Comments
by the students and the teacher

Mika: "I had a valuable experience.  It was exciting.  It was very hard to make this web site, actually; however, we had lots of fun.  I am proud of contributing to this project.  I hope that it is helpful for international students to know about the stores in downtown, Burlington."

Hyun Ah: “It was fun.  I could learn not only English but also computer skills to make a web page.  I am very pleased because we finished our web page right before I am leaving Saint Michael’s College. Even though it is not perfect, I am proud of our web page.  I hope that our web page will help new international students to find interesting shops in downtown Burlington.”  

Ngawang: "I hope this web site will be a very useful tool for international new comers.  I am new brand in Vermont, but at the same time as doing our web project I learned many new things about Vermont.  I hope you will enjoy visiting our web site.  This is our gift for new comers.  Lastly, I am very appreciative of Professor Christine Bauer-Ramazani's instructions and her encouragement for us."

Takashi: "Making this web site was very interesting for me, but it was hard work. Through making the web site I was able to learn how to use FrontPage, but I also discovered how difficult it is to create a web site.  I was able to have a good experience in this project.  Thank you!

The teacher's (Christine) comments on "Collaborative Learning through Student Web Projects": "This was indeed hard work but very rewarding and fun.  I thoroughly enjoyed the enthusiasm with which the students approached this project; it was great to see how they implemented all types of technology in completing this web page, all of which fostered their language learning process in a meaningful, communicative way.  They corresponded via e-mail; they used word processing editors for typing the text, checking vocabulary and synonyms; they had evening and weeekend meetings at the library; they took great pictures with Mika's digital camera and downloaded them to a photo editor; they researched the Web for links that would help new students coming to Vermont and Saint Michael's College; and finally they constructed the web pages--in all of this the students collaborated, using English as the medium of communication/interaction/negotiation.  By doing so, the students gave evidence of the possibilities of project-based learning, collaboration, and constructivism for language learning. 

For me as a teacher, the most fascinating element in this student project was the students drive for autonomy--they wanted to "own" this project, and so it had to be something that they could all be proud of.   Once they were convinced that this would be a fun project for collaboration and language learning, they "took over" the decision-making process, and I became the facilitator.  They made the decisions autonomously as to what to include, how to organize the material, how to make the web pages attractive, and how to revise them.  In fact, these pages went through 4 or 5 voluntary revisions (What more could any teacher ask for?)!  Takashi was a huge help in the creation of the web site, as he single-handedly took on the task to design it and be responsible for collecting all of the pieces that each of his classmates contributed.  We could not have done this without his help.  Thank you, Takashi!  Now we have a web site we can indeed be proud of.  As one of my graduate students said, "This is a testimonial to the power of CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning)."