The application of mobile technologies to learning has the potential to facilitate the active participation of learners in the creation and delivery of content. Mobile technologies can also provide a powerful connection between a variety of formal and informal learning contexts and can help to build a community of learners. However these versatile tools present challenges to educators and learners alike. The paper discusses the pedagogical challenges that result from the introduction of mobile technologies in language learning in the context of an intensive week of study abroad. We describe and evaluate a pilot project that uses mobile blogging to promote a constructivist, situated and informal learning experience of the foreign language and culture based on theories of active learning. We aim to encourage interaction and a sense of community among learners outside formal educational environments and in different locations as we ask them to engage with the foreign culture by capturing, sharing and reflecting on their experiences for their peers.

This article describes the rationale for pedagogical, technological and organisational choices in the design of a virtual learning environment (VLE) for an upperintermediate Spanish course with regard to the roles of participants (tutors, moderators and learners). We report on findings from a preliminary evaluation of the interaction between the different actors and this space, using quantitative and qualitative data obtained from interviews, questionnaires and analysis of usage logs. We look at the tensions that emerge as tutors and learners adopt new roles and engage in new pedagogical relationships around the opportunities afforded by this kind of teaching and learning space. We argue that our attempt to promote interaction through our VLE model has resulted in a contested space where traditional hierarchies and relationships between tutors and learners are in a state of flux and where new hierarchies and relationships are constantly being forged. Finally we explore new ways in which tutors' roles might be organised to more effectively fulfil their supportive and facilitative functions in this new online environment.

This paper discusses a framework for designing online tasks that capitalizes on the possibilities that the Internet and the Web offer for language learning. To present such a framework, we draw from constructivist theories (Brooks & Brooks, 1993) and their application to educational technology (Newby, Stepich, Lehman & Russell, 1996;Jonassen, Mayes & McAleese, 1993); second language learning and learning autonomy (Benson & Voller, 1997); and distance education (Race, 1989;White, 1999). On the one hand our model balances the requirements of the need for control and learning autonomy by the independent language learner; and on the other, the possibilities that online task-based learning offer for new reading processes by taking into account new literacy models (Schetzer & Warschauer, 2000), and the effect that the new media have on students' knowledge construction and understanding of texts. We explain how this model works in the design of reading tasks within the specific distance learning context of the Open University, UK. Trayectorias is a tool that consists of an open problem-solving Web-quest and provides students with 'scaffolding' that guides their navigation around the Web whilst modelling learning approaches and new learning paradigms triggered by the medium. We then discuss a small-scale trial with a cohort of students (n = 23). This trial had a double purpose: (a) to evaluate to what extent the writing task fulfilled the investigators' intentions; and (b) to obtain some information about the students' perceptions of the task.

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