I found this video clip to be very interesting, and certainly relevant in the time that we will be teaching. After having read the article for this week, I find this to be even more intriguing than I found it to be before. My cooperating teacher has some very traditional methods that she uses in her classroom, and I have noticed that she uses less technology in her classroom than many of the other language teachers. I find that incorporating technology into the classroom, especially in FL classrooms, can be extremely beneficial to the students. I observed a French teacher at Exeter High School that incorporated technology into her homework assignments using the website: lingtlanguage.com. Standard and traditional homework assignments were restricted to mostly reading and writing, but many forms of technology now enable FL teachers to practice listening and speaking outside of class.
Another benefit of technology that I read about in the article was the ability to self-reflect in the use of online blogs or journals. Students find the blogs to be a good way to reflect on what they have learned, whether it be in class, or in a study-abroad situation. These documented learning moments are also shared with classmates, or made public depending on privacy settings, and are therefore available to many more people than if a student were simply to write an essay for a teacher. When I spent a semester in Dijon, France, I kept a blog mostly as a tool to update my friends and family back home in the US. However, I still find it useful to go back and look at what I experienced and learned while I was there. In these learning situations, these experiences can be shared or made public, and you can benefit from reading and learning about other people's experiences.
The part that touched me, perhaps the most, was when the student help up the sign that showed how a public blog post is accessible to more students, and more beneficial to those students. I had never really considered before how private homework assignments can be when they are simply handed in to the teacher. In the article that I read, a lot of the students admitted that they put more effort and thought into what they were writing when they knew that their peers were going to be reading their thoughts in addition to their teacher or professor.
One thing to keep in mind as the world of education becomes more technology based is that it isn't safe to make assumptions about the access that students have to technology, especially in high school. A teacher at EHS told me how she was reminding one of her students of something they had to do. She made the assumption that he had a smart phone and could simply set a reminder in his phone. When she suggested that, he responded by saying that he didn't own a cell phone. While I think that technology can do worlds of good in education, we have to be sure to provide the students with the technology that is necessary to complete the work. (Otherwise, we would need to provide the students with alternate assignments that are not technology based.)
Perhaps one of the largest advantages that technology has, that would be particularly useful in any FL classroom, is that it has the power to connect students across the world. American students in a French high school classroom can write to French students, and correspond with pen-pals. They are also able to connect through other modes of communication such as blogs. Although, I see no reason to incorporate medias such as Facebook and Twitter into lesson plans. I find that these two in particular, are a larger distraction than aid for the students. In addition, they can benefit in the exact same way using other, more useful forms of technology such as blogs.
Yes! Certain aspects of Internet technology just do not work well with certain ages of students, such as elementary and middle school kids. Teachers thus need to be very careful about how they incorporate technology into teaching. That being said, nowadays many web tools, such as wiki, blog or social networking are to be set as a private setting. For example, our blog and wiki are only for us; no one else. Only students from this class can view and participate. I feel pretty comfortable with this. How about you?
ReplyDeleteI also feel comfortable with this, because it is set up through blackboard for UNH. If we were to try to incorporate a blog into our high school class at EHS, then we would likely have to create our own since the HS doesn't have the blackboard system. It certainly is possible to do, but requires more preparation from the creator (the teacher) and more understanding. That being said, I think that the benefits from using technology in the classroom can be enormous if they are used in the right way.
ReplyDeleteThe topic of privacy is not something I had thought of. There are probably parents out there that would object to students posting online and having other people being able to see it. So that would have to be set up so that no one else could see it, which would be complicated. I'm also glad that you addressed that we can not make assumptions about student's access to technology. Not everyone is tech savvy, and this could embarrass students in front of their peers. We definitely have to be very careful in how we set up technology in our classrooms.
ReplyDeleteDo public schools have certain privacy regulations that would need to be addressed if a teacher wanted students to post online, whether publicly or privately?
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