Electronic Education:Making Eygpt's ESL Connection

Barry Bakin interviews Mark Warschauer, author of the seminal CALL text E-mail for English Teaching, about his work in Egypt and around the world

How did you get started?
I had been interested in computers for a long time, but what really got me started on all this was using the Internet for the first time. I was teaching in the Czech Republic when I first got an Internet account in 1993 and joined the TESL-L e-mail discussion group. I was absolutely amazed at the excitement, and usefulness, of being able to communicate with people all over the world almost instantaneously. I felt right away that this would have great potential for language learning. I met Tom Robb (Kyoto University, Japan) and Lloyd Holliday (Monash University, Australia) online and we decided to launch a set of international e-mail discussions lists for ESL/EFL students (called the "Student Lists," a project which Lloyd and Tom are still running today). Later, I started writing E-Mail for English Teaching: I wasn't a computer expert then and I certainly don't consider myself one now. I was simply a person who knew a bit about using computers and found telecommunications wonderfully exciting. I admired the work of Bruce Roberts, who started the Inter-cultural Electronic Classroom Connections project (http://www. stolaf.edu/network/iecc/), and CALL pioneers such as John Higgins, who wrote a wonderful book called Language, Learning and Computers.

Can you recall any inspirational experiences?
When we started the Student List project, I was greatly encouraged by the excitement and enthusiasm of the students. I'll never forget the comments of one student, a Polish guy living in Seattle, who told us that for the first time he really understood the meaning of writing--that writing was about passionately communicating his views rather than simply producing a grammatically correct sentence. I knew then that we were on to something good.

How were your early attempts at using computers in the classroom received?
I've been fortunate to always have the full support of students, colleagues, and administrators. In the Czech Republic, the Internet was just getting started, but everyone was greatly excited about it and did everything possible to help get things going. A year after that (fall 1994) I moved to the University of Hawaii and I got tremendous support from colleagues in the National Foreign Language Resource Center there, such as Richard Schmidt and David Hiple. And here in Egypt, where I've been since 1998, the enthusiasm for the Internet is unparalleled.

What are you doing in Egypt?
I'm the manager of educational resources and technology for the Integrated English Language Program (IELP-II) in Egypt. I work for AMIDEAST, which co-manages IELP-II under contract from the United States Agency for International Develop-ment. The overall purpose of IELP-II is to help improve English language teaching in Egypt through programs such as in-service and pre-service teacher education, program development, materials development, and so on. It's a huge project with 60 full-time staff and hundreds of part-time consultants. My job is to direct a large team of staff and consultants who are working with universities and the Ministry of Education to plan, design, implement, and evaluate appropriate uses of information technology for English teaching and teacher education.

What is the time span of the project?
IELP-II started in 1997 and will likely run until 2003 (a previous incarnation, IELP-I, was administered by another group and existed from the mid-1980s to 1996). Our main partners are the Ministry of Education (whose governmental schools teach English from 4th grade through high school), university faculties of education (who train and graduate future English teachers), and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) or Occupational Purposes (EOP) centers. We run a wide range of programs including teacher education programs on computers and the Internet, programs run via interactive video-conferencing, the production of a video series on best practices, and the use of interactive radio instruction (IRI) for teaching English to children in Egypt's one-room schools. At the inaugural conference of EgypTesol in November 1999, we were able to work with our new Educational Technology Special Interest Group to have Egypt's first "Electronic Oasis" (roughly modeled on TESOL Conference's Electronic Village). We also have a Web site for EgypTesol (www.egyptesol.org).

How has the project changed your view of technology in the ESL teaching context?
The project has reinforced my belief that CALL is not really about computers, per se, it's about people and institutions. If you want to have effective use of computers in a school or educational system, you need to work with teachers, students, and administrators to help shape their beliefs and visions and bring about real institutional change. Our greatest successes in Egypt have been in developing cadres of leaders who can develop the field of CALL for the 21st century in Egypt, though we still have many challenges in helping bring about long-term institutional change.

What are the realities of electronic education in Egypt?
Access to the Internet is improving quickly in Egypt, but it's still far behind the US. No public university that I know of offers free unrestricted access and e-mail accounts to all its students, and certainly not dial-up connections. Few schools have stable, direct Internet access. Home dial-up access isn't bad, but any kind of broadband connection from home is virtually impossible, and is rare in universities or even businesses. In addition, local phone calls are billed by the minute, so if you're online a lot it can get quite expensive. In summary, you can certainly access the Net here, but not as cheaply, conveniently, or fast as in the States. All of this, plus large class sizes and limited numbers of computers, not to mention a very full and rigid curriculum at the K-12 level, means that it's much more difficult to implement Internet projects than in the United States. We're concentrating for now on helping teachers use the Internet for their own professional communication and development, and to slowly learn to use the Net in simple and practical ways with their students. Perhaps this is better, though--some of the best Internet projects I've seen were class e-mail exchanges done with a single computer used to send plain text e-mail. There is a need to keep Web sites simple and easy to download. I hope that all those who are creating them will please have pity on those of us around the world who are downloading sites at a slow rate and paying for access by the minute!

You are the creator of the "Papyrus News" e-mail news list. What is it?
Papyrus News is an e-mail news list on the global impact of information technology on language, literacy, and education. Basically, it's my way of sharing what I find interesting with colleagues around the world. I send out about 3-5 messages a week including short articles I find on the Internet, reports of new publications or conferences, interesting analyses, and so on. I also occasionally share my own papers, writings, or ideas. It's not a discussion list - just a one-way passing on of information. My motivation was to have a way to maintain contact with people around the world who share my same interests, which include CALL but also include broader issues of technology's impact on education, literacy, and society.

You are the co-editor of the Internet journal Language Learning & Technology. In what way is an Internet journal different to a print journal?
Our journal is in many ways similar to research journals published in print, with some important differences. First, we are able to include multimedia (e.g., graphics, sound files, and occasionally video) to illustrate the points under discussion. Secondly, through hyperlinks, articles can take readers to more extensive data, media, or resources. Third, since the entire submission and review process is electronic, we can usually process and publish articles a bit faster than print journals.

What do you see as trends in the field of electronic ESL?
We can no longer only think of how to use the Internet to teach English, but we also need to think about how to teach English in order to help people learn to read, write, and communicate on the Internet. We term this notion "Electronic Literacies".

Your book, E-Mail for English Teaching, was published by TESOL in 1995. What role has TESOL played in your professional development?
TESOL has played an absolutely essential role in my professional development. Together with graduate school, it was my first TESOL conference in San Francisco in 1991 that really helped me start to understand the field of TESOL as a profession. Ever since then, TESOL conferences have been invaluable for me to stay in touch with new developments and network with colleagues around the world. Most recently, I became a member of TESOL's new "Virtual Professional Development
Task Force," working together with some other TESOL colleagues to help develop a vision and plan for TESOL to make effective use of online resources to enhance teachers' opportunities for professional development.

How do ALR readers find out more about your work?
I try to keep a lot of my own papers, as well as links to projects I'm involved in (e.g., Papyrus News and Language Learning & Technology) on my Website, http://www. lll.hawaii.edu/markw. I do enjoy receiving e-mail from teachers and graduate students around the world, and readers are welcome to contact me at markw@hawaii.edu. For information on the Student List project see http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/education/sl/sl.html and for Language Learning & Technology see http://polyglot.cal.msu.edu/llt/ You can find information on how to order E-mail for English Teaching at the TESOL web site: http://www.tesol.edu/