It doesn't have to be just a dream...

The Internet can be one of the most effective EFL/ESL tools imaginable if it is fully utilized by English schools. The trick is to have a school Web site that draws students into a community of learning beyond their English classroom.

The idea of setting up a school Web site is intimidating to most schools and teachers. But the cost of buying a custom site is also prohibitive for most schools.

Hopefully, your answer lies here, in this short introduction to DIY Web sites for EFL young learners.

Introduction

Running a Web site is actually not very difficult. Most people who do it, have five or twenty running at one time anyway. Once a Web site is created, it will basically keep working without anyone paying attention to it. And many of the features you can put on a Web site, such as photo albums, chatrooms, bulletin boards, newsfeeds and so on, are interactive, but do everything automatically. Even the settings of these features can usually be adjusted directly through a Web browser. The person who built the Web site doesn't even need to be around. It is safe to say that any functioning school has at least one secretary smart enough to handle nearly all Web site maintenance.

Still, whether or not your school will try to create and maintain its own Web site is going to come down to whether or not it will benefit the school. The obvious answer here is yes. But to be persuasive, this answer should be broken down into its component parts.

What you can do with a Web site

Photo gallery - Fully automatic. School staff can easily upload digital photos into the school collection, organized into albums and categories. Students can upload their photos from home. An administrator can add albums or categories as required, or remove old photos. The interface can normally be changed too, using a selection of templates.

Chat rooms - The school can set a regular chatroom time in the evening for kids to log on and chat with their classmates in English. The teacher even join in.

Bulletin Board - The school can have its own discussion board. This is ideal communicative homework for the teacher to assign. "Everybody go to the discussion on restaurants and describe the best meal they ever had."

Newsfeeds - There are several free content feeds available that can be put on an EFL Website. These automatically serve Web site visitors with an up-to-date list of links according to chosen parameters. For example...

Games - There are lots of great educational Flash games available for free on the Internet. You can build them into your site, or just link to them. Most are designed to be easy to build into your site. And there are lots of English learning games and word games too. If the homework assignment is to play hangman online for 20 minutes, the kids will be happy and so will Mom and Dad.

Vocabulary - Why not just put your whole vocabulary curriculum on the Website? The textbooks usually have word lists in the back. If those aren't long enough, add some more words. With it all there on the Web site for all to see, Mom and Dad might help make sure Junior really learns all those words. Add pictures too. Remember, you only have to do it once, and it will stay there forever.

School introduction - This is so obvious it shouldn't be mentioned. A school homepage can help expand the image of a school. It can contain a map, photos of the school and neighborhood, photos of the staff and facilities. It is simple enough to create this information in a bilingual format as well.

What you need to learn