Introducing Strong Forms of Bilingual Education in the Mainstream Classroom: A Case for Technology

Bilingual education programs whose aim is to support the development of balanced bilingualism belong to "strong" forms of bilingual education. Other desired outcomes of strong forms of bilingual education are cognitive advantages and better school achievement. The goal of our research is to explore how technology can help introducing strong forms of bilingual education for minority language children in mainstream classrooms. We present a first prototype (the OCOL model) that successfully recreates a bilingual learning environment. A study into the prototype shows that appropriate technology can help children achieve balanced bilingualism and biliteracy. We then discuss the aims, requirements and enabling technologies for the deployment of bilingual educational systems for children in mainstream education. Key areas for further research are identified and discussed: supporting bilingual language development, supporting curriculum acquisition in two languages, providing fair assessment tools, and improving communication and collaboration in multilingual environments