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TAD Consortium August 2000 Information Update 1
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CONTENTS
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NEWS/TRENDS
--- At The Government's Mercy Again
(Kenya)
--- Digital divide replicates
PROFILED ORGANIZATIONS
--- Los Maribios - Nicaragua
--- The Media Project - Mozambique
ONLINE RESOURCES
--- Khanya - managing rural change cc
--- Guides to Quality in Visual
Resource Imaging
--- Online
project documents for the DFID-supported "ICTs and Small Enterprise in Africa"
research project
--- The Web Developer's Journal
--- Sexual Harassment Law in the
Technology Era
--- TeachersFirst Physical Education
section
--- The Kids Zone Magazine
ARTICLES
--- A 'Vaccine' Of
Educational Material -- What The Doctor Orders
--- The
Death of Cyberspace and the Rebirth of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL)
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NEWS/TRENDS
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AT THE GOVERNMENT'S MERCY AGAIN (KENYA)
The fate of Kenya's first private radio station, Citizen Radio, once again hangs in the
balance after Kenya's Court of Appeal (the highest in Kenya) refused to order the
reconnection of the station transmitters and restoration of its broadcasting frequencies
pending the hearing of a lawsuit filed by the station:
http://dfn.org/Voices/Africa/kenya/citizen5.htm and http://dfn.org/Voices/Africa/kenya/kenyasiege.htm
(DFN special report: President Moi and press freedom in Kenya)
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By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI: South Asia has emerged as the most promising region for sourcing information technologyexpertise, but this is an achievement that is of use only to the rich nations, say critics.
The so-called digital divide between industrialised and developing nations is being replicated within the region, widening the already big gulf between the majority poor and an English language-speaking, Internet-savvy elite, they point out. The region's emerging prominence as an IT superpower, best seen in the case of India, is said to be accentuating the sharp contrast between an educated white- collar "elite" and the rest. Increasingly, the new sub-continental Internet-using elite identifies less with their digitally-deprived compatriots than with what Kenneth Keniston, expert on South Asian software at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), calls the global "digirati."
In the past half century, South Asian nations have done little to raise living standards of the majority poor who are a world apart from a microscopic, English language-speaking elite that is close to the centres of political and economic decision making. The big Indian names in the global IT industry such as Sabeer Bhatia, creator of Hotmail and Azim Premji, rated by Forbes magazine among the world's five richest people, belong to this class. Says New Delhi-based education expert, Kirti Jayaraman: "The Internet is very much a big-city phenomenon and confined to the elite classes who may as well be living on a different planet with access to the Internet from their homes, offices and schools."
According to Jayaraman, the digital divide can be seen quite clearly in schools in India's big cities. Here, the children of rich and middle class families go to English language-medium -schools stacked with computers linked to the Internet.
On the other hand, the urban poor send their children to government schools that instruct in the vernacular language and lack tables, chairs and even roofs. The situation is worse in India's vast rural hinterland. -Dawn/The InterPress Service.
http://www.dawn.com/2000/07/23/int8.htm
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PROFILED ORGANIZATIONS
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Taken from The Drum Beat - 57 (from THE COMMUNICATION INITIATIVE partnership - http://www.comminit.com)
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Los Maribios - Nicaragua - imparts knowledge of new agricultural techniques and crops to 2,400 rural families through video. Includes action on agriculture, gender and economic development through a weekly agricultural radio programme, seminars on gender, and videos on the breeding of iguanas for export.
Contact: fao-nic@field.fao.org
http://www.comminit.com/downloads/word_docs/danida/FAO-project.rtf
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Taken from The Drum Beat - 57 (from THE COMMUNICATION INITIATIVE partnership - http://www.comminit.com)
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The Media Project - Mozambique - supports independent media development, de-centralization of media, media pluralism, training of media people and development of democratization. Responds to the need for information and the re-establishment of social networks after years of war. Supports radio programmes on health, culture and the environment. Contact: bjallov@mediamoz.com and http://www.comminit.com/downloads/word_docs/danida/Difficult-Road.rtf
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ONLINE RESOURCES
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Dear colleagues
We have now added useful internet resources to our web site. Please tell us of any very useful sites you have found for the topics we have suggested We have also made a few minor changes in format to make it easier to use. We are also starting a news flash box to indicate new developments at Khanya, and any outside news of interest to managing rural change.
