The original  pools website stored in September 2008 - producing open online learning systems

language teaching materials,  methods, and teacher courses

Pools started as a Leonardo II supported two years (2005-2007) project developing materials for language teaching and learning as well as teacher training courses based on pools of materials for nine languages; Basque, Danish, Dutch, English, Gaelic (Scottish), German, Lithuanian, Romanian, and Spanish. It is a main objective to cluster with other language projects.

Let the pools website serve as a portal to your results. From the website you also have access to copyleft language teaching materials and methods manuals that you may include in your own projects.

Register here to receive news about pools and information when new materials become available.

You may now become a member of the POOLS team; like all materials in the POOLS website the membership is free. To enrol as an active member please click here.

The project target group is teachers of the LWUTL (Less Widely Used and Taught Languages) in technical colleges. Due to the limited range of ICT materials for these languages the teachers often have to develop materials themselves if they want to exploit the many advantages of eLearning. The final products will be:

1. Pools of online copyleft materials to be used during in-service teacher training courses and in teaching.
2. Flexible competence based language teacher course modules on ICT methodologies and development of ICT based teaching resources. The modules will be developed for in-service, distance, and blended courses
3. A DVD with step by step instructions and examples on how to create multimedia online material.
4. A course book (downloadable .pdf file) with description of language teaching eLearning materials and methodologies
5. A website, which will serve as portal to clustering projects and other ICT and LA projects. The site will contain all of the project materials, videos, discussion area and e-mail lists. Back to Top

Needs documentation: In 2000 a survey among teachers in the EU countries "The European Language Learning Materials Survey” showed that teachers of less taught languages have little pedagogical and methodological training and the course materials for these languages were rarely communicative in nature. The survey emphasized the need for improvement in this area. This was in 2002 followed up in a report to the EU Commission “The Training of Teachers of a Foreign Language: Developments in Europe” (Revised Report, August 2002) which in its recommendations p. 75 states that “All teachers should be trained in the use of ICT approaches for interactive use with pupils in the classroom” and p. 79 “More efforts needs to be made to make initial teacher training modules and in-service course content available online and in other distance learning forms”. Back to Top

It is the aim of pools to address the above documented needs by creating pools of online copyleft resources ( Copyleft is a way to license a work so that unrestricted redistribution, copying and modification is permitted, provided that all copies and derivates retain the exact same licensing) and to develop, test and disseminate flexible competence based teacher training course modules. The course modules, also “copyleft”, will deal with ICT approaches and development of ICT based materials for teachers of less taught languages like Basque, Danish, Dutch, Gaelic, Lithuanian, and Romanian. Back to Top

The project will build on results from a previous project (BP-BLTM) as well as results from other ICT and LA projects, the partnership will seek to cluster with these projects to ensure exchange of expertise and results and achieve broader impacts through joint dissemination

So what were the results? Read the ASSESSMENT SUMMARY - Final Report. We achieved 9 out of 10 in the consolidated assessment!

POOLS members recommend you to join:
Eurocall - European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning and
WebHeads - Online Community of Practice of Teachers and Educators Practicing Professional Development through Web 2.0 and Computer Mediated Communication.

WE would also like to recommend that you take part in  EUROCALL 2008, Kodolányi University College, Székesfehérvár, Hungary, 3-6 September, 2008 www.asszisztencia.hu/eurocall/

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