Technology in the Classroom: An asset, or a distraction?
I believe that technology can be an asset FL teaching—though I believe it has both limits and disadvantages in some circumstances. I believe that it is important to define "technology" more specifically. Is a projector still considered "technology?" How about a power-point presentation?
I believe than in order to be an effective teacher who presents "authentic" material in the 21st century, one must provide a certain amount of tech-related information/activities to students. Our world (regardless of nation or culture) becomes defined more and more each day by our interactions with "technology." In order to provide authentic, meaningful, material or achieve "real world skills," teaching techniques must reflect this. I have one anecdote to highlight this fact:
During my study-abroad in Dijon, I took an art history class that focused on French architecture, sculptures and paintings. It was a large lecture of about 100 students, all of whom were French, apart from myself and a few of my fellow anglophones. It was a difficult course, not due to the material, but the way it was presented. I took thirteen weeks of art history without seeing a single representation of a single piece of art: not on a slideshow, a transparency, a print out; not even a crudely sketched imitation on the blackboard. My professor simply read from her script, which along with the historical context and information about the artist, included written descriptions of the works. It was as if the class were geared toward the visually impaired.
I would argue that this class would have been more palatable with the help of technology. A few photos on a powerpoint; a video of a "tour" of a notable cathedral.
I believe such visual aids are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of technology and its usefulness in the classroom. I am very intrigued by the opportunities that programs such as Skype (and online interactions with speakers of the target language)can provide to cultural learning. I think that Voicethread is a valuable resource for speaking, pronunciation and listening skills. Blogs have a great potential for encouraging participation among students and engaging them to take responsibility for their learning.
But their downfalls are plentiful: 1. Potential for "technical difficulties;" 2. They can sometimes increase the time it takes to teach a certain point, or to complete a homework task because infallibly, one must "wait" for the computer/gadget/internet. 3. Too many tech-related assignments can spread a class too thin—making it too complex to follow, for students to remember assignments and where to complete them. 4. They sometimes create an interruption of the cohesiveness of the class, taking away from the material with their added complexity.
As for social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram— I see little need to incorporate them into the classroom. I believe that students already spend too much time/place too much importance on these medias already, and perhaps they should be left at home. I think it is important to take into account how much "screen time" we all have in our lives already, and make certain that technology is truly a benefit that can not gained in some other way before we assign them to students.
You have made a good point about too much technology can add distraction and make students feel lost. I taught an online 402 course this summer. I had to be very careful about how I give my students instructions. I use a wiki to organize my course and that's the only place where students have to access the course material and carry out daily assignments. Most students really had no problem with it. However, you alway have a few students who do not know much about technology and often get lost. I ended up spending a lot of time with a couple of students doing 'problem-solving'. I think if you believe in the usefulness of technology and want to use it, you need to be willing to put time and effort to make it work for your students. One teacher said to me: "You can be a good teacher and never use technology and technology won’t turn a bad teacher into a good one. However, a good teacher who uses technology can make good things happen” What do you think about this?
ReplyDeleteI wholly agree. A good teacher knows how to balance the material they present: a good amount of variety creates a fuller "picture" of the concept for students to grasp. A good teacher understands the role that technology can play in presenting this "full picture." A less skilled teacher may already have difficultly combining the different elements (grammar lessons, cultural units, skits, written work,etc) to make a cohesive concept for students; adding technology into this mix will only continue to unbalance this teacher's methods.
DeleteFirst of all, you've made me a little worried about the art history class I'm taking in Dijon next semester. :) Also, I totally agree how technology can boggle you down. For instance, I'm currently retyping this comment because, as this site has done to me before, the thing just went haywire and deleted all but the first 6 words and the last 2 words of my previous comment. This semester I have had to make 6 new online accounts each with a user name and password. So I've had to figure out how to use each one, figure out what my teacher wants me to do with each one, and I have to keep track of them all. It can be very frustrating for someone like me who is not technologically advanced and seems to have issues doing anything with a computer, like commenting on someone's post in a blog.
ReplyDeleteIt also gets annoying when teachers plan to use some type of technology and obviously did not prepare themselves. I'm sure it will happen plenty of times to myself, but it gets very old watching teachers throughout school struggle playing online videos, usually because the internet is awful at school. It should not be a surprise to them every time! If your classroom cannot handle playing videos, then choose to do something else.
It continues to amaze me that the wifi at UNH still seems lacking. Compatibility is a huge issue in regards to technology in the classroom. It really depends how well equipped you are, your students are, and the classroom is. Assigning very technologically dependent work to high school students could be difficult because not all students have adequate access to the internet or a proper computer.
DeleteChloe and Troy, your comments about the "technical difficulties" inherent in technology, as well as how well the instructor is prepared to teach using the technology, are important to keep in mind. In my first month of teaching, the teacher I was subbing for left me a "Fakebook" project to do with my level 1 Spanish students. They were to create a fake Facebook page and include basic sentences about themselves. The high school uses Google Drive to share documents so I "shared" (or thought I did) the template to make the Facebook page. The students couldn't access it. I created a blog and posted the link in it; the students couldn't edit and re-save it. Keep in mind all of this was going on while students were working on laptops that a) wouldn't turn on; or b) wouldn't log on; or c) wouldn't let students access the Internet and/or their network drives to save things. Also, the level 1 students had a lot of behavioral problems mixed in so I was running around the room troubleshooting technology, trying to share the template on a flash drive, while also keeping students who couldn't do work because of technology problems out of trouble. Let's just say the whole project was a train wreck, I ended up letting many of the students handwrite it, and then I subsequently avoided using those laptops like the the plague for the rest of my time teaching there. Some of that was out of my control, but it was bad news that I didn't look more into how to share documents ahead of time.
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