Regards
Ian Goldman
Khanya - managing rural change cc
Website: www.khanya-mrc.co.za
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From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2000.
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/
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Guides to Quality in Visual Resource Imaging
http://www.rlg.org/visguides/
On July 17, the Research Libraries Group (RLG), Digital Libraries Federation (DLF), and the Council on Library and Information Resources announced a new set of five guides to the technical and planning aspects of digital imaging of visual resources. As the official press release notes, "this new Web-based reference is designed to serve the growing community of museums, archives, and research libraries that are turning to digital conversion to provide greater access to their visual resources as well as to help preserve the original materials." The guides include "Planning a Digital Imaging Project"; "Selecting a Scanner"; "Imaging Systems: the Range of Factors Affecting Image Quality"; "Measuring Quality of Digital Masters"; and "File Formats for Digital Masters." All are offered in HTML format, and users's comments are encouraged for future updates.
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Online project documents for the DFID-supported "ICTs and Small Enterprise in Africa" research project are now available at: http://www.man.ac.uk/idpm/ictsme.htm
They include summary and concept papers within the IDPM Development Informatics series, and the full interim report that analyses:
-- The Role of Information in Enterprise Development
-- Small Enterprise Development in Botswana
-- The Information Needs of Small Enterprises in Botswana
-- ICTs and Enterprise Development in Botswana
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The Web Developer's Journal is a useful on-line/free source for Web developers.
http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/
Definitely worth a look if you haven't seen it yet.
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Sexual Harassment Law in the Technology Era
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/towns-2000-07-p1.html
Sexual harassment law is not new, but Internet and high-tech companies recently have become the target of a number of lawsuits. These lawsuits relate not only to sexual harassment in the physical workplace but also to improper use of technology, such as by sending offensive e-mails. A new article on GigaLaw.com explains what sexual harassment is, why Internet companies should be aware of it and what they can do to minimize their legal liability.
Here's an excerpt:
For years, the courts have seen an increase in the number of sexual harassment claims against employers. However, during that time, there were few, if any, reported cases against high-tech companies. This is now changing. For example:
In 1999, Juno Online faced two separate suits from former employees who alleged that they were told that they would be fired if they broke off their ongoing relationships with senior executives.
Pseudo Programs, a Manhattan-based Internet TV network, was sued in January 2000 after male employees referred to female employees as "bimbos" and forced them to look at sexually explicit material on the Internet.
Technology Integration Group was sued over allegations that one of its managers had repeatedly harassed the plaintiff with his unwanted touching.
To read the full article, go to http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/towns-2000-07-p1.html
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The new TeachersFirst Physical Education section includes resources for all grade levels, with particular emphasis on games and exercise strategies for elementary and middle school teachers. We've been able to find a number of games and activities from international sources, and we hope these will add an element of variety to your gym or playground. The Physical Education resources are available from the TeachersFirst content matrix at http://www.teachersfirst.com/matrix-f.htm
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The Kids Zone Magazine is nonprofit. The Kids Zone Magazine's mission is promoting interactive literacy by merging new technology with good old fashioned book reading and writing.We ask that you bookmark this educational resource site. Visit often and tell your friends. --The site is a great parent and teacher resource. The Kids Zone Magazine (The Magazine For Kids, By Kids) at <http://www.kidszonemagazine.org>
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ARTICLES
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A 'VACCINE' OF EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL -- WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERS
By Frederick Noronha
Can information and access to educational material serve as a "vaccinations" to tackle intractable human problems that have been plaguing us for generations. Is this an antidote for poverty, ill-health, environmental degradation and low agricultural productivity? Yes, believes a doctor from Belgium, as he offers 'tonnes' of useful information on his low-cost CDs (compact disks) across the globe.
