With unit 9 nearing its end, I can’t help but think about my own experience learning English. The only piece of so called technology was a vinyl recorder, which was used for practicing listening.
We had our textbooks, notebooks and pens - these were our only tools to help master the foreign language.
Today, more than 25 years later (already a teacher myself!), I have so many different types of technologies and social media tools readily available for any imaginable type of activity.
To be honest, I am not a tech savvy person myself and still prefer the traditional ways of teaching, however I realized a need to start bringing technology into my lessons as I started noticing that I was falling behind my “digitally wise” students. Do I really need technology in my classroom? Is it really going to make a big difference? “ Considering this reality, what we need is not to assess whether or not [computer- mediated] practices are superior to classroom learning but to see that “many of the tools and practices are used by many learners naturally while they are using their foreign language” ( Chapelle, 2013, p.2).
Well, if the new generation is immersed in technologies from early years, that means they process information very differently, which means I needed to catch up!
Since the beginning of the course I created a Twitter account, started using Google Slides for my lesson presentations, Flipgrid and Screencastify for recording videos and Quizlet for creating quizzes. I have clearly noticed one major difference since I started bringing technology into the classroom - my students are more active during the lessons and feel more motivated. Sometimes they almost forget they are learning!
I really liked the ideas shared by Diane Ramanathan (TESL 0100 course, Unit 9) on how we can incorporate technology in our teaching process:
1) motivate and engage (eg. Kahoot or Microsoft Publisher for writing class newsletters)
2) support and encourage collaboration among learners
3) use tech tools for tasks and projects (eg. Publisher, Survey Monkey, Padlet)
4) use technology to introduce and practice language ( my favourite one is Duolingo)
There is no doubt, technological innovations can change any dull lesson into a fun one on a whim, but I think it is important to remember that “the ultimate goal of using these tools should be to help students become more independent learners and promote their agency for their own needs and aspirations” ( Brown & Lee, 2015, p. 254). Sometimes we tend to forget what the real goal of bringing technology into the classroom is - it's not about having fun but improving the quality of the learning process for our students.
Another great advice from Diane (which I am following already) is to take one step at a time. We, teachers, can easily get overwhelmed with the vast variety of the technologies available. What works for me is finding something small and simple ( app, software etc) that makes me think "I can do it" and then go from there. One step at a time.
Please see an example of me using screencast here
References
Chapelle, C. (2013). Instructional computer-assisted language learning. In C. A. Chapelle ( Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics (pp.2718-2721). West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Brown & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy ( 4th ed. revised). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.
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