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We’ve been learning about bits of technology use in
classrooms every week. The first week was the creation of a blog and its possible application in the learning process. The second –saving the most
useful links into a social bookmarking service such as Delicious. The third –
the aural/oral skills improvement/development through the use of internet
sources. This week it was the turn of reading, writing and vocabulary skill development. I've been exploring and saving so many useful sites. I find that there are scores of them and most of them are good.
However what I learned while writing
my technology enhanced lesson project was that you can't use everything you
find just the way it is. That you can take bits and pieces from different sites
to adjust to your classroom needs.
Very often there are limitations to
the use of technology in the classroom. Sometimes they come from the lack of
equipment (computers in the classroom for example) other times the attempt to
make the technology means, textbook contents and classroom realia meet fails.
It wasn’t very easy for me to write
a technology based lesson plan because each time I’d have an idea it was
hindered by the reality of “Wait, you can’t find enough computers for that”. While
the WWW abounds in resources they can’t be used much at the lessons as long as
the English classrooms are not equipped with computers or there is no access at
the IT Lab in school for at least a monthly lesson with online resources. Most certainly the teacher can bring to the class and present a lot of things but in
this case the students are passively “ingesting” the contents provided. Even in
this form it is a great leap from writing on the board to presenting it in form
of power point presentations, for instance, or from listening to a dialogue on
the stereo and viewing and listening to a Video clip of it.
With such limitless possibilities the technology offers it does feel sometimes like technology is the fast speed car harnessed to a slow moving carriage of teaching methods of language acquisition. If you speed too much up you risk on breaking the carriage.
Hello Liliana,
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on such a wonderful blog. Nice shots and great design. I like your statements: "the fast element in the slow drawn carriage of language acquisition. Take the Knowledge Street!" as second language acquisition requires so much patience and confidence. Learners then should know that they can't learn it over night. Just like babies. They can't acquire their L1 that quickly.
I join you in admiring what we've learned through the weeks, so far and the motivation we get from our Leader, Robert.
I agree that teachers should be eclectic in their choices while preparing a technology enhanced lesson plan to meet their classroom needs. Classrooms, students, and objectives differ from one part of the world to another. So, it's up to the teacher to select what works. I also share the position that technology should be considered as an aid to teaching and not as a substitute of the teacher. Hence there must be some limitations.
Though this week has been a busy one for most participants, it's no less than the previous ones. We've added new handy skills to our lists paving our ways to a brighter future teaching career.
Thanks for having me on your blog! lol!
Yours,
Abdelghani.
Hi Liliana,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the accurate recap of what we have done so far; four weeks and already so many things acquired! yes, I also experimented this excitment in front of the so many possibilities offered by the net and I have to admit that the choice was not easy; we in fact need a certain dose of realism and caution and as human beings, we should not be enslaved by machines but use them as aids, instead.So, let's do our best to master them well and avoid breaking the carriage.
Regards,
Colomba