About Siemens's (2004) suggestion on CALL

Seimens’ suggestion of the factors necessary for creating a virtual learning environment provides us with a guideline of how to establish quality virtual learning communities. In the current educational system, the problem with classroom instruction include a lack of opportunities of information source. Teachers, textbooks and other printed materials are still the major source of information input. Students work on a position that passively receive information. However, new tools for interaction like webquest, wikis or RSS feed readers provide a wider network of information sharing, with which students can get access easily to peers’ discussion or comments. Another question is how the students receive the feedback that is beneficiary for their language learning. The virtual community of poetry archive and children’s poetry archive, for example, are what the students need in learning authentic English through poems. An example of poem, A Room in the Past read by the poet Ted Kooser himself can be heard on this website: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=8689 A lecture by the poet can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuoWarhWFXw
For younger learners, the Children’s Poetry Archive at
http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/home.do is more suitable. Besides the audio recording of the poem, some questions answered by the poets are also accessible on the web pages (e.g. http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/singleInterview.do?interviewId=761# ) If I were teaching a poem to the students, I would ask them to ask some questions first, and try to find answers on the website.