One of the many replies I’ve received in the less than twenty-four hours since I asked for suggestions about where to purchase ESL/EFL books, software, and multmedia was from David Deubelbeiss at EFL Classroom 2.0.

EFL Classroom has some great resources that will certainly be on my upcoming list “The Best…” list on where to buy materials. David also mentioned that he’s putting together an ESL software list, and asked for my suggestions.

I thought I’d turn my response into a “The Best…” list.

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 the program in this article.

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.

The links are to Alta Books.  As I’ve written, they no longer carry materials from other publishers. However, their catalogue pages are still active, and carry a lot of information about each item.

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.

Also, Educational Freeware is a site where you can download lots of different free software, and much can be used for language-learning.

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.