Freely available online tools and open educational resources for language teaching and learning. The inventory contains a list of tools that have been evaluated with sound pedagogical criteria in mind. These criteria have been developed by teachers for teachers and provide essential information so that you can select appropriate applications and use them with your learners.
Go to the inventory
A training kit for language teachers which promotes up-to-date online teaching technology including bite-size activities for online language teacher training, suggestions for reflective activities and collaborative tools for sharing "self-training" experiences.
Available in English and German.
Go to the publication page
The DOTS training kit is a tool for language teachers which promotes up-to-date online teaching technology including bite-size activities for online language teacher training, suggestions for reflective activities and collaborative tools for sharing "self-training" experiences.
Go to the resource page
The DOTS moodle workspace is a forum for teachers and teachers trainers which allows them to exchange ideas and learn more about the DOTS training tools.
Available in 20 languages.
The website and publication are targeted at teachers and teacher-trainers in VOLL (Vocationally Oriented Language Learning). They explain the background to the different aspects of ICT inVOLL, describe the steps involved in carrying out various ICT-based activities and provide practical examples and links to case studies on the VOLL website.
Available in English.
Download the case study
This video was shown at the ‘Quality Education and Languages Competences for 21st Century Society’ Conference, held in Graz in March 2014. The theme of the video is the use of technology in the classroom. It also explores how education systems are changing to accommodate a new generation of ‘digital natives’ who learn through technology.
Video available in English.
View the video
An evaluation tool used to track progress while learning languages. Portfolios can be found on the ECML’s dedicated European Language Portfolio website. Full copies of some of the portfolios are available to download.
Available in English and French.
Go to the ELP page
The purpose of the BLOGS project was to adapt the idea of web journals to language educational use. The book describes how web journals can contribute to the development of writing skills and gives guidance on how to set up and run a BLOG platform. The ideas in the project were tried out by over 600 users in many countries around Europe and a platform was created and made available on the Internet with a General Public Licence.
The CLIL project provides a series of indicators for teachers in a CLIL context to assess their teaching, together with examples of good practice to help them improve. The indicators cover the four aspects of culture, communication, cognition and community, each from the 4 key concepts – content, language, integration and learning. There is also further information about CLIL.
LanguageQuests are designed to promote an integrated approach to communicative, realistic and functional second language acquisition (SLA). The work of this project will focus on the implementation and dissemination of this concept, covering methodology as well as ICT, materials development and course design and aiming especially at the potential and impact of ICT and new forms of collaborative work on language education.
The ECML’s “Languages for social cohesion” programme (2004-2007) involved approximately 4500 language professionals from Europe and beyond. This publication focuses on key developments in language education promoted through the work of the European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe (ECML).
New technologies have become the predominant influence on the way we live and work at the beginning of the new millennium. The aim of the ICT in VOLL project was to consider the potential new technologies have to offer for the creation of innovative learning environments for language training for professional and specific (vocationally oriented) purposes.
This publication describes a project, which aimed at integrating web-based communication with a thematic story approach to teaching a foreign language to 8 to 10 year-olds. The aim was to encourage the use of the World Wide Web as a medium over which children could publish their language productions to an audience of peers from participating schools in 21 European countries.
This book is a reflective account of the work of the European Centre for Modern Languages, Graz during its first medium- term programme, which lasted from 2000 to 2003.
This project developed against a background of profound educational changes. The Information Age has had enormous impact on the way people learn and in it has opened new avenues to enhance the distance learning environment. The roles of the stakeholders in the teaching-learning process have evolved. Teachers have become facilitators, mediators, and enablers. Learners are encouraged to take control of their own learning and to be autonomous, although these qualities are not inherent to distance learning but rather skills that need to be developed
Go to the project website
The essential problem for a teacher using the web is how to retain the information he/she has come across and assessed as valuable for his/her students.
The report presents the results of the Study on the Impact of ICT and New Media on Language Learning , which was initiated by the European Commission through its Education and Culture Executive Agency, and carried out between June 2008 and May 2009.
