My thought on technology in language learning is that it is a valuable resource. I did not grow up with computer technology in my home or school environments, but now, such technology seems to me normal and natural to use, at least in some limited ways, both at home and in classrooms. As a valuable resource, technology and its potential uses are subjects I would like to learn more about. It's the second week of my CALL course, and I feel I've been introduced to so many ways to use computer technology for language learning. I feel I have so much to learn, and I believe that I must learn.
I teach in a community service program in Japan for students from various countries. I also teach the administrative staff at a university here. Every two years students from the community service program return to their countries, often wishing to continue their English lessons here. In their own countries English lessons may be limited, inaccessible, expensive or differently approached. Just being in the CALL course for two weeks has me envisioning the ways in which I might reach my students around the globe in a multicultural classroom via computer technology. I have strong ties to Bangladesh, in particular, the country of my heritage. Being able to teach my husband's eight nephews and one niece (ages 3-20) there would be so fulfilling while also allowing us to keep in touch through engaging conversations in English.
This is my first blog.
I teach in a community service program in Japan for students from various countries. I also teach the administrative staff at a university here. Every two years students from the community service program return to their countries, often wishing to continue their English lessons here. In their own countries English lessons may be limited, inaccessible, expensive or differently approached. Just being in the CALL course for two weeks has me envisioning the ways in which I might reach my students around the globe in a multicultural classroom via computer technology. I have strong ties to Bangladesh, in particular, the country of my heritage. Being able to teach my husband's eight nephews and one niece (ages 3-20) there would be so fulfilling while also allowing us to keep in touch through engaging conversations in English.
This is my first blog.
Glad to know the class has inspired you with some new teaching ideas thus far. I'd like to hear more about the new ideas you have envisioned! Let's keep inspiring each other through our conversations :)
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DeleteThis summer I began an online graduate certificate program at Indiana University, and this CALL course is my first course. The very format of the course --being online, using a learning management system -- as well as the readings have me thinking more and more about the ways in which English Forest (the community service program that I teach in) might grow to continue to be of service to its students even as they move to other areas of the world.
Currently, I use Skype as a means of interacting with some of my students for lessons. However, my CALL course has me thinking of ways in which I might also design an online course. I would really like to do this, and I hope that I can.
Some preliminary ideas that come to mind are to use a learning management system, to have assignment pages with links to web-sites for language activities, to assign online pair work so that two students could work together to practice or do activities at a suitable time, to include video in the learning management system that students could access at their convenience, produced videos as well as my own that might show modeled dialogues or offer language practice specific to our lessons, and possibly power point presentations on language concepts. One of the CALL course readings, Mike Levy's article on "Technologies in Use for Second Language Learning" (2009), offers a vast description of so many ways to use technology for language learning, and I feel a need for time to explore, think, allow my ideas to gel in order to design a meaningful distance-learning curriculum. Levy discusses virtual learning environments, with multimodal features. His description is fascinating.
Other readings offer insights into purposeful computer-based language-learning activities, based on theories on authenticity, audience, and autonomy. The computer allows students familiarity with many more genres for reading, writing, and creating, as Peter Duffy explains in his article, "Engaging the YouTube Google-Eyed Generation: Strategies for Using Web 2.0" (2007). These articles have helped me to think of the value of project-type tasks, both on and off the web, in relation to multiple perceptions of authenticity, including the students', real audiences, and autonomy. The web allows the processes of interaction, dialogue, expression, disagreement, negotiation, cooperation, collaboration, discovery, resolution and revision that may be involved in learning to extend beyond the classroom, beyond the teacher and classmates, beyond traditional classroom genres. The web and the world become as the classroom. Students can develop a sense of agency as they engage in computer-based tasks for language learning that are perceived to be authentic and purposeful. These articles have stirred me to think more about the kinds of tasks I might offer the classes: purposeful, relevant for them, in a format comfortable for them. It has me thinking about the roles I too may play in this learning --as a teacher, a guide, a facilitator, a participant.
On a personal level, it feels like a special convergence: my interest in having English Forest continue online and my CALL course.