This presentation starts with a look at some existing libraries with virtual portals ...

The Online Writing Collaboration Project (OWCp) by Meteab M. AlZahrani, Indiana University of Pennsylvania English Department was created to be the meeting place on cyberspace for English learners and teachers from all over the globe. OWCp main mission is to connect English learners with English native speakers to promote English Interactions and to create authentic interactive learning environment with the target culture (American and English Culture). OWCp is based on collaboration theories, and thus it is a two-way interaction, in which EFL learners can share and discuss their writings with classmates & American peers. OWCp members receive comprehensive feedback from qualified online tutors who volunteered to help English learners. All these are free services for students. Here are the major OWCp sections:

• The Online Tutorial Writing Lessons (http://www.owcp.net/ls) provide Free tutorial writing lessons that promote online collaborative writing, engaging students to apply writing process strategies including art of feedback trading and peer reviews strategies, teaches students how to choose a subject, write thesis statements, determine a purpose, and how to organize their ideas, increase awareness of audience, teaches students the writing modes, instruct students how to document and cite other writers' work.
• The Forums Section (http://www.owcp.net/forums) promotes interactive, authentic, collaborative writing, motivates students to write freely and communicatively, encourages students to share their writing with real audiences from different cultural backgrounds, teaches development of ideas through constructive feedback, promotes critical thinking through online discussion and debates, and creates positive attitudes towards collaborative learning in general and English writing in particular.
• The Electronic Reading Section (http://www.owcp.net/netlib/) creates reading/writing connection and integrates reading skill with the listening skill through enabling built-in out-load readers that help online readers to read a text while listening to it simultaneously, facilitates a book group reading and then initiate group discussions, provides free access to the largest Net-library on the net, provides Audio-books, online reading articles, free Electronic books and authentic electronic materials, and provides Free Reading software to help learners be better readers.
• The Live Tutoring Section (http://www.owcp.net/ls/live) enables English learners to engage in an authentic live audio-video communication with native speakers of English, creates audio-video live workshops for both students and teachers, and provides technical supports to teachers and students who wish to use online conferencing tools in their leaning and teaching.
• The Live Chat (http://www.owcp.net/chat/chat.htm provides both text-based and voice chat sessions with native speakers and other English speakers from all over the globe, to elaborate on the online discussions and classroom discussions and thus generate ideas and have more learning opportunity outside class.
• Learn from TV Section (http://www.owcp.net/tv/cctv.htm provides English Live TV Channels from USA and other English speaking countries for English learners to learn English from TV with Closed Captioned TV transcriptions, provides special English through simplified forms of spoken language through Web based radios in such a way that English learners can follow easily and learn more vocabulary from the every day news. This increases EFL students' awareness of the American target culture and increases Americans awareness of the Arabic and Islamic world through "Discover Islam TV" and other Arab TVs that broadcast in English.
• The Download Section (http://www.owcp.net/download.php) includes English Writing Lessons, Online Collaborative Writing Tools, Electronic Books, Electronic dictionaries, English Idioms software, English Writing Software, OWCp Help Files, and Writing Templates
• OWCp Review Section (http://www.owcp.net/reviews.php) has a good collection of ESL/EFL book review and movie reviews, and creates an opportunity for English students to learn how to review a book and publish it online.
• OWCp Translation Page (http://www.owcp.net/trans/) provides instant translation of a work from Arabic to English and/or from English to Arabic, and provides Web-based dictionaries and Web-based translation services

Plus there is an OWCp Links section to provide teachers and students of English with up-to-date links to authentic materials that include online journals, lesson plans, teaching/learning materials, English software, English writing process strategies, e-books, and other miscellaneous teaching and learning materials.

Next up: Library and research skills

(C)opyright 2003
by Vance Stevens, click here for contact info
Computing Lecturer, Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE
From a presentation given Thursday, May 8, 2003 at the MLI Teacher to Teacher Conference, Abu Dhabi, UAE
This site features in an article in the On the Internet column of the Dec 2003 issue of the Online TESL-EJ

Last updated November 29, 2003

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