Reflection: Teaching with Technology

Technology is exciting. A good chunk of our world today seems to revolve around it, or at least move through it. Facebook and Apple are now major features of finance and economics, not just things that college kids used (as it was a mere 5 years ago). Skype and similar videocalling technologies are looming over traditional telecommunication, and are relied on not just by business executives but also many of the international students we teach. My point is that technology is here. It's in all of our lives, in some major ways. As language teachers, I feel that we must address it. As the DuBravac chapter points out, students now belong to the Net generation- whether they are native or non-native speakers, they are using technology in some capacity, and certainly would benefit from being able to use it in their desired contexts, such as at an English-medium university. Achieving competence in technologically-mediated genres, like e-mail, message boards, and social networks is just as necessary as having good phone skills (which is distinct from standard face-to-face conversation). As language teaching should strive for authenticity and student needs, teaching the genres/registers of CMC while using CMC is valuable. SLA theory also offers some support for teaching with technology. Theoretically, CMC that allows for real-time interaction (audio and/or visual) provides comprehensible input, modified output, and/or an opportunity for the negotiation of meaning, all of which is thought to lead to language development. Independent learning opportunities that involve interaction are vast, especially compared to a decade or two ago when homework was almost completely limited to individually completed reading/listening and answering questions or solving grammar exercises. Empirically, there's still a great deal of work to be done in validating the use of many forms of technology for general learning, but one reporting from the Wang and Vasquez article that I found promising was that blogging yields higher output volume than pen and paper writing. I also believe there's a strong argument to be made for technology when it improves classroom practice in terms of efficiency and flexibility. LMS are useful to reduce grading time as well as eliminating time spent collecting and returning paper assignments (and in a shorter class period, this can really matter!). Digital textbooks and padcams allow flexibility in displaying material and allowing more dynamic visual illustration of concepts, and compared with a multi-page handout, are much more efficient in that sense. When technology doesn't intersect with the criteria of real-world use, SLA, or improved classroom practice, then it shouldn't be used.