Headway itools for ESL/EFL - Smartboard software review

Headway elt books have been helping English language learners for decades. Now, Headway have joined the 21st century with Headway iTools for smartboards to compliment your lessons. This article, Headway iTools - Smartboard software review will explain why this is a leading classroom resource.

This review takes a good hard look at Headways iTools and how they can help your learners learn English.

While the Headways iTools are complimentary to the popular series of Headway books, this review does not include the books - rather the focus is on the iTools as a smartboard approach to teaching ESL.

New Headway Elementary (THIRD edition) iTools CD-ROM and Teacher’s Guide, Liz and John Soars and Gareth Davies

New Headway Pre-Intermediate (THIRD edition) iTools CD-ROM and Teacher’s Guide, Liz and John Soars and Gareth Davies

New Headway Intermediate (FOURTH edition) iTools CD-ROM and Teacher’s Guide, Liz and John Soars and Gareth Davies

 Oxford University Press, 2009.

The New Headway iTools comes with a CD-ROM and an iTools Teacher’s Guide. Although there are many similarities between each version, this review covers Elementary and Pre-intermediate (third edition) and Intermediate (fourth edition), with detailed discussions of the Elementary version.

The Teacher’s guide begins with 32 pages of instructions about how to use the activities before page by page teaching notes for each unit in the course book. The first page has instructions on how to install the CD-ROM, which is as simple as putting it in the drive, following the instructions on the installation wizard and waiting a few minutes. However, if you do have any trouble, there is an e-mail address for obtaining technical support.

 When you open the program, the main menu screen has three options. One is to start using iTools, take the video tour, or open the teacher’s guide. I began with the ten minute video tour which is presented by Gareth Davies, a teacher trainer who gives tips on how to use an interactive whiteboard and some advice on navigating and using the iTools.

 The teacher’s guide on the CD is exactly the same as the hard copy that comes with the CD-ROM, but by having it on the CD, you always have it in the classroom. For example, when you are using activities linked to a page in the course book, you can click on the teacher’s guide icon and check the information about that particular activity, then click back to the activity.

First you select the unit of the headway book that your students are studying. Then you see colourful double page spreads from the unit, with the page numbers clearly marked. I used unit 9 about food with several of my elementary classes, which involved clicking on Unit 9, then selecting the page number, for example, page 66-67 which gave me the activity menu.

The activity menu is colour coded as headway like to do, so you know from a quick glance how to proceed. For example, the orange activities are directly from the course book, so you know to give the students some time individually or in pairs to do the activity before checking it on the board, or visa-versa if you prefer. The purple activities are either adapted from the course book or are new activities designed to give your students some additional practice. The blue activities are interactive audio for all of the activities, so you do not need any additional audio CD’s as everything you need is on this one CD-ROM.

The bottom of the screen is where you find the navigation tools and the four ‘permanent features’ which are grammar, glossary, sounds and timer. The grammar feature links to the grammar spot in the course book that has a reference to more information later in the book. What you have on the screen is exactly the same as in the book, and as Gareth explains in his video tour, this is where I found the interactive pens were really useful as I highlighted features and added our own examples on the board to expand the information in the book.

The glossary is also the same as the words listed in the back of the course book, but whereas the book only has the word, part of speech and the phonemic, the CD version also has an example sentence and an audio of the word. Furthermore, the words can be sorted by unit or by alphabetical order depending on your needs.The bottom of the screen is where you find the navigation tools and the four ‘permanent features’ which are grammar, glossary, sounds and timer. The grammar feature links to the grammar spot in the course book that has a reference to more information later in the book. What you have on the screen is exactly the same as in the book, and as Gareth explains in his video tour, this is where I found the interactive pens were really useful as I highlighted features and added our own examples on the board to expand the information in the book.

The glossary is also the same as the words listed in the back of the course book, but whereas the book only has the word, part of speech and the phonemic, the CD version also has an example sentence and an audio of the word. Furthermore, the words can be sorted by unit or by alphabetical order depending on your needs.

The sound feature is one that I particularly like as it is an interactive phonemic chart divided by consonants, vowels and diphthongs. By clicking on the script, the students can hear the sound, and I found this really useful when students were confusing sounds as I could quickly play the two sounds for them to hear and practice the difference.

 The last of the permanent features is a timer that can be set as a limit that will count down, so you might want to set a 2 minute limit on an activity. When I did this, my students were motivated to beat the clock much more than when I set a time limit! Alternatively, you can set the clock to count upwards to time how long an activity takes the students to complete. However, it is the activities that are the main point of the program, and without these being so colourful and thoughtfully designed, there would be no motivation.

As previously mentioned, some activities mirror what is in the course book while others are adapted or new and I found there was a good variety of task types so the students didn’t get bored or be able to predict what would be next. For example, page 66 of the elementary course book asks students to match the food and drinks into plural and singular nouns with the photograph. The interactive activity uses the same picture, but with a click and drag activity to match the word to the picture.

Next is the tape script of Daisy and Piers talking about the food they like and dislike. I can choose to show the script or hide the script. When I show the script, the words are highlighted like a karaoke activity to help the students follow. My students really liked reading on the screen with the highlighter. The next activity is the grammar spot which is the same as the course book, and this is always followed by grammar practice which is either adapted or a new activity.

 In this unit, the grammar practice recycles the food and drinks vocabulary, with a click and drag activity to sort them into countable or uncountable groups. Many of my students have very limited computing skills, but I found that these activities built their computing skills and their confidence improved with each activity.

 At the end of each unit are some special activities. Unit 9 of elementary has a video activity, a grammar quiz and a vocabulary quiz. The video activity uses the same group of actors throughout all the levels, with each video lasting about two minutes, and linked to the theme of the unit. For example the video in unit 9 about food shows them cooking a curry, but every person who goes into the kitchen adds more curry until it is too hot to eat. The video is accompanied by multiple choice questions for the students to answer.

The grammar and vocabulary quizzes require dividing the class into two teams to answer scored questions to try and get a better score than the opposing team. It is quite sympathetic as it does allow a second try if the first try is incorrect. My students really enjoyed doing these quizzes, and it gave me good feedback on how well the lessons had been learned.

 Some units have a phonetics activity that is really engaging but challenging for some students. This activity reviews some words from the unit, using the phonemic chart, and the students click to listen to the word, and then drag the interactive sounds into the correct order. For some of my students, learning the phonemic chart is new, but this activity helped them make sense of it and consolidate their learning.

While my discussion has focused mainly on the elementary CD, the pre-intermediate and intermediate ones are very much the same, with similar activity types, but of course, matching the book and the difficulty level. The same actors are used in the video activities making this an on-going feature that continuing students would enjoy. I liked the videos so much that I watched them all from start to finish, and while it is not an on-going soap opera, it does follow the lives of Helen, Jane, Matt and David and introduces us to some of their friends.

 Overall, this series has been designed to work with an interactive whiteboard but if your school doesn’t have one yet, don’t despair as you can also use it with a data projector or a computer. The screens are bright, colourful and very engaging. I found that I had no difficulty in getting my students to have their eyes up and interacting with the materials in a way that made learning fun and interesting. I highly recommend this to accompany your Headway course material.