Hi Carol,

There are a lot of tools out there that students can use for conversation
practice outside of class.  They have a real varying degree of
professionalism and ease of use.  A couple of the newer, more polished ones
are:

  - LiveMocha: They have both free and paid tracks, and students can
  interact with other native speakers both in writing and in conversation.
   Excellent tool for individual learning.
  - Verbling: New startup that is more like speed-dating in the language.
   Students talk for 5 minutes with a partner and then are switched to a new
  partner.

There's a whole group of other tools that are very similar but are much
less polished.  I have no idea how many of these are defunct, and which
still have a good user base. It's really hard to get an idea from their
website. Perhaps others can chime in:

  - http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/
  - http://www.italki.com/
  - http://www.sharedtalk.com/ (by Rosetta Stone supposedly)
  - http://www.eslbase.com/language-exchange/
  - http://www.busuu.com/
  - http://www.palabea.com/
  - http://www.hello-hello.com/

There are also some excellent tools for providing conversation practice
with native speakers for full classes inside the course requirements.
Probably not great for the students who aren't taking classes, but fit
well for larger groups of students.

  - http://www.language-exchanges.org/ (The Mixxer by Dickinson Colege).
   Pair your class with individual native speakers in the lab. Great free
  tool if you have time to set it up. Very good for single classes (5-30
  students)
  - TalkAbroad - Students have access to trained/supervised native
  speakers and can schedule time outside of class to complete
  interview/conversation assignments.  Full tech support for students.
  Conversations are recorded and submitted to the instructor.  Very good for
  large classes (30-1000 students).  There are costs for the student. Full
  disclosure: I run TalkAbroad.

Hope that helps give a lay of the land!

Todd
TalkAbroad