by setting up a series of electronic worksheets with
links to various websites and guide questions, somewhat like a web quest. If the
learners have the necessary digital literacy ,they can manage this themselves. The
electronic worksheets can be set up in various ways, such as on Google Docs, as part
of a class wiki, or as more traditional web pages.

12. From the preparation;
 the learners are expected to present ideas in class using tools like PowerPoint , or Google Presentation,
after having sought guidance from each other and the teacher about language. Information and ideas
can be added to a Google Map and shared with parents and friends.
This kind of activity is task-based learning. Towards the end of the task cycle, the group and the teacher
could go back over the language that they have used and consider areas where they have had difficulties
and then consider how these can be resolved.
 Following on from Ellis’s(2005) principles, we see learners engaging in meaning-focused activity, but
with some emphasis on form. We are developing implicit knowledge of language: the learners are
engaged in exploring real language, interacting about it and then talking about what they have found
with the larger group.
 Following Jolly and Bolitho (2011), the teacher has identified a problem – that the textbook needs to be
made more relevant to digital natives – has found a suitable way of mediating the process using
particular technologies, has designed and set up electronic worksheets, or has provided guided tasks to
scaffold the process, if the learners are more advanced. With the help of a range of technological
resources, the teacher has produced good-looking materials that can be tried out with one group and
then adjusted for others.

13. ACTIVITY 2: EXTENDING CLASSROOM
ACTIVITY
It has been argued for some time that writing should be seen as a process (Flower and
Hayes1980) and that technology can aid that process (Pennington 1996).
As Web 2.0 has taken centre stage in language teaching and we have moved
theoretically towards constructivism, the field of technology and writing has started to
refer to collaborative writing with a particular emphasis on the use of wikis .
There are many other options for promoting writing and other social media; in this
example, Facebook is proposed. This use of technology extends the lesson. The
extension is required because the actual lessons themselves focus on a discussion of
writing, not the act of writing itself.

14.  Ivy (2013) identifies the problem as being one of a lack of writing practice.
 The learners are already making use of social media to communicate outside of the classroom;
it is therefore a short step to design a lesson extension that encourages the learners to begin
to make use of Facebook as a medium for writing practice.
• The journey is not as far for either the teacher or the learners and fits in with the sociocultural
realities of this and many other contexts.
• The lesson is built around descriptive writing.
• The teacher uses a picture to stimulate student discussion about what they might say, and
students work together in small groups to start a mind map giving them the basic structure.
• They are expected to describe a typical local dish as if it is going to appear on a poster as a
part of an international food festival.
• Outside of the lesson in Facebook they begin to start writing and are prompted by the
teacher to extend their ideas – to add new adjectives.

15. ACTIVITY 3: BRINGING THE OUTSIDE IN
One of the popular ways of enlivening classrooms and making them more relevant is
promoting connections between classrooms in different parts of the world.
We have seen this at various levels, and it has often been connected to intercultural
development, initially in higher education .
There are good examples of this conducted at a primary and secondary level in
Motteram(2013) where Pim (2013: 26–27) describes two case studies of the use of
video conferencing :one to develop cultural understanding and spoken language skills
and one used to develop reading skills with remote tutors.

16.  Stanley (2013: 48–50) describes how an Egyptian teacher invites a colleague she has met online to ‘visit’
her classroom and answer questions about the impact of climate change on her country
 In all of these cases the teachers again identify a particular issue: promoting reading skills or spoken
language skills where the traditional context constrains what is possible.
 In the case of teachers trying to deal with effective reading practices for their learners, this use of
technology supports the skills of the classroom teacher in an area that they find difficult because of their
low-level language skills.
 For the Egyptian teacher, she is constrained by the facilities that are available in the school and can
normally make little use of technology in her classes. This activity gives her the freedom to do
something that the learners find motivating and that gets around the limits of what the school can
offer. She provides her own laptop, but the school has a projector and an Internet connection.
Appropriate tasks are created in each situation and then a range of different technologies can be
utilised to support these lessons. The reading class might be supported by a blog of additional
materials that are related to the books that are being read.
 In the second primary example, the students use a wiki to post descriptions of their daily lives.
The Egyptian teacher ends up using blogs, Facebook and a virtual learning environment called Edmodo
with her learners.

17. TO CONCLUDE
• Digital technologies can increasingly help teachers to design effective materials that
meet the needs of language learners both in the traditional classroom and beyond.
• By designing for learning and starting with easily accessible and usable tools, which in
many cases learners are likely to be accessing for their own uses, teachers can
implement the Principles of Instructed Learning (Ellis 2005).As a result classes are going
to be more effective and more targeted.
• The design for learning framework’s holistic nature means that teachers can be more
aware of the domain that they are trying to explore, but also use it as a way of
articulating what they are trying to achieve to others.
• The activities offer opportunities for teachers to provide effective and targeted material
that are principled and fit for purpose.