To Teach or not to Teach Tech ?... that's the question

To Teach or not to Teach Tech, that is the question  ....

This week has been hectic, but I manage myself to come online and do some multitasking, but not to focus to do heavy reading after working long hours.
Only today I was able to watch the wonderful AITEFL Conference Evaluating Web Based Tools for Language Instruction byNik Peachey  
It was enlightening in the sense that we can feel sometimes overwhelmed by the great amount of tools available to teach Top 100 tools  , and we know there are more that are not in that list and everyday creative people all over the world are creating new ones, but during the conference Nik showed some criteria to evaluate , and choose which ones to use and which ones to avoid to enhance our teaching -learning process.

I have mentioned in my previous posts, that I have come to think and agree that the new literacy should be teaching to code  :

Mitch Resnick , Let's teach children to code

App teaching kids to code

and

Professor Richard Noss in Technology Enhanced Learning :http://www.tel.ac.uk/

With all that as a backup, I will say tonight, that if  I am asked to tech or not to tech, I will go and teach  tech in my class and will inspire others to do it, starting with my students, how am I going to do it ? I am not sure yet, but I will.

To finish I will quote Rt. Hon Michael Gove "Almost every field of employment now depends on technology.From radio, to television, computers and the internet, each new technological advance has changed our world and changed us too.But there is one notable exception.Education has barely changed ".

So, our mission as educators is to  : 

• Connect
• Share
• Analyse
• Assess
• Apply
• Personalise
• Engage
• Streamline
• Include
• Know
• Compute
• Construct

Electronic Literate

Well it has been a while since I haven't blogged, but now I started another adventure . I was invited to participate in a PhD project of a fellow colleague in Newcastle University, it is entitled :

Transformative learning’: The developmental processes of L2 teachers as effective users of online resources for language learning and teaching. 

I liked the idea from the beginning , being able to share with other teachers and learn together and eventually form a community sounds really appealing . 

The question of how electronic literate I consider myself has been pondering my head . To make sure, I took a test, but to my surprise the terms and the content were already obsolete ( it mentioned MP3, what is that ?? ! ) and well, according the results, I am quite good in the field. 

As a second language teacher one has to be innovative, one of the ways of keeping up with the times and with our students, who seem to one step ahead of teachers all the time related to technologies, is by the use of technology in the class. 

We live surrounded by technology and most of our students were born next to a computer and can not recognise a  "diskette" if shown one, or have never looked for information in a library like we did.

 

Unfortunately, I might be very fond of using technologies in my classroom and I am certain my students would really appreciate it, but there is a program to follow and colleagues to work with that might be reluctant to make the transition from paper to digital. When the curriculum is organised centrally and not locally to meet the needs of our students,  and when teachers have cero o very little influence on it, the only changes that you can do as a teacher are in the way you present activities and material. In our case, the program indicates the methodology and the way the students will be assessed. To think of anything else will be out of the question.

On the other hand, I don't consider my students digital natives, although they were born in this era, but the only know how to move around Facebook and are not even able to set a good privacy setting. There is a lot to learn, one might think they will be comfortable using technologies, but they are more engaged in been presented technology than using them themselves . 

 In my context, to achieve my goals with these 21st century students, I am doing my best. I teach trainee teachers , therefore I share my digital literacy with them so they can use it in their own lesson planning and classes. It is also a good idea ,especially working with young people, that they can see the importance and the benefits of incorporating technology in their practices  

Here , there is a video of what I try to teach my students, they need to make a change :