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On Monday, after
our brief introduction, I noticed that
you all have experience in teaching English as a foreign language at different
levels. Several of you have mentioned that due to limited resourses, you do not
have much of a chance to use technology in your classes but you would like to.
So, my question
is, what attracts you to technology? Why do you think it is important to
incorporate technology in your language teaching practice? Rather than
theoretical responses, here I am looking for your candid opinions on this
issue. Please respond by using the Comment feature.
Thanks :)
I think being a competent teacher of English requires having good skills in the use of technology in classrooms. We, teachers of English, have to deal with a generation of students who easily get distracted in the classroom. Old school methods do not work with them anymore. They ask for more than the traditional classrooms offer. We all need to use different tools to engage our students and to teach them effectively. There is one paradox though. Our students are supposed to be digital natives but they still need a lot of support and guidance to cope with technology.
ReplyDeleteSonat, well put. How do you see the role of teachers' in solving this paradox you mentioned at the end?
DeleteI sometimes take it for granted that my students will be very efficient in doing the tasks that require the use of tools. I think we should choose easy-to-use tools and software that do not make things more complicated.
DeleteI am attracted to technology because it's the future. Reading about all the possibilities it entails is something I really like to do. But because technology is and will be applied in many aspects of life, I think it's a good thing as teachers and students to try and keep up with these developments, and think about what they imply for you, personally. Not only for educational purposes, but also as a bridge to a rapidly approaching future. Furthermore, technology will be able to assist teachers, so they have more time they can invest in actual teaching.
ReplyDeleteHow do you teach a generation of children who have never known life without the internet? Can schools survive in the age of the web?
ReplyDeleteThese are the titles of two articles on BBC.com. In an age when such questions about the future of education arise, we should seek ways to adapt ourselves.
So, basically, you think that technology is an inevitable part of our lives now and therefore should take place in our teaching as well. Since our students are digital natives or at least near-digital natives, it is difficult for us to satisfy their needs with traditional teaching methods. All, well taken. Technology is fun and engaging and Josien puts it it allows us investigating more time in actual teaching. But to be more specific at this point: how does technology do that?
ReplyDeleteNow, let’s be more specific: Looking back to all the research you’ve read so far about second language learning and based on your personal learning and teaching experiences of English as a foreign language, how does CALL support language learning?
First of all, thanks to technology, we can prepare tasks appropriate for students with different learning styles such as visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Based on my teaching experience, I could say that technology helps me a lot to enrich my classes with visual materials. Another thing is that I use technology to give feedback to my students. Feedback in a traditional way never worked but the use of web tools draw their attention.
ReplyDeleteWhat attracted me to technology was indeed a personal experience. One of my earliest encounters with English was through a software which I used on a Windows 98 computer. As an elementary school student, I loved matching colorful pictures with words and playing simple problem-solving games. Thanks to that experience, today, I still remember the words that I learned from that software with the pictures I was presented.
ReplyDeleteHaving a firsthand experience with a technological tool, I am convinced that technology is a great means for making learning effective, fun, and memorable.
Before working as a research assistant, I taught intermediate English to adults in a language school for a short term. There were only a TV(only the TV, no channels) and a DVD player in each classroom. The major disadvantage of such a classroom, in my opinion, was the lack of Internet access. Together with the fact that all students were digital immigrants, it was hard to utilize authentic materials without the help of some technology. I also believe that relying on a textbook all the time limits the variety of tasks, materials and the amount of input the students are exposed to. Added to that, even without so much information about or use of multiple technological tools, a basic research on the Internet helps students in many different ways. I remember students writing essays in the classroom based on a single model in the book and when they are writing at home after doing some research on their topic. The difference was huge. It was also good to see they make decisions and adjust the tasks according to their needs without much help. So basically, the factors that attract me to using technology in language learning are authenticity, multiple sources of input, and learner autonomy. These are reasons why I decided to take this course, as well. I would like to learn more about technological tools and effective ways to incorporate them into my teaching and research on language education.
ReplyDeleteThe basic reason i believe technology should be integrated into language teaching is that it is capable of appealing to all kinds of learners so long as we know what the right tool is and the right way(s) of making use of that tool. And on parts of teachers, this requires great backgound and this course can provide us with that, if not all of it. I am saying this because we always have to keep discovering and
ReplyDeleteexploring tools. I agree with Sonat on that our students are not computer experts. They might be computer literate however this does not make them experts just like a literate elementary school graduate would not even be somewhere near a literate university graduate. So i believe we still have a long way to go. Let's keep trying and improving :-)
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ReplyDeleteChat room discourse consists of language that is much closer to oral discourse than to written (Sotillo 2000).
ReplyDeleteAs we all know well, the discourse via chatting on the Net is very limited. Do you think chat room English may create results we do not desire? What may be the role of a teacher in CMC to avoid the kind of language we don't want our students to use?
How can an effective ICC experience be implemented through CMC?
ReplyDeleteAre you of the opinion that students for such projects should necessarily be at a high level of proficiency?