As regular readers of this blog know, our school has a special program where immigrant families are provided a computer and home DSL service to help them learn English.  You can read more about this in the Techlearning article Family Literacy, Computers and ESL.

A small number of our families, though, live in areas where DSL service is not available.  In those cases we provide software for the families to use.  I thought it might be helpful for me to share which software we provide.  We purchase it through Alta ESL, a great source of ESL materials, so the links will take you to software pages in their online catalogue.  Each page gives more information about the specific software program.  By the way, you can also find the link to Alta on my Teacher’s Page under ESL Books and Materials.

We use:

Live Action English

Oxford Picture Dictionary Interactive

Side By Side Interactive

Mega Series

We involved the families in the decision-making process leading to the purchases.  As far as costs go, we figured-out how much we would ordinarily spend on a one-year DSL subscription, and then spent that amount for software.