Job Discussion Forums

[bje]

[scot47]

cmp

I knew you could !

[Stephen Jones]

There are two basic points which are being unnecessarily conflated here.

The first is the use of technology in the classroom. As Scot47 has said. The idea that technology was the solution for everything took root in the US in the fifties, and unfortunately it is still with us. For much of the 60s and 70s we had the ubiquitious language Labs. I remember being instructed in the use of one in Paris in the mid-seventies. Twice I took a class there; on neither occasion was I able to get it to work. Indeed the thing was so insanely complicated that I don't think anybody ever got it to work in its full glory.

It is a well known rule that when a piece of clapped-out technology goes out of fashion in the west you sell it to the Saudis, so at Jubail we actually had six of these insanely complicated language labs. When those of us on the British steel contract were given an explanation of how they worked nobody understood so I asked one of the teachers who had actually worked at the college for six years to show us. Rather embarrassed he explained that he had never actually used the room as a language lab (in fact nobody ever had as I found out when I worked there full time). I eventually became the first teacher to work out how they worked in all their glory; you could listen in to all the students by pushing a switch and even send them personalized corrections through the mike. I found that last feature useful in Ramadan; when the student nodded off you could scream "Wake up!" down the mike and watch him jump three feet into the air as the blast came through the earphones.


In the mid-nineties computers came in, and the mad idea came round that they would solve everything. A computer can be useful in language learning; basically it is a book with an answer key, a tape recorder, and a video player all in one device. However just as you are not going to learn English on your own from a book, a tape recorder and a video player, you're not going to do so from a computer. Add to that the shortage of materials (and there is a very good reason for that; a paper exercise you can type up in fifteen minutes will easily take a couple of hours or more to produce as a computer exercise, taking into account all the fiddly bits that you need do).

Computers have their limitations, but for those in charge there is the temptation to announce that they have everything super-computerized even if the stuff is almost never used, if available at all. And then there is the danger of the enthusiasm of the recently converted. These will have gained a superficial knowledge of some aspect of computer technology and will proudly announce that this is the way forward, that everybody has to take it on board, and that those who are mired in the past and not prepared to adapt to the future will have to go. These people never have a profound knowledge of the technology they are espousing; those who work with computers all the time are much more aware of all the things that can go wrong, and the numerous steps that must be taken before there is any benefit at all. These fanboys can normally be identified in that they give demonstrations of the new technology that peter out half way when they find that something hasn't been set up properly, or that they need to contact the IT department about a setting, or that the network is down. Normally, like the dotcom bubble their enthusiasm deflates rapidly, albeit somewhat more discretely.

The truth is that there is a trade-off between features and reliability. With a chalk board the only likely technological hitch is that you run out of chalk. With a whiteboard and board markers you get color, but run the risk that somebody has totally ruined it by writing all over it with permanent marker. With an OHP you need to worry about bulbs, and sockets and fuses and switches but at least won't have your lesson grind to a halt for twenty minutes because MS updates tries to install an automatic update on your latpop and it takes ten minutes of the class looking at the hourglass on the screen in front of the whole class before you pull the battery, reboot , disable automatic updates and succeed in playing the sound file.

This post has got rather long, so I'll leave my comments on the pick-and-mix approach to language teaching (aka death by Xerox) for another time.

[Longton]

And smart boards. Does anyone use these?

There is a danger that people waste so much time setting up power point presentations with sound effects and flashy graphics that the lesson is over before much can be done. Or maybe that's the whole idea - seduce the the students with technology and forget about ghastly Headway or Workplace Plus!

[Stephen Jones]

British Council has smart boards in every classroom I believe. They are quite common in British secondary schools it seems.

[scot47]

We had smart boards in our Training centre in Jeddah years ago. No technicians to fix them though. After a while they were forgotten about.

[EFLUndercover]

There is much more to computer-assisted language learning than using a computer in a language laboratory or a PowerPoint presentation and a SmartBoard. Nor is it just value-added textbook instruction.