Dr Michel Loots, MD, from Antwerp believes the planet has a crying need for a "massive low cost vaccination campaign against lack of knowledge". In fact he compares it to the impressive universal polio vaccination.
So he wants to give to those in need the equivalent knowledge of 16 full university degrees at their fingertips. He has worked out a unique solution that brings just this to you at the cost of a few dollars. He also argues that just 5,000 personal computers can "guarantee a continuous high school level education of 60,000 persons" if properly used.
Dr Loots is not in it for the money. His goal is to use IT to tackle age centuries-problems that once colonised countries across the globe are yet to overcome. And what's interesting is the way in which he does it.
Director of the Humanity Libraries Project, Dr Loots shows how innovating thinking can ensure that some 3000 essential books -- that can make a difference to the lives of millions, but which cost US$ 50,000 -- can be made available at between US$ 30 to 50.
His trick is simple: collate already-available material. Push for more research and studies to be put in alternative 'copy-left' models that allow it to be freely shared. And replicate this information in a way that makes it most easy to pass around across the globe! On CD.
Many solutions for world problems have been published. Solutions for 50% of basic world problems have been gathered, at high subsidised cost, by UN agencies. This can be a kind of electronic "Marshall" information plan for the Third World, as this experiment rightly points out.
Some CDs currently available offer thousands of documents on environment, medicine and health, development, food and nutrition and other subjects.
For instance, do a search for 'India' on the Food and Nutrition Library and you immediately come across 3423 references. These include useful studies on lesser-known grain, infant morbidity, alcohol-related problems, and early child development -- all related to India. There's also a useful debate on whether too many people causes hunger... or whether other factors are at play.
Loots' argues that essential information -- if made available "at your fingertips" -- can help tackle poverty, help take better decisions and help solve local development and basic needs problems.
Says he: "A complete development and basic needs CD-ROM library for developing countries seems an efficient way to achieve this swiftly, provided it can be delivered at the lowest cost possible. This is the goal of the Humanity Libraries Project."
This project wants to provide all persons involved in development, well-being and basic needs, with access to a complete library containing most solutions, know-how and ideas they need to tackle poverty and increase the human potential. The final goal is to include 3,000 essential books, accessible at the lowest cost possible of US$ 30 to 50 for a set of upto five CD-Roms.
Interestingly, an average university degree of four years requires integrating about 10,000 pages of information and knowledge. Loots' HDL library version 2.0 contains 160,000 pages, all accessible within seconds. "This means the equivalent knowledge of about 16 full university degrees available at fingertips to any person," says he.
Besides the library project of 3.000 books, Loots has plans to create tailored, ready-to-upload libraries. Into this will go some of the material of the CD-ROMs for which this non-profit organisation gets permission to upload, on any servers in many Third World cities. This will help strengthen the capacity of local servers, says he.
This Humanity Libraries Project was founded five years ago as the Humanity CD-Rom Project. Till recently, the project was named the Humanity CD-Rom Project, but as it is going into DVD and Internet versions, the name has been changed to Humanity Libraries Project.
Loots feels the project is now "mature" and shows it can fulfill an enormous need. Says he: "We are looking for additional sponsors for the dissemination of many free libraries, for the editing of similar humanitarian cd-rom libraries in French, Spanish and other local languages, and to create similar network libraries with many partners in specialized fields like education, health, nutrition, environment and micro-enterprises."
He has plans to work with as many organisations, universities and governments to adapt his humanitarian concept to local cultures and local languages, so that such bodies can provide low-cost basic information locally.
Many organisations and institutions, he notes, have hundreds of valuable publications. These could be added in this common low-cost CD-ROM library project.
He sees development and governmental agencies world over helping to create a low-cost library of their most essential publications and pool them in an open humanitarian shareware setting. Therefore, Dr Loots says, it is essential that all agencies, governments, NGO and individual authors to start to digitize their material. And also to agree that their information can be shared for low-cost redistribution in an humanitarian network setting. "We are willing to share our low-cost production capacity, resources and experiences," says he.
