Abstract:

Nowadays students use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), especially the Internet, in their every day live as habitual means for communicating and expressing themselves. Education can not ignore this fact and, thus, educational programs should include actions which integrate such technologies. This is the aim of the research presented in this poster, which analyses the use of a virtual learning environment (VLE) in the English class.
Numerous proposals from different didactic areas have supported the integration of ICT in several educational levels. Even though the role of such tools has been studied from a theoretical (SGR2009-680) (Pérez, 2005) and from an applied (DIM) perspective, the studies that analyze the inclusion of ICT in general, and VLE specifically, in Infant and Primary Education are not many.
The research explores the steps that are to be followed in order to design a virtual environment for children from 10 to 12 years old in order to foster the acquisition of both the communicative competence in the English language and the technological competence required by the current curriculum.
The project is conducted in the Grup d’Investigació en Mediació Lingüística (GIML, SGR2009-680) from the Universitat de Lleida.

Keywords:

ICT, Virtual environments, Learning English.