Saturday, April 4, 2009
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Teachers' and Students' Role with ICT Language Teaching in the classroom
Week 3
The Net Generation
The story of Wesley (the boy in the slide) is not new but an interesting one. The Net-Generation kids have really the caught the world by storm. Most of them in this group are teenagers and young adults who are adapt, flexible, daring and fast learners who are able to navigate these technologies effortlessly, effectively and at lightning speed! Wesley is a smart, cool, confident and tech-savvy teenager (evident in his photo) who did a video recording of the resort room that he was in during a holiday trip to the Bintan Lagoon Resort with his family. He was so creative in his efforts that he approached the manager of the resort to sell the idea of his virtual reality movie clip so that visitors can have a snapshot of the resort before visiting the place. Of course, nowadays it is so common to have virtual tours on the internet of hotels and resorts which one wishes to visit. But coming from a young boy (this story happened a few years ago) at that time was very innovative indeed! I've heard of children making handsome amount of money trading on ebay and forums at an age as young as ten years! I would not be surprised to see/have 40 of such Wesley-liked kids in the classroom in the near future. Will we teachers be intimidated and overwhelmed by these kids? I think we shouldn't be; we need to tap on their resources, learn and explore together in the exciting realm of technology. That brings us to the next question of how we unlock the pedagogy of the tripartite relationship between teacher-student-technology in the curriculum setting.
The tripartite Relationship
A teacher-centred classroom is no longer sustainable nowadays. The "I say, you do" way of teaching and teacher being the sole source of authoritative knowledge in the classroom will not hold its stance much longer. I believe, in order for this relationship to hold, the pedagogy must be responsive to the nature and learning needs of the students. Teachers must get to know "why things are important " rather than "what and how to do things with ICT". When ICT is used in these relationship, it must be such that it leads to more learning and not hinders the learning process. The use of technology is such that we want to achieve a specific outcome.The teacher's job therefore is to make sure that when ICT is used, it must be meaningful, purposeful and practical that leads to the students wanting to learn and use more of the technology. The mutitude of roles of the teacher and learner are also discussed. I believe the roles we play are very much dependent on the situation and the context/task on hand. Dr Phillip Towndrow also stressed that we can get resources from the learners/students themselves and also through shared information like the blogs.
Yes, this also led me to think of finding out more about my learners before I start the lessons: what they know, what do they want to know more, why/what they want to learn........
Learning from/with/in technology
This is an eye-opener for me as I entangle the mysteries of these few simple prepositions in regards to technology. According to Dr M. Warschauer, the use of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has gone through many stages of development. It has evolved from the mainframe computer to the personal computer and now to the multimedia, networked computer. In the 1960's , computer were big machines used by big corporations and the USA defence and languages were learned in a very structured manner. There were strict grammar rules to follow, with drills and practices to tap on; users at that time were learning 'from' the computer rather than from the teacher, where there was a large store of knowledge. As the technology developed into the smaller and more powerful personal computers, we are learning 'with' the technology, where cognitive, simulated and communicative e-learning take place. In the 21st century, the integrative technology is here to stay, where there is not only the socio-cognitive process that is involved in language learning but there is the whole realm of multimedia, the internet and the networking that are intertwinked in the process. We are now learning 'in' the technology as we can superimpose a real world into a virtual world collaboratively anywhere, anytime and any place with people around the world playing games or learning a language. There is authentic discourse between doctors and patient, lecturers and students, tutors and learners; users could log-on to listen to live seminars and conferences etc...etc...
All these really made me sit up and ponder why, what and how I should use CALL to make my lessons more captivating and beneficial to my ESL learners.
Questions to reflect
The teacher's role is an important one as it sets the broad objectives of the using of ICT. Instead of asking the students to read up as much information as they can find on a particular topic over the web, the teacher should do some research and decide on the boundaries of information search. The poor students might be reading a loadful of information but not being able to understand and extract meaning to what they are assigned to do. It is the job of the teacher to show them the way by an example in class eg. where are the search engines, the web links and what are useful information and garbage information. This is also to clear up any misunderstandings and gaps in expectations.
The close and interactive relationship of the teacher, student and technology in ICT language learning is well and good; but I question how the teacher can fulfill the learning needs of the students by having them to choose materials according to their needs and interests when all course learning materials are already prepared for the academic year? Hence, I think it poses challenges to the teacher to be able to make decisions to change, align and adjust the teaching and technology so that it is relevant to the students' language, communication and literacy needs currently and in the future.