Loots points out that an estimated one-third, or about 20 million pages of UN material, are very useful and contain solutions for fifty per cent of basic world problems.
Probably as much university and NGO material is as useful. Unfortunately, much of this UN information is copyrighted -- and is either too expensive for developing countries or not available. Sometimes, if free, it requires request or download processes that are too cumbersome for Third World countries or for anyone interested to participate, he notes.
There are several reasons why such useful knowledge fails to get disseminated. Insufficient publicity. Slow dissemination compared to what "free" flow could achieve. Some UN agencies following too tight and defensive copyright restrictions. UN prices that the Third World can't afford. On the other hand, there's a lot of promise too.
"Once the electronic versions of the UN publications are freely available, universities and governments of all countries can start to massively translate these 30,000 UN publications to their local languages. This local availability will help convince local leaders, NGO and other agents to tackle basic poverty problems," says Dr Loots.
Any volunteers? Loots says you can help this project by granting permission for reproducing your information or publication on these CD-Roms to be widely shared, or become a non-profit node in your region.
There are already interesting models from across the globe that help the free sharing of information for the sake of humankind -- instead of following merely profit-oriented copyrights policies.
Thanks to computers, perfect copies of a digital work can easily be made -- and even modified, or further distributed -- by others, with no loss of the original work. In cyberia interactions, this is the only way for individual beings to thrive in a community.
The only way to give the world a chance, is to give millions of humanitarian people and NGO around the world equal access to these solutions and this information to help themselves and other people. They should be given free permission to redistribute and recombine these solutions without "suffocating control systems", as he argues.
Loots is campaigning for the core UN knowledge to be released in "copyleft" in standard formats. Copyleft would mean that UN agencies retain copyrights, and control over the commercial book sales. But that at the same time free use and electronic dissemination is allowed for non-commercial purposes without the actual inefficient centralized copyright control.
"Many NGO are already applying this copyleft principle for their information. Should the UN agencies do the same, they will be much more understood, appreciated and respected, and consulted for implementation of global projects," he argues.
Today, for as little as US$6 (for bulk purchases) one can get the US$20,000 worth of books -- which in paper would weigh 340 kilos and span 160,000 pages. All on one CD-Rom! Publications come from some 70 partner groups and cover 23 major subjects; with each 20 to 50 books. There are about 30,000 linked images. Useful information and relevant education at a low price indeed.
Dr Loots recently told this writer: "I am just out of a period of two months working days and night to create similar libraries for Food and Nutrition, Health and Environment, with each hundreds of books, and a version in French."
CONTACT DETAILS
Online version: http://payson.tulane.edu:8888/
Contact : Dr Michel Loots, MD
Address : Oosterveldlaan 196 B-2610 Antwerp, Belgium
Tel : 32-3-448.05.54 - Fax : 32-3-449.75.74
E-mail : mloots@globalprojects.org
Web Sites : http://www.oneworld.org/globalprojects/humcdrom
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Plenary speech at the "CALL for the 21st Century" IATEFL and ESADE conference, 2 July 2000, Barcelona, Spain.
The Death of Cyberspace and the Rebirth of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL)
By Mark Warschauer
The notion of "cyberspace" suggests that there exists a virtual, online world that is distinct from our real world. "Cyberspace" is a type of fantasyland, where we take on cyber-identities and engage in virtual reality. But then, when we leave cyberspace, we come back to the "real world".
I would content, in contrast, that the significance of online communication lies not in its separation from the real world, but rather in how it is impacting nearly every single aspect of the real world. Just like there is no such thing as "speechspace" or "writingspace" or "printspace," so there is no cyberspace. The notion of cyberspace is thus not helpful for understanding the very real impact of online networking on our lives, and indeed the concept of cyberspace is slowly dying out.
In contrast to the notion of cyberspace, let us consider the views of two prominent scholars of human communication. Manual Castells (Castells, 1998) has written that "Information technology, and the ability to use it and adapt it, is the critical factor in generating and accessing wealth, power, and knowledge in our time" (p. 92). And Walter Ong (1982) observed that "Technologies are not mere exterior aids, but also interior transformations of consciousness, and never more so than when they affect the word" (p. 82). Thus, according to these important views, with which I agree, information technology is transforming our societies and our lives and even, eventually, our minds, rather than creating alternate worlds.
