Ames Alytus

ALYTUS branch of the American English school

uses new
information technologies in order to improve and
expand teaching English.
We have registered as the members of OXFORD
TEACHERS'CLUB, which provides us with teaching and
methodological material, advice and lesson plans.
'McMillan English updates' sends some extra material
for the textbooks INSIDE OUT, MARKET LEADER, and
e-lessons.
Besides we use www.onestopenglish.com
www.englishathome.com
Eight years ago our school used a multifunctional
programme English+ for children and adults.
Last year our teachers started using an interactive
programme TOTAL ENGLISH, which enables us to expand
our teaching activities with the help of CDs of
Student's, Teacher's and Activity books.

Ames Vilnius

The teachers of Vilnius branch haven't got a lot of experience using IT so far, still we have used:

a) First of all, the materials accompanying the coursebook, such as audio Cds, videos, DVDs,
interactive Cd-roms. Cd-roms are quite often used for exam preparation courses like FCE, CAE, TOEFL and they are usually used in the classroom using laptop and multimedia projector. Sometimes they are used for extra practice in a computer lab to revise some material individually. For the same purpose some software is used as well, e.g. English Grammar in Use, English Language Dictionaries (Longman, Macmillan, Cambridge);

b) Internet resources are used by both teachers and students. Different websites to accompany the coursebooks and many others designed mainly by major EFL publishers especially for language teachers;

c) e-mails are used by most teachers of different courses for writing assignments;

d) only a few teachers (at least one) use blogs for the teaching purposes;

e) Authentic video materials prepared by the teachers themselves are successfully used as well;

Since new technologies is something the students enjoy using for integrating skills, we are looking forward to learning more about it during the seminar.

AMES, Utena

Some problems we encounter while trying to use IT:

1) for most students, especially adults and secondary school-leavers, learning and time spent for it literally is money, therefore learning using computers during the lesson might be considered as waste of time and money. Our, teachers', task is to make such activities really effective, worth doing and attractive.
2) adult students do not have time to spend extra time at a computer; they bring traditional learning skills to classroom and expect to learn and be taught as much as possible during the class time. Their main excuses are - too busy, no time.
3) for our school it is too expensive to have a separate computer classroom. The way out may be acquisition of a computerized/mutimedia OHP.

We use IT in the following ways:

1) watch films, teaching programmes, documentaries
2) look for teaching/learning materials on the Internet
3) prepare our own teaching materials
4) encourage and direct students to some useful websites
5) students use a computer for doing some of their homework, search materials for projects.

Kaunas American-English School

On IT implementation in classes we have discussed the following:
1. Kaunas American-English School do not maintain Comp lab, we strongly believe in near future to have one and use IT in our classes.
2. By no means teaching up -to- date materials, which every teacher download and share with other staff members are used as extra material, whch is successfully combined with the taught topic. The most popular site : onestopenglish.com
3.Also, authentic language (US/UK English) films or selected parts of films are viewed during the lessons, which are integrated in students' developing Listening skills activities.
4. Moreover, some teachers for improving Writing skills, give some tasks to send via e-mail, each student gets a feedback on the completed task.
5. Our school teachers'group preparing for LCCI exam communicate via e-mail for materials exchange, advice, consultations, etc.
6. At the begining of course/school year group members are exchanging e-mail addresses.Some of them communicate using Skype, they are always encouraged by teachers make contacts in international "chat" links.

American English School Conference Task

Dear DOS/manager

I'm looking forward to seeing you at the conference on the 2nd of December. I will be presenting on the theme of 'Blogging for EFL teachers'. I hope you can do this task before we meet.

• First of all, arrange a meeting with your teachers.
• Discuss these questions:

How have you used technology in your classrooms? Have you had any success? Any disasters? Was the activity integrated into any textbook you were following at the time?

• Choose one teacher's experience to focus on. It can be either positive or negative. A success or a failure. Write down briefly what they did/what happened. You will add this content to the blog.
• Log in to this blog; use the 'sign in' button at the top.
• Type the name: vilnius@ames.lt and the password: 'amests' in the top right hand window and log in.
• Click on 'new post'
• Type your school name in the title window.
• Type in the material you discussed at the meeting.
• Click 'publish'

You can now read your content by clicking on the 'view blog' button!

You may wish to print these instructions. Please do this task before the 29th of November. Don't get frustrated if this doesn't work. This is after all an experiment.

See you soon.

Richard