Given by Edward Tanguay Internet Specialist for Language Teaching

1. that much of the information you need as a language teacher is available to you on the Internet
2. skills to find this information
3. how to print the information you find and copy it in word processing documents
4. how to send this information to others and organize it yourself in your E-Mail box

What Is It You Are Looking For as A Language Teacher?

Take five minutes and write down something you have been looking for as a language teacher. This could be:

• a reference dictionary, e.g. American slang or a British/American translation dictionary
• someone who has taught a class on the same subject you are teaching
• a translation for a specific phrase or the meaning of an acronym
• the answer to a grammar, syntax or cultural question
• activity ideas for your class
• current information about the British, American, French, Spanish, or Italian culture
• reference and teaching materials for your ESP area: chemistry, engineering, biology. . .

Be sure to write down a specific thing you are looking for. You will need it later on in this workshop!

CNN Newsroom	When you subscribe to CNN Newsroom, you receive a daily CNN Newsroom teacher's guide to the 30-minute CNN Newsroom broadcast daily at 9:00 A.M. German time. You can have your audio/visual center record this broadcast and make the tape available for you that day. The 5-page teacher's guide contains an overview of the broadcast and class-ready activities which you can copy and hand out to your students.
ESL Scientific Writing Course	Here's an example of a complete ESL course on the Internet. Why reinvent the wheel? Incorporate an online course into your own course. Many online courses such as this one are very well planned and self-explanatory.
British/American Dictionary	So your British colleague asked you if you are going to wear braces to the party and you don't know what she's talking about? Find out here.

Once you have found what you are looking for, you will want to do one or more of the following:

print it
include it in a word processing document
send it to someone else
organize it

If you are looking at information on your screen which you would like to print directly to the printer, simply click on the button at the top of the screen that says PRINT. The text and graphic will be printed immediately.

Note:  If you don't want to all of that information in the header and footer to be printed (e.g. if you want to hand a clean sheet out to your students), click on FILE, PAGE SETUP, then click off all of the following properties: 

Document Title
Document Location (URL)
Page Number
Page Total
Date Printed

1. select the text you would like to copy from the home page (CTRL-A selects all)
2. click on EDIT and COPY
3. open your word processing program (e.g. Microsoft Word) if it is not already open
4. move the cursor to the position you want to place the text
5. press CTRL-V (remember on German keyboards that the CTRL key is labeled STRG)

Note:  The graphics from the home page will not be copied into Microsoft Word, only the text. If you would like to include the graphics as well, you need to click on each individual graphic with the RIGHT mouse button and select SAVE IMAGE AS and save the image to the disk. This will be a GIF file. To be used in Word, you will need to convert it to BMP with a graphics program, e.g. PaintShop. If this is already way to complicated for you (!), I suggest you learn how to write documents in Netscape Gold 3.0 which can easily incorporate GIF files into the text. It is very easy to learn (what you see is what you get) and is an indispensible tool for creating classroom materials with text and graphics from the Internet. See your local PC lab administrator on how to access and use the program (or ask me to come to your school and give a workshop on it).

If you want to send a home page to another person:

1. get the page you want to save on your Netscape screen
2. click FILE and MAIL DOCUMENT
3. in the MAIL TO field, type in the internet address of the person you would like to send it to
(or send it to an alias or a mailing list)
4. type in a subject, e.g. nice grammar exercises
5. click SEND

A good habit to get into as a teacher in the information age is to periodically surf the net, look for useful materials, and organize the ones you find in the Netscape 3.0 bookmark folder system so that you can access them easily in the future. This means for instance that you will be able to put all grammar home pages you find into a folder called "grammar" and all vocabulary home pages into a folder names "vocabulary".

When you find a home page which you would like to come back to later:

1. get the home page on the Netscape screen, e.g. a home page that has a grammar activity
2. click on BOOKMARK and ADD BOOKMARK
3. then click on BOOKMARK and GO TO BOOKMARKS
4. If you don't have a topic folder for this kind of home page, e.g. grammar, create a folder by clicking ITEM, INSERT FOLDER, and typing in name of folder, e.g. grammar
5. The name of the page that you just bookmarked will appear at the bottom of the bookmarks. With the mouse, drag the icon for this page up into the topic folder, e.g. grammar
6. Close the bookmark window by clicking FILE and CLOSE.

Now, anytime you would like to come back to this folder, just click on BOOKMARK and move the mouse pointer to the folder you want. It will automatically open. Select the home page you want by clicking on it.

How to organize your E-Mail into folders As a teacher who knows how to use the Internet effeciently, you will soon be getting a lot of E-Mail from colleagues around the world. You need to be able to organize this E-Mail as it comes in folders, e.g. ESP-related articles, grammar activities, writing projects, etc. You can do this with Netscape's mailbox folder system. 1. To create a folder in your Netscape Mailbox, click on FILE and NEW FOLDER. 2. In the NETSCAPE USER PROMPT window, enter the name of the folder, e.g. writing activities 3. Now let's say you get an E-Mail from another colleague describing a writing activity. Click on this E-Mail's icon, drag it over to the left hand side of the screen, and drop it in the yellow folder icon labeled writing activities 4. To see all files in the writing activities folder, click on the folder icon itself. To go back to your incoming messages, click on the INBOX folder.

How to attach a file to an E-Mail If you would like to send a Microsoft Word, Excel or PageMaker file, or a picture, a sound file, or even a video clip to a colleague in another city or another country, you can attach it to an E-Mail and send it off. 1. In your Netscape Mailbox, click on the button TO MAIL. 2. Enter MAIL TO, SUBJECT and type a short note such as "Here is lesson plan I did in Microsoft Word." 3. Click on the ATTACHMENT button. 4. Click on ATTACH FILE. 5. Then with the mouse, find and double click on the file you wish to send to your colleague. 6. Click on the SEND button. When your colleague receives the message, he will just have to click on the name of the Microsoft Word file, it will automically save to his hard drive, and then he can load it into Microsoft Word. You can try this out by sending a file to yourself.

Now that you know how to use these tools, find the piece of paper on which you wrote down what you are looking for as a language teacher. Use the above tools to see what you can find! Good luck and happy searching!

If you did not find exactly what you need, send me an email and I might be able to point you in the right direction. Also, remember that the Web is a large place and is growing exponentially, so keep on looking!