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Vocational Languages Resource BankCILT: Vocational Languages Resource Bank
Xentica won a competitive tender to design and develop an online database which would hold classroom teaching materials pertaining to vocational languages (to include Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Urdu). Throughout the development Xentica staff liaised closely with the client, CILT (the National Centre for Languages), in order to ensure the facility worked effectively from the user's perspective and to ensure that the "back-end" was correctly designed and implemented for administrative purposes.
Offering free resources and ideas, the Vocational Languages Resource Bank (www.vlrb.org.uk; www.vocational-languages.org.uk) aims to facilitate the link between classroom-based language learning and using languages in a career-based setting. The database currently holds resources focusing on all four areas of language learning: reading, writing, listening and speaking, and to support this skill set, resources are presented in a variety of formats, including text, visual and audio. The site will grow to include more languages and vocational areas and it is also intended to provide an online source of assessment tools.
The website incorporates a secure administration area for VLRB administrators to upload teaching material in its various digital formats, as well as a facility for teachers to be able to register with the site so that they can add their own resources to share with others ('add your own resource'). Once registration is approved, the teacher can login in to the secure teachers' area of the site and submit resources. All externally submitted resources are checked by VLRB administrators before becoming live on the website. The entire functionality for adding, editing and approving resources is on-line and database driven.
The public area provides a powerful search facility for locating and downloading resource materials, using a drill down approach based on the criteria selected:-
The results display general details for each resource, with page navigation and sort by options:-
Opening the resource link provides further details and any downloadable material available:-
The new resource bank was initially launched as a pilot so that teachers and DfES staff could feedback their comments and suggestions after trying and testing it. The site was warmly received with several teachers commenting on the site's user-friendliness and attractive display. One teacher enthused: "Really like the clear and clean look and feel of the site. Very much looks like a CILT product, but it has its own identity".