Perspectives on CALL for Project Based Learning
Adult Education
Compiled by Susan Gaer
for TESOL 2000
Santa Ana College, School of Continuing Education
The Projects
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A Rural Project
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The Folktale Project: In this project, adult ESL students were put in the role of expert. Most of the students had minimal reading and writing skills but very strong oral traditions. These students were experts and passed on some of their culture by telling folktales that they had learned as children to middle school children. The middle school children then wrote the folktales which were critiqued for authenticity by the adult storytellers.
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An Urban Project
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A School Newspaper: In this project adult ESL students enrolled in a class that helped them develop writing skills and develop the school newspaper.Students developed writing by reading models and responding to these models by creating their own writing. This was then published along with other student writing from the school into a student newspaper. We are now working on our fourth issue.
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An International Project
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The Home Remedy Project: This project started out as a teacher initiated project with teachers having students write home remedies from their native countries. However, once published on the web, students globally started adding to the base making this a dynamic living project.
Resources
The E-mail Projects Webpage: A compendium of project ideas for students to develop, add to and initiate. Most of the projects are multi age level, multi cultural and interesting whether you are a native speaker of English or not.
Fleminton's Reading and Writing Program has student based work in Australia developed by Mex Butler.
Virtual Visits: Adult students both ESL and ABE/GED (Adult Basic Education and General Education Diploma Students) develop online visits of community places. These are placed on the web along with feedback and discussions from other classes worldwide.
Publications by the author: More Teaching and Less Learning.