How we think about cyberspace has consequences for our vision of English teaching as well. If we see cyberspace as an unreal fantasyland, then we will likely choose to send our students there to engage in some practice activities so they can then come back to perform in the real world. However, if we reject the notion of a separate cyberspace and fully take into account the true impact of online communication on real life, then we must teach our students to read, write, and communicate online as a very important medium of 21st century life. It is this vision that I will discuss today, as I look at how the field of computer-assisted language learning must be reborn in our new century.
I will begin by examining 10 upcoming developments of information and communications technology and then examine what impact these developments will have on the field of English language teaching.
UPCOMING DEVELOPMENTS IN INFORMATION & COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY
Technology itself does not determine human behavior, such as how we teach. However, it does create the possibilities for new forms of behavior and of education. The progress of CALL to date in CALL has depended on the evolution from the mainframe computer to the personal computer to the networked, multimedia computer. Before we consider what CALL will look like in the 21st century, we must first briefly look at what information and communication technologies will look like in this century.
The first change we can expect is from phone-based to wireless communication. Low-weight solar-powered electric planes like those pictured at http://www.aerovironment.com/area-telecom/telecom.html will facilitate low-cost wireless communication from anywhere on earth.
A second change will be from dial-up connections to permanent, direct connections,
including from the home. For example, according to Telecommunications Research
International (see
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/geographics/article/0,13235911_352761,00.html#table),
cable modem access in the US grew by some 183% in the first quarter of 2000, while DSL
access grew by 183%.
A third change will be from personal computers to other computing and online devices (see prototypes developed by Compaq at http://www5.compaq.com/rcfoc/20000410.html)
A fourth change will be from narrowband to broadband. Cable modem connections currently deliver 10 Megabits per second, shared among many users. The next version of broadband ("broaderband") is expected to bring up to 40 Megabits per second for each user, or 26 times the bandwidth of a T1 connection (see discussion at http://www5.compaq.com/rcfoc/20000605.html).
A fifth change will be from expensive to affordable, certain in the developed countries, but also to an increasing amount of people in developing countries. In Egypt, for example both the cost of purchasing a personal computer and the cost of a monthly Internet account have fallen by nearly one-half in the past two years.
Related to this, a sixth development is that Internet access will change from being exclusive to being a mass form of communication. By the year 2005, it is predicted that some 700 million non-English speakers will be online, including more than 300 million Chinese (see chart by Global Reach at http://www.glreach.com/globstats/evol.html).
A seventh development will be from text to audiovisual, as exemplified by the growing popularity of home video production facilitated by new Apple's new iMovie software (http://www.apple.com/imovie)
An eighth change will be from English to multilingual. By 2005, the number of Web pages in English is expected to drop to 41% of the world's total (Computer Economics, 1999). However, and OECD study suggests that a much higher percentage of the Web pages used for e-commerce will be in English (as suggested by the large percentage of secure .com servers which are in English, see discussion in The Default Language, 1999). This will create a situation of diglossia, with people using their own native languages for local or regional communication and commerce, but still using English for most international communication and commerce on the Internet.
A ninth change will be from "non-native" to "native." I am not referring to language here, but to comfort in using computers. Children who grow up with computers and the Internet will communicate on them with "native-like" fluency, as opposed to our generation that had to make the transition from print to screen.
A tenth change will be from the lab to the classroom. Computers and other online devices will be found in every classroom in developed countries, not just in computer laboratories. At least one school in California is using class sets of wireless i-Mac computers, sitting on carts and ready to be rolled into any classroom for wireless student Internet access.
IMPACT ON ENGLISH TEACHING
What then is the expected impact on English teaching of these developments? Let us examine five areas: new contexts, new literacies, new genres, new identities, and new pedagogies.
