LIT2T Leadership Guide

35 TO: TABLE OF CONTENTS 7. CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATION This section provides a short commentary on issues that may challenge all stakeholders adapting a language training centre to a blended or online learning model of language instruction. Administrators and staff should begin with a discussion about the challenges involved in bringing technology into the centre’s teaching and learning. 7.1 Locating Resources Locating relevant resources for ESL TELL sessions can be time consuming and frustrating. It can be frustrating because the content, navigation and appearance or cost of web resources often changes without warning. This is disappointing to instructors and learners who have taken the time to learn these tools and incorporate them into their curricula. Locating and using web resources can be challenging. The web resource edulinc.org, with its courseware, offers a solution. It provides relevant, adaptable, educationally sound, Canadian focussed language training resources in a structured online learning environment, supported by instructor training. Its content is updated and alterations to the service, training or learning objects are announced on the LearnIT2teach portal, in the LearnIT2teach digital newsletter, and at face-to-face events. 7.2 Learning Resources Websites that are bookmarked (called “Favorites” on MS Explorer) on workstation browsers at your centre – such as SpellingCity, BBC Learning English or NFB Canada Education – are sometimes useful resources. However, the bookmark list on the browsers at a centre can become confusing to most of the users. Instructors or learners bookmark websites for immediate requirements, and over time the reason for saving the bookmarks is forgotten. A long list of bookmarks will continue to grow until someone resets or revises these bookmarked links. Usually, the result is each workstation has a different bookmarks menu in a dissimilar sequence. Instructors rarely have time to sort through these bookmarks to determine if they are useful for ESL lessons. In addition, they would require dedicated time to classify activities by CLB or LINC levels. The activities at edulinc.org are matched to LINC levels. All learning objects contained within the LINC courseware complement activities in the LINC Classroom Activities Books that align to the CLB levels. Making the LINC courseware the fundamental CALL resource for a language training centre provides instructors and learners with a reliable set of activities to use in the computer room. 7.1 Locating Resources 7.2 Learning Resources 7.3 Resource Sharing 7.4 Sustainability 7.5 Creating Content 7.6 Upgrades 7.7 Branding 7.8 Information Dissemination 7.9 Inappropriate Content 7.10 Designated Blended Learning Specialist 7.11 Instructor/Instructor Buy-In