Teaching With Technology

Module: Teaching with TechnologyInstructor: Leandro Costa

Why use technology?

• Growing up in the Digital Age is affecting today's youth in numerous ways including growing up with a constant digital stimuli. Physiological change in brain and changes in the their thought processes have changed the learning preferences of today's youth.

• “Technology offers vast possibilities for language development and connections to the cultures of the worlds where the target language is spoken.”

(Cunningham & Redmond)

• Prepare students for their futures in the workplace and in society

• Integration vs isolation • Students are generally technology –

literate and have become accustomed to using computers, videos, and other technology-based means of acquiring information.

• Students learn at different rates and have different learning styles. The use of technology helps teachers reach all students in different ways.

• Technology helps to relate curriculum to life outside the classroom.

• Technology helps to involve students in worthwhile, interactional activities, such as interpersonal exchanges, information gathering, and problem-solving projects.

• Technology helps students to be active participants in the Information Age

• Using different aspects of technology helps motivate students to learn.

• Technology adds many dimensions of foreign language learning, particularly with the use of multimedia programs.

• Technology helps to make the study of foreign languages very practical and significant in children’s lives. If students can communicate readily through e-mail with children in a foreign country, it is unlikely that the teacher will hear them say “but I will never have a chance to really use….(any language)”

• Students have the opportunity to work collaborative manner.

• Technology gives students opportunities to use their productive and receptive abilities for real purposes, such as publishing a newsletter or writing interactive journals.

• Exposure to authentic language• Easy to find topical information that

students can relate to. • Practical for teachers:Digital format

means no fussing with tapes; store files right on your laptop / pen drive!

Theoretical considerations

As with any pedagogical tool, it is extremely important that the use of technology in the FL classroom be directly connected to sound SLA theory. How do the students benefit from the

technology? How can we improve the tools we are using

to help us in the classroom?

In order to use technology correctly as a pedagogical tool, we need to examine not only which areas of acquisition will receive the most benefit from the technology but also which types of technology can be the most beneficial. Which of the four skills can benefit the most

from technology? Reading? Writing? Speaking? Listening?

Which tools can be applied and which cannot?

Pedagogical considerations

Instructors must invest time and flexibility into their background research in order to ensure that any web-authoring tool is integrated effectively and appropriately in the classroom.

Learner levels must be accommodated, especially in the language classroom.

Appropriate assessment must be established in order to hold students accountable for their work.

The nature of the tool must be determined in advance so that it matches the particular needs of the students as well as the course objectives.

Web 2.0

• A Paradigm Shift:

• How did you use the Web in the past? How do you use it now?

• Students “can either be passive receivers of media messages or they can be digital content creators and critical thinkers.”

Source: Retrieved January 18, 2008, from video in the classroom.com : http://www.needleworkspictures.com/vic

• Can you think of ways in which the previous statement

applies?

Web 2.0

The Read/Write Web • Anyone can be a Web author • No knowledge of programming

necessary • Connecting & collaborating with

others – Building knowledge and gaining perspective

Web-authoring tools

First-generation Web

Asynchronous tools Email: allows for one-to-one

exchange and supports multimedia. Discussion boards: allow for group

exchange and encourage “universal participation” (Godwin-Jones, 2003).

Synchronous tools Chat sessions: promote rapid response

and group interaction as well as the ability to analyze the language at a later time.

Instant messaging: have high communicative value because of voice/video options and the support of multimedia.

Web-authoring tools

Second-generation Web

Blogs Can be individual or collaborative and

offers self-publishing options which can “encourage ownership and responsibility on the part of the students” (Godwin-Jones, 2003).

Drawback is that posts are organized by time and not content.

RSS and Wiki Allow automatic updates to students

in regards to services to which they have subscribed.

Are intensely collaborative and allow for recognition of work (i.e. changes are connected to the user).

Other web-based tools

Social networksFunction Links groups of individuals together

through common interests or goals.

• Collaborative Communities: Wikis, blogs & podcasts

• A Class Wiki: students collaborate to create a knowledge base, post class notes Qu Tech wiki. Class wiki

• Student Blogs: a forum for students to express their voice to an audience other than the teacher

• Podcasting: Students create a digital speaking notebook for tracking (and evaluation?)

• Yahoo answers• A site where you can ask and answer

questions of any kind to people from all over the world.

1. Provide cultural insight2. Promote real-time communication3. Give students the opportunity to decide

on topics for Q&A.

Digital Media Production

• Students use the discussion board to publish their opinions and ideas.

• Digital story telling, multimedia projects. • Students make comic srips or animates movies

with dialogue boxes using Web 2.0 tools, such as make beliefs comix and Dvolver.

• Students send speaking task audio files via

email.

Developing projects

Putting the idea of interconnectedness into practice.

1. Students read an article.2. Students select some relevant information from

the article.3. Students google names / facts form the article

and then find connections, links.4. They present to class the research in a

multimedia fashion.

• Writing a collective blog

1. Teacher opens a blog at www.blogspot.com or www.wordpress.com

2. Teacher and students share login and password

3. Teacher gives topics, various students write and comment.

• Some reflections:

• In the past, technology was something that was present in the classroom and students had very little access to it in their homes. Nowadays, technology is everywhere, and students, theoretically, have equal access to (almost) everything the teacher uses in class.

• How do you think this shift affects the way we plan our lessons?

• Adapted from:

• file:///H:/Module%20Teaching%20with%20tech/Technology%20in%20Foreign%20Language%20Education%20%20BLOGS.htm

• slideshare.net