New Contexts
These developments of ICT are an important factor helping to change the entire context of English teaching. Largely because of the increased used on English in new globalized media and commerce, there is a major growth in the number of second-language speakers around the world, and a corresponding shift in the relationship between native- and non-native speakers of the English. According to recent estimates (see Crystal, 1997), there are now some 375 native speakers of English (i.e., in the "inner circle" of countries such as the U.S. and England, see Kachru, 1986), an equal number of second language speakers of English (in Kachru's "outer circle" countries, such as India and Nigeria), and some 750 million EFL speakers of English in countries such as China and Egypt. This represents a huge growth in the number of non-native speakers of English around the world, and a change in the relationship between native- and non-native speaker. Extrapolating from the work of Graddol (1999), I would roughly estimate that while, a century ago, there were three native speakers of English for every proficient non-native speaker of the language, in a century from now this proportion will be reversed. And indeed, the very distinction between native-speaker, ESL speaker, and EFL speaker will change when millions of people throughout the world, including those in traditional "FL" countries, use English much of the day every day to communicate globally and access international media.
To provide one example of this, according to a study my colleagues and I conducted in Egypt (Warschauer, Refaat, & Zohry, 2000), while Egyptian colloquial Arabic is used in much informal chatting and e-mail use, nearly all formal communication by e-mail in Egypt—even between one Egyptian and another--is conducted in English.
Continuing on the question of ICT, e-mail, and changed context of English use, one U.S. study found that e-mail is now believed to be the principal form of business communication in certain US industries, surpassing face-to-face and telephone communication (American Management Association International, 1998). This thus necessitates a rethinking of the relationship of computers and the Internet to English teaching, as I hinted at the beginning of this talk. Just ten years ago, for example, it was very common for those involved in CALL to say that "A computer's just a tool; it's not an end in itself but a means for learning English." How often did you hear something like that at a conference? Yet earlier this year, and English teacher in Egypt told me this, and this is a real quotation from a real teacher: "English is not an end in itself; it's just a tool for being able to use computers and get information on the Internet." The juxtaposition of these two ideas says a lot about how our thoughts about English teaching and the Internet must change. It is no longer just a matter of using e-mail and the Internet to help teach English, as I wrote in my first book five years ago, but also of teaching English to help people learn to write e-mail and use the Internet.
New Literacies
This leads us to another important impact of ICT developments, which is the significance of new literacies. In the era of print, to read was to attempt to understand the meaning of an external author. In the online era, to read is to interpret information and create knowledge from a variety of sources. Online reading and research skills include selecting the right questions, choosing the right tools, finding information, archiving and saving information, interpreting information, and using and citing information. It's the difference between taking a book home from the library-and assuming that the information in it is reliable because it has been vetted twice, once by the publisher and the other time by the librarian who purchased the book-and conducted research online, where the very act of reading cannot be done without making critical decisions at every step of the way, such as whether to scroll down a page or pursue an internal link or try an external link or to quit the page and conduct a new search. In the past, we used to discuss "critical literacy" as a special category; in the future virtually all literacy will necessitate critical judgment.
New Genres
Similar changes are occurring with respect to writing. It has been suggested that the essay will soon become a marked form, like the short story, in other words something that we may still study but that few of us will actually write, to be replaced by multimedia (Faigley, 1997). For examples of the types of student writing of the future, take a look at some of the educational Web sites being developed by students in the ThinkQuest competition http://www.thinkquest.com).
Students must master not only multimedia but also electronic communication. I will illustrate the importance of new types of writing by briefly discussing a case which came up in an earlier research study I conducted (Warschauer, 1999). The study involved an ESL writing course in an Intensive English Program in Hawai'i. One of the students in the course was a graduate student from China. This student, who I will call Zhong, had previously conducted some research in China with co-researchers from Sweden. Agreements had been reached about who would have the rights of authorship on the data collected. Zhong was thus surprised to learn by e-mail that his Swedish co-researchers were going to usurp all the data under their own authorship. Zhong attempted to write them an e-mail message protesting the situation:
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Dear Svet:
How about your decision for your mothers treatment. I am sorry I can not give advice because I do not know what cancer she suffered from. As I know, tumor hospital of our university is skilled in many types of cancer while Zhongshan hospital and Changhai hospital are good in primary liver cancer. Zhongshan hospital has special wards for foreign guests. If you can tell me and Hengjin in detail, we can supply more information about hospital and doctors.....
