I think that the web offers a wide-range of wonderful learning opportunities for ESOL or NESB students.  It is really important that teachers know their students well enough and understand their needs, but also that teachers know the range of technologies that they have available to them to best support their students’ learning.
When we look at online learning opportunities, these range from applications that can be completely open - viewed and contributed to by anyone in the world, right through to applications that are very closed - only certain people …

I question why finding information needs to be difficult or time-consuming in order to make the learning happen. ie. I use wikipedia all the time as a starting place if I want to find information on a new topic - particularly if I know very little about that topic.