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Nowadays, the importance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) not only in our
personal and professional lives, but also in the educational area, is unquestionable. ICT play a
major role in the educational context, as they may be approached from different standpoints: as a
course in order for students to get to know how these technologies work, as a methodological
resource in the teaching and learning of other courses, and also as a management tool in
educational centres or institutions, to mention but a few (see Cabero, 2000).

Out of these three approaches, in this article we will only consider ICT as methodological
resources in Language Teaching and Learning (LTL), which has experienced a substantial change
due not only to the appearance of ICT but also to other changes in the teaching practice itself.
Accordingly, students are no longer mere receivers of contents; instead, they can produce their
own contents — hence becoming the focal point of their own learning process (Palomo et al., 2008:
13) thanks to the use of ICT and to the new methodological principles surrounding them (Roig,
2007: 223). It now seems that blackboards, textbooks and students’ workbooks are not the only
source of knowledge any more.
Indeed, more sophisticated resources, such as computers and interactive whiteboards, have
come to the fore, and their popularity is widespread among educational centres following the
support from educational authorities, who have funded such devices to promote the use of ICT
both inside and outside the classroom.
But besides these “physical” resources, there is a huge amount of applications and tools that
have arisen in the field of ICT with the evolution of the Internet and that can be accessed anywhere
and at any time. It is also easy to find online resources created by other language teachers and
which are ready to be used in the classroom.
These resources are usually stored in websites or, more recently, in blogs, which are of great
interest for LTL and whose main pedagogical use is the possibility to create real contexts of
communication by using synchronous and asynchronous tools, especially in the latter.
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English is the most commonly taught foreign language all over the world. As a result of this fact,
materials designed for English language teaching has been increasing enormously. Besides course
books and other written resources technology integrated language teaching provides many
materials for language learners as well. Websites might be regarded as online teaching tools which
can be very effective resources both for learners and teachers. However, if the website which is
aimed to use as a resource was not designed in an efficient way, it might lead to wasting time. In
addition, not well designed websites might include wrong guidance for language development.

Taking the role of websites in language teaching into consideration this study focuses on the
evaluation of websites designed for teaching English. For this aim, a questionnaire prepared for
website evaluation was modified with the views of experts and results gotten from a group of
students as the first step of ongoing project on the evaluation of language learning websites. Latest
version of the questionnaire was given to totally 56 English language learners studying at the
school of foreign languages. The learners stated how much they use the internet and the websites
in their language learning and how find the websites they have been using. Learners also evaluated
the websites of their own choice. Some suggestions were made with the help of the results

Webquests: A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the

information that learners work with comes from the web.

Use in education

Webquests can be a valuable addition to a collaborative classroom. One of the goals is to increase
critical thinking by employing higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Webb’s Depth of
Knowledge. This is a goal of the American educational system's Common Core and many new
American state standards for public education. Since most webquests are done in small
collaborative groups, they can foster cooperative learning and collaborative activities. Students
will often be assigned roles, allowing them to role-play in different positions, and learn how to
deal with conflict within the group.

Webquests can be a versatile tool for teaching students. They can be used to introduce new
knowledge, to deepen knowledge, or to allow students to test hypotheses as part of a final
interaction with knowledge. The integration of computers and the Internet also increase students’
competency with technology. By having specific task lists, students can stay on task. By having
specific sources of information, students can focus on using resources to answer questions rather
than vetting resources to use which is a different skill altogether.

In inclusive classrooms (classrooms that have students of varying exceptionalities interacting such
as learning disabled, language impaired, or giftedness) tasks can be differentiated to a skill level
or collaborative groups for the same level of task. A skill level may have students with learning
disabilities working on a basic task to meet the minimum standard of learning skills and gifted
students pushing their task to the higher end of the learning skill. More commonly, groups are
composed of learners of all skill levels and completing the same level of task. This is typically
easier because the teacher is only creating one webquest, but can cause less student interaction
from lower students and less learning from higher students.
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Limitations of WebQuests

WebQuests are only one tool in a teacher's toolboxes. They are not appropriate to every learning
goal. In particular, they are weak in teaching factual total recall, simple procedures, and definitions.

WebQuests also usually require good reading skills, so are not appropriate to the youngest
classrooms or to students with language and reading difficulties without accommodations. One
might ask an adult to assist with the reading or use screen-reading technologies, such as Voiceover
or Jaws.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is an application layer protocol that facilitates communication in the
form of text. The chat process works on a client/server networking model. IRC clients are computer
programs that users can install on their system or web based applications running either locally in
the browser or on 3rd party server. These clients communicate with chat servers to transfer
messages to other clients. IRC is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums,
called channels, but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat
and data transfer, including file sharing.

Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat that offers real-time text transmission
over the Internet. A LAN messenger operates in a similar way over a local area network. Short
messages are typically transmitted between two parties, when each user chooses to complete a
thought and select "send". Some IM applications can use push technology to provide real-time
text, which transmits messages character by character, as they are composed. More advanced
instant messaging can add file transfer, clickable hyperlinks, Voice over IP, or video chat.