No abstract

This chapter presents an overview of synchronous computer mediated communication (SCMC) platforms and identifies their hardware requirements. SurveyMonkey, an online survey tool, is featured as an example of how access to international communities of language teachers can be tapped to appraise the merits of chat tools for teaching and learning. Their review finds that Messengers are most widely used and popular because of their usefulness and friendly interface. Since most students are now using chat rooms, teachers must develop a better understanding of how to best utilize these systems in language teaching. Pedagogical methods are uncovered in order to ensure that best practices in the use of SCMC for language acquisition prevail. Trends in using online chat for teaching and learning are highlighted as advances in intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) contributes to what is becoming ICMC (intelligent computer mediated communication).

There are hundreds of open source projects from simple email software to WWW servers and full operating system. This paper focuses on setting up an online platform for educators by free open sourced educational systems including wiki, blog, bulletin board, Content/Course Management System (XOOPS and Moodle), and MOO (MUD, Object Oriented). The author has experimented and selected these free and open systems which are easily installed and managed. Through this content-based server, educators can save and archive their files online easily, and integrate their online resources without any web design skill. With the full control of these different educational tools, educators can form a collaborative learning community based on their teaching goals. Thus teachers and students build an online community as partners. They can learn from and with others, share and try out web learning tools, distribute leadership and inspiration, support and interact with others from all over the world.