For example, the Internet can be used to enhance a student's language learning beyond the classroom and without teacher assistance. iPods are being used very effectively for foreign language learning as is the use of blogging to encourage and support creative writing.

If teachers consider the diverse learning styles of their students and support them in alternative learning as with the use of instructional technology then perhaps teaching and learning may might improve.

[Mark100]

Scot47

One of the good things about using new learning tools is that it not only inpsires the learners but also it inspires the teachers.

There is no need to be afraid of using new things and to use the jargon.
You just might find that you enjoy some of them.

Nobody is saying that they will answer all our prayers however failure to adapt to new technology will inevitably put you out of touch with mainstream society.

After all we could go back to learning second languages with just a chalkboard and a set text and people would if succiently motivated manage to learn a language. This wouldn't be much fun and it would ignore all the other possible learning tools that we know have as a result of technological advances.

I know this is difficult in Saudi and in some places not possible but even in Saudi things are changing and the use of videos, language labs, CAL etc is becoming more mainstream.

In the end teachers that fail to adopt new methodologies and technologies will like the rest of the workforce that fails to adapt to change be forced to seek employment elsewhere.

[scot47]

New technology is fine. I am suspicious of what Dr Johnson called "enthusiasts" - people who have an obsessive belief that this is THE ANSWER to ALL our pedagogical problems !

Reminds me of the Americans in Vietnam who thought that technology would allow them to defeat the enemy ! Just get bigger and better helicopters and Charlie would lose !

[biffinbridge]

We use CALL at the moment and I really don't see what the big deal is about. Why? For example, it's much easier to press a button once on a CD player than it is to select the media file, click on an icon, mess about with the pause and play buttons and so on. Similarly, I much prefer doing a board stage myself than relying on a laptop/projector link...it's all just balls as a classroom tool and much better as a self-access way of study. I know how to use it, it doesn't baffle me. Also, once your students are linked up to a network they soon find that a screen is a good place behind which to fall asleep.

[Stephen Jones]

It is more convenient to use a sound file on a computer than a CD player. Why? Because you normally have to carry both the CD player and the CD around with you. And most CD players use the same interface as a computer now anyway.

This does however depend on everything working and on there being a back up strategy.

There are plenty of other things you can do in the classroom. Have a copy of the text book up on the screen so you can point to it, look up words the students don't know in the dictionary, have the answers show themselves in the gaps without having to write them, going off to play online hangman at the end of the lesson.

What you have to beware of is the same problem you have with producing your own worksheets. That you expend so much effort in producing them that you finish by giving them too much prominence.

[eha]

"New technology is fine. I am suspicious of what Dr Johnson called "enthusiasts" - people who have an obsessive belief that this is THE ANSWER to ALL our pedagogical problems "

Many of these I'd call 'self-promoters' rather than 'enthusiasts' . Quite surprising sometimes how their enthusiasm translates into nice little niches for themselves --- co-ordinator of thisnthat-- with release time, of course; workshops on thatntheother. What I mean is, a lot of these people don't actually KNOW much about pedagogy; that's why they're so sure there is a final solution, and that they have it.

[saral]

No kidding, eha. Our school has a new DOS and she is the self-appointed queen of pedagogy (she's written a book, don't you know)yet when we approach her for assistance with some small point we are swamped with piles of printouts from the internet and no assistance is to be had. We are sent to the internet for everything. I'm a fan of the net and all that but good old nuts and bolts works for me in the classroom more often than not.We've just given up approaching her for niggly little questions and work it out be tween ourselves.

[cmp45]

[saral]

Pretty much depends on what you think I meant by "niggly". It would seem you could possibly have missed my point by a mile. The topic was "self-promoters" and "enthusiasts" who have an obsessive belief that technology is the answer to every problem. There are times that a simple bounce of an idea amongst staff members can do the trick. Piles of pages presented. We are beginning to feel badly about all the trees going down to supply our printer.