Further reading: "The rise of the Net Generation" by Don Tapscott (The Digital Economy)
The Net Generation
The story of Wesley (the boy in the slide) is not new but an interesting one. The Net-Generation kids have really the caught the world by storm. Most of them in this group are teenagers and young adults who are adapt, flexible, daring and fast learners who are able to navigate these technologies effortlessly, effectively and at lightning speed! Wesley is a smart, cool, confident and tech-savvy teenager (evident in his photo) who did a video recording of the resort room that he was in during a holiday trip to the Bintan Lagoon Resort with his family. He was so creative in his efforts that he approached the manager of the resort to sell the idea of his virtual reality movie clip so that visitors can have a snapshot of the resort before visiting the place. Of course, nowadays it is so common to have virtual tours on the internet of hotels and resorts which one wishes to visit. But coming from a young boy (this story happened a few years ago) at that time was very innovative indeed! I've heard of children making handsome amount of money trading on ebay and forums at an age as young as ten years! I would not be surprised to see/have 40 of such Wesley-liked kids in the classroom in the near future. Will we teachers be intimidated and overwhelmed by these kids? I think we shouldn't be; we need to tap on their resources, learn and explore together in the exciting realm of technology. That brings us to the next question of how we unlock the pedagogy of the tripartite relationship between teacher-student-technology in the curriculum setting.
The tripartite Relationship
A teacher-centred classroom is no longer sustainable nowadays. The "I say, you do" way of teaching and teacher being the sole source of authoritative knowledge in the classroom will not hold its stance much longer. I believe, in order for this relationship to hold, the pedagogy must be responsive to the nature and learning needs of the students. Teachers must get to know "why things are important " rather than "what and how to do things with ICT". When ICT is used in these relationship, it must be such that it leads to more learning and not hinders the learning process. The use of technology is such that we want to achieve a specific outcome.The teacher's job therefore is to make sure that when ICT is used, it must be meaningful, purposeful and practical that leads to the students wanting to learn and use more of the technology. The mutitude of roles of the teacher and learner are also discussed. I believe the roles we play are very much dependent on the situation and the context/task on hand. Dr Phillip Towndrow also stressed that we can get resources from the learners/students themselves and also through shared information like the blogs.
Yes, this also led me to think of finding out more about my learners before I start the lessons: what they know, what do they want to know more, why/what they want to learn........
Learning from/with/in technology
This is an eye-opener for me as I entangle the mysteries of these few simple prepositions in regards to technology. According to Dr M. Warschauer, the use of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has gone through many stages of development. It has evolved from the mainframe computer to the personal computer and now to the multimedia, networked computer. In the 1960's , computer were big machines used by big corporations and the USA defence and languages were learned in a very structured manner. There were strict grammar rules to follow, with drills and practices to tap on; users at that time were learning 'from' the computer rather than from the teacher, where there was a large store of knowledge. As the technology developed into the smaller and more powerful personal computers, we are learning 'with' the technology, where cognitive, simulated and communicative e-learning take place. In the 21st century, the integrative technology is here to stay, where there is not only the socio-cognitive process that is involved in language learning but there is the whole realm of multimedia, the internet and the networking that are intertwinked in the process. We are now learning 'in' the technology as we can superimpose a real world into a virtual world collaboratively anywhere, anytime and any place with people around the world playing games or learning a language. There is authentic discourse between doctors and patient, lecturers and students, tutors and learners; users could log-on to listen to live seminars and conferences etc...etc...
All these really made me sit up and ponder why, what and how I should use CALL to make my lessons more captivating and beneficial to my ESL learners.
Questions to reflect
The teacher's role is an important one as it sets the broad objectives of the using of ICT. Instead of asking the students to read up as much information as they can find on a particular topic over the web, the teacher should do some research and decide on the boundaries of information search. The poor students might be reading a loadful of information but not being able to understand and extract meaning to what they are assigned to do. It is the job of the teacher to show them the way by an example in class eg. where are the search engines, the web links and what are useful information and garbage information. This is also to clear up any misunderstandings and gaps in expectations.
The close and interactive relationship of the teacher, student and technology in ICT language learning is well and good; but I question how the teacher can fulfill the learning needs of the students by having them to choose materials according to their needs and interests when all course learning materials are already prepared for the academic year? Hence, I think it poses challenges to the teacher to be able to make decisions to change, align and adjust the teaching and technology so that it is relevant to the students' language, communication and literacy needs currently and in the future.
Further reading: "The rise of the Net Generation" by Don Tapscott (The Digital Economy)
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
What do I learn from this lecture 2?
The short movie gives me great insights into the teaching of Language using Technology. In the reading class, a student reads an article with the teacher assisting or giving some interviewing questions. Meanwhile another student video-tape the whole process. This is a very interesting and captivating way of learning as the students are motivated to learn and learning becomes a fun process. But my questions are: are the technologies readily available to teachers and students and with the limited time and resources that the teachers have, and with little support from the IT department (as many of these lessons need to be prepared by the teachers themselves) can these technologies work across all subjects and curriculum? for any ICT programme to be infiltrated into the schools and classrooms, it must be a concerted effort from the top management to want to do this; not just for the sake of staying updated with the technology but having the goals to succeed.
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