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As you can see though, the first draft of his e-mail message was highly inappropriate and would have failed to convey his message; indeed, it focused principally on the health of the Swedish colleague's mother and only discussed the disagreement in a vague manner far down in the message. Zhong worked with the teacher of the course intensively, over e-mail, to complete two more drafts of the e-mail message until it effectively communicated what Zhong wanted to say, as seen here.
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Dear Svet:
When I received your email message of Nov 4, I was very surprised to see that you went ahead with your paper on maternal health care. As you must be aware after our discussion in Shanghai last September-October, when we distributed all the topics among us, the topic of maternal health care was incumbent on me for analysis and publication....
In conclusion, I am afraid the only satisfactory solution I can see is to publish my paper with me as the first author.
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As a result, the problem was resolved in a satisfactory manner.
Not all students will be performing sophisticated sociological research with international scholars for publication in scholarly journals. But many students will need to carry out some form of collaborative long-distance inquiry and problem-solving as part of their jobs and community activities. It will be incumbent on us to teach the writing skills necessary for these kinds of tasks. This includes both the pragmatics of written interaction as well as the hypermedia authoring and publishing skills needed for effective presentation of material (see discussion in Shetzer & Warschauer, 2000; Warschauer, 1999)
New Identities
The increased importance of online communication is also contributing to new kinds of identity. As an example, let us look at the case of Almon, a Hong Kong immigrant to the United States discussed by Lam (in press). Though Almon had lives in the US for several years, he performed poorly in English class in school and had little confidence in his academic English ability. Yet Almon developed his on "J-Pop" Web site about a Japanese pop singer, and spent hours a day e-mailing and chatting other J-Pop fans around the world who were attracted to his site. Though almost all of the fans were Chinese or Japanese, this communication, as well as the site itself, was in English. Through this process, Almon developed self-confidence in his English communication ability, as part of a global youth movement that uses English and new media to share ideas. Almon's experience doesn't suggest, of course, that we need to downplay academic literacies, but it does suggest that students who use new media develop a wide range of literacies and identities, and we need to take these into account in our English teaching.
New Pedagogies
This really brings me to the heart of my talk, which is the new pedagogies which all these changes require. The following table illustrates some of the pedagogical changes that have occurred and are occurring in CALL.
The Three Stages of CALL
Stage 1: Structural CALL
Initiated: 1970s
Technology: Mainframe Computers
Methodology: Grammar-Translation & Audio-Lingual
View of Language: Structural(a formal structural system)
Main Activities: Drill and Practice
Learning Objective: Accuracy
Stage 2: Communicative CALL
Initiated: 1980s
Technology: PCs
Methodology: Communicate Language Teaching
View of Language: Cognitive (a mentally-constructed system)
Main Activities: Communicative Exercises
Learning Objective: Fluency
Stage 3: Integrative CALL
Initiated: 1990s
Technology: Multimedia and Internet
Methodology: Content-Based, ESP/EAP
View of Language: Socio-cognitive (developed in social interaction)
Main Activities: Authentic Discourse
Learning Objective: Agency
(Based on Kern & Warschauer, 2000; Warschauer, 1996; Warschauer, in press-a)
I do not want to suggest that these stages have occurred sequentially, with one following the other, from "bad CALL" to "good CALL". At any one time, any of these may be combined for different purposes. However, there has been a general trend or development of the years, with new ideas and uses of computers being introduced in combination with those previous.
Let me give one example to illustrate the difference between communicative CALL and integrative CALL. Communicative CALL was based on communicative exercises performed as a way of practicing English. This was in line with a cognitive view of language learning: that, through interaction, learners can develop language as an internal mental system. The content of the interaction is not that important, nor is the nature of the community, nor, really is the learners' own speech or output. What is important is how the interaction helps provide input to the learner to develop a mental system.
