Applications for Digital Libraries in Language Learning and the Professional Development of Teachers

Abstract

This poster presents plans for designing and developing learning support systems for end-users involved in the construction of a Language Learning Digital Library (LLDL). This is in conjunction with the LLDL project for developing stimulating interactive educational tasks that can be built on top of digital libraries made in Greenstone’s open source software specifically to support language teaching and learning. The relevance of the proposed work includes the development of training modules and in-depth workshops for language teachers and students involved in the participatory design of stimulating educational activities that can be uploaded to create digital library collections. Digital libraries can support language teaching and learning through the use of authentic media, comprehensive searching capabilities, and automatically generated precision-targeted exercise material. They also provide social computing environments for teacher-to-student and peer-to-peer communications, along with opportunities to collaborate on group projects. What is more, teachers can build their own digital resource collections and these can be shared among online teaching communities which include annotations and reflections on how to best integrate the digital library technology into their teaching practice.