The site, with the help of Google where we inserted the work, became a success, as collaborators they could not only see everything I put there but as well as upload their work and help build "our" site, which they did. As they were secondary school students and quite responsible already, we were able to create a sort of "English community" in which they were the main participants. This m o t i va t e d t h e m a n d p ro m o t e d t h e i r independence since they knew it`s not every day that a teacher gives students the chance of being co-creators of a website directed to learning English! Although I tried to centre the work with the website during our classes because of the student who didn`t have internet access (even this one managed to edit the website out of school, possibly by using someone else`s internet access!) students worked on their homepages at home as well and commented on each others` pages actively, all in English of course. They worked well and some of them finished their written task quite early and started preparing their PPT presentation immediately. The written projects were of good quality, objective and clear and I could see that, apart from one topic or the other, the majority really made the effort to create their own texts (without using copy/paste!) and improved their written English proficiency as well as the quantity of text they were able to produce.
Conclusion Students responded so very positively to these activities and strategies because they naturally feel highly motivated by technology and have a tendency to try to do everything using the computer and the internet. Awarding them the responsibility of being cocreators of a website motivated them and made them participate more in class and try harder so as to make better projects, this
being so because they were responsible students most of which intended to continue studying and get good results. The success the site has had with my students and the improvement of their written and spoken fluency are more than reasons to continue using these tools together with more interactive web based activities, which I think will promote even more the students` proficiency in the English language and their motivation to learn it. What I observed in this project indicated that these strategies are good and effective since I was able to increase my students’ written and oral production in terms of quantity and quality. During the time of the project I used my diary to take notes on the students` reactions and register the evaluations I gave to the mind maps and to the written projects. I also used the tool offered by Google where you can check the history of revisions made to the pages and I also subscribed to the site changes so I always got on my email everything that was changed and, above all, who changed it. I definitely encourage other teachers to use these strategies and tools. Mindomo, Twurdy and Google sites are free valuable tools that can help improve our students` proficiency in the English language as well as be useful for them in other aspects and areas of their lives, like Shetzer and Warschauer, 2005, mention these tools will give them power that may bring results well beyond the language classroom. Final projects prepared with the help of web search are also effective, together with PPTs, as a base for oral presentations. References