Integrative CALL is based on a socio-cognitive view of language learning. From this viewpoint, learning language involves apprenticing into new discourse communities. The purpose of interaction is to help students learn to enter new communities and familiarize themselves with new genres and discourses. From this point of view, the content of the interaction and the nature of the community are extremely important. It is not enough to engage in communication for communication's sake.
So, allow me to return to the example. I recently spoke to a teacher who was feeling frustrated. She kept telling her students to go onto the Internet once a week to practice English, but they were wasting their time, chatting in their own language and not really engaging in English. From my view, this reveals the limitation of the communicative approach to CALL, that is to view the Internet as a medium of purposeless communication practice. I suggested to the teacher that she might instead want to use the Internet to have her students perform real-life tasks and solve real-life problems in a community of peers or mentors. Students could conduct an international research project on an issue they are interested in (see Warschauer, Shetzer, & Meloni, 2000), or perform a service for their communities such as creating an English Web site for a local organization (Warschauer & Cook, 1999). In these cases, English communication would be incidental to the main task. But as they carry out the task they would be learning important new genres and engaging in new discourses.
This is related to the objective of CALL and, indeed, of language learning, which evolved originally from accuracy to, more recently, accuracy plus fluency. I would suggest that we must add a new objective, together with the previous two: agency. Agency has been defined as "the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices" (Murray, 1997), and "the power to construct a representation of reality, a writing of history, and to impose reception of it by others" (Kramsch, A'Ness, & Lam, in press). Agency is really what makes students so excited about using computers in the classroom: the computer provides them a powerful means to make their stamp on the world. Think, for example, of the difference between authoring a paper (i.e., writing a text for the teacher), and authoring a multimedia document (i.e., creatively bringing together several media to share with a wide international audience) and even helping to author the very rules by which multimedia is created (as people have the chance to do right now in this time of creative explosion in new forms of online expression. By allowing and helping our students to carry out all these types of authoring-toward fulfilling a meaningful purpose for a real audience-we are helping them exercise their agency. The purpose of English is thus not just to "know it" as an internal system, but to be able to use it to have a real impact on the world.
CONCLUSION
To summarize how CALL is changing, it is useful to look at one expression of CALL from the 20th century-from the late 1970s to be exact. A limerick in a computer-assisted instructional manual of that day contained the following limerick as recalled by Patrikis (1997, p. 171)
Word has come down from the dean That by aid of the Computing Machine Young Oedipus Rex, Could have learned about sex, Without ever touching the queen.
In other words, the advantage of computer-based instruction is that it is completely removed from "real life." You can learn English without having to get your hands dirty in the real world-and then, of course, you can then come back to the real world to use it. Note the similarity between this notion and the notion of cyberspace, whereby what is done with the computer is somehow not real.
In contrast to this, let us look at a more current expression about the value of computers in instruction. As Shneiderman (1997) has noted, "we must do more than teach students to 'surf the net,' we must also teach them how to make waves." This then provides the opposite view of what has been expressed above. We will fulfill the best use of computers in the classroom when we allow and encourage students to perform the most real tasks possible, to take advantage of the power of modern information and communication technologies to help try to change the world in ways that suit students' own critical values and the interests of humankind.
Actually, this is not a new idea. Freire and Macedo (1987) had earlier expressed the same idea. They noted that literacy is not only about "reading the word," but also about "reading the world" - and not only about reading the world but also writing it and rewriting it (p. 37). These concepts have been an important part of critical pedagogy throughout the 20th century. But today, new forms of information and communication technologies provide a powerful new means of achieving them.
This then expresses nicely how CALL must be "reborn." Let us view neither the computer nor English are ends in themselves, but rather let us make them tools that our students can use to read the world, to write it, and to rewrite it. That is my vision of CALL for the 21st century.
REFERENCES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This paper is based in part on two other recent papers: "Millenialism and Media: Language, Literacy, and Technology in the 21st Century" (Warschauer, in press-b) and "The Changing Global Economy and the Future of English Teaching"(Warschauer, in press-a).
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