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Based on over 190,000 responses from students, teachers and head teachers collected and analysed during the school year 2011-12, the Survey of Schools: ICT in Education provides detailed, up-to-date and reliable benchmarking of Information and Communication Technologies in school level education across Europe, painting a picture of educational technology in schools: from infrastructure provision to use, confidence and attitude
The study examines the evolution of ICT infrastructure in schools in terms of networks, hardware and software. It then looks at how ICT is being used in educational processes and incorporated into curricula before focusing on its role in enabling the development of innovat ive teaching methods. Finally, the crucial part played by ICT in the development of 21st century skills is assessed.
Available in English
The Online Linguistic Support (OLS) supports language learning for Erasmus+ mobility participants. The OLS offers participants in Erasmus+ long-term mobility activities (Key Action 1) the opportunity to assess their skills in the foreign language(s) they will use to study, work or volunteer abroad. In addition, selected participants may follow an online language course to improve their competence.
Available in English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Italian.
Go to the programme page
The SpeakApps project focuses on creating a free and open source online platform that gathers ICT-based applications and pedagogies to practice oral skills online. The SpeakApps platform would thus serve a community composed of foreign language teachers and their students.
Available in 12 languages.
Go to the project page
Consumer Classroom is a community website for teachers bringing together an extensive library of consumer education resources from across the EU, along with interactive and collaborative tools to help prepare and share lessons with students and other teachers
Available in 23 languages.
Poliglotti4.eu is a project promoting multilingualism in Europe that reports on best practice in language policy and language learning, and provides policymakers, teachers, learners and civil society organisations with a powerful toolkit for benchmarking and enhancing their activities in non-formal and informal education and learning sectors.
Available in English, French and German.
Five documents to make your skills and qualifications clearly and easily understood in Europe: Curriculum Vitae, Language Passport, Europass Mobility, Certificate Supplement, Diploma Supplement.
Available in 27 languages.
Go to the Europass website
ICT help us learn better, more efficiently and creatively, to innovate, to solve complex problems and access wider and more up-to-date knowledge. ICT provides everyone with flexible and accessible learning opportunities, in and outside the classroom.
Go to the European Commission page
European Language Label 2013 award winner Linguaswap is a moderated language swapping and learning website specifically for second level students developed by teachers in Carnew, Ireland. Visit the Linguaswap website for more information on the project.
View project video
Tool for Online and Offline Language Learning (TOOL) project, funded by the European Union builds ‘blended learning’ language courses in five European languages: Dutch, Estonian, Hungarian, Maltese, and Slovene. The courses are designed at A2 level on the Common European Framework of Reference and address learners who have had an initial introduction to one of the languages and who wish to progress from a basic survival level to a higher competence. Diaspora, businesspeople, tourists, students, workers as well as people who are interested in languages, are all part of the targeted sector.
Available in 11 languages.
iTILT is a European project on Interactive Technologies in Language Teaching which focuses on the use of interactive whiteboards in the communicative language classroom. View over two hundred examples of classroom practice including video of class activities, lesson plans and files, and commentary from the teachers and learners involved. See interactive teaching with technology for different languages, proficiency levels, and age groups from seven European countries, helping teachers gain confidence with technology in communicative language teaching.
Available in 6 languages.
Go to the website
This analytical survey sets out to give a general overview of the availability of technology for foreign language (FL) teaching and learning today, to outline the various uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in this sector, to provide a few, selected studies of best practice, illustrating meaningful deployment of these resources, and to point towards future developments and possible implementation in the coming decade. It highlights the importance and the role of the teacher in ICT-rich foreign language learning environment and shows how such environments can contribute to cross-cultural understanding.
The following document reports on the use of ICT in primary education for the teaching and learning of Modern Foreign Languages. There is no comprehensive research framework in this particular area, and so much of the literature considered in this report is from specific projects and studies comparable with typical situations in the primary school sector. Several practical recommendations arising from an analysis of the literature are offered at the end of this report.
The ever increasing explosion of highly attractive multimedia resources on offer has boosted the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the teaching and learning of modern languages. The use of ICT to assess languages is less frequent, however, although online testing is starting to develop. This paper examines the national context for the assessment of modern foreign language proficiency in England, outlines the kinds of assessment currently available and the development of electronic forms of assessment and compares the above with the survey results of a European Union (EU) funded project on current good practice in online assessment of languages in other European countries.