Final Thoughts

I just wrote a message on the community blog about what I learned this semester. I thought I would add a few things here since that question asked us to focus on just one thing.

Perhaps one of the most important things that I will take away from this class is a different sense of awareness or sensitivity to the new technologies and the students of today who are growing up with them. I’m now in touch with the fact that technology is everywhere and it has permeated everything. There were some things, like Twitter, which I had never heard of before this class, and now I hear about Twitter at every turn. CNN tells its viewers to Twitter them; there are battles to see who can have the most followers. Before the class I was somewhat aware of blogging, but now I see blogs everywhere and I even have my own. New social networking sites such as Twine, Linkedin, and Hi5, are springing up all the time. I’ve even joined a few.

I am now much more sensitive to privacy issues than I was before. I had, of course, heard about a Miss America contestant whose nude photos had surfaced on Facebook or job applicants who were denied employment because of their MySpace content. But I hadn’t thought about the issue of privacy for students who might use technology in a class.

Before this class I had never heard of a teaching philosophy. I appreciated learning about it and it was good to have to put together my “teachnology” philosophy. It made me think hard about what how and why I would use technology in my teaching. Now, I think I should spend some time thinking about and articulating my teaching philosophy.

I think the time we spent reflecting on today’s students was well worth it. It’s not that I learned a lot of new things, but it was helpful to contextualize it.

Learning styles was not a new thing to me. It was interesting, though, to juxtapose learning style and technology.

I also really appreciated learning about new media. This was a totally new concept for me. I will now be more aware of how writing and storytelling are changing; how important images are and the usefulness of video.

I know I will use the skills and knowledge I’ve gained in this class. If I have the opportunity to teach, I have some very specific ideas for using technology to enhance my students’ learning. On the other hand, I might never actually teach English in the future so I might not have the chance to apply the learning in a pedagogical way. Even so, I know much of what I’ve learned will be useful in my personal life. I will keep my blog and make it a personal link with friends and family. I will start to be the keeper of our family webpage and stop relying on my husband to post things for me. I will constantly be aware of technology and will want to stay abreast of changes and new developments. I will have confidence that I can learn new technology. I’m very glad I took this class.

Final Presentation

I find myself doing some major procrastinating with the final presentation. After an entire semester of learning about various ways to use technology in the classroom, I have a pretty good idea what I'll use in my ESL classes but I don't have a good idea about how to present my ideas. I think part of my problem is the fact that I'm not currently teaching. It's been four years since I taught. On top of that, I don't have plans to teach in the near future and might, in fact, never teach. So it's hard for me to pull my ideas together and talk about what I plan to do with technology.

I know that the most important thing in any ESL class I might teach is to give the students plenty of opportunity for practice. Whether it's a listening class, a conversation class, a writing class or whatever, they need to practice. I used to tell my Japanese students the three most important things to do when learning English is practice, practice, practice. It was always fun to hear them quoting me on that.

Another thing I believe strongly is that it is important to create an environment where students can relax and feel comfortable practicing. When there is anxiety, language learning is harder.

Those are two goals I would have for technology in the ESL classroom--to give students a lot of practice, and to create a learning community where they feel safe and relaxed.

Knowing what I want to accomplish, the task now is to decide on the technology that will best meet those goals. I think the choice of technology would be related to the class I'm teaching. If I'm teaching writing, for example, blogging would be a good way to give students practice and create community. If I'm teaching listening, using sites on the internet could give them practice and having them create and listen to podcasts could give them community. For conversation, MOO could be useful. The writing done in a MOO is very conversation-like. And, of course, MOO creates community. In a speech class, I would have students make videos in addition to doing speeches in front of the class. When making a video, students would, hopefully, practice over and over to get the speech just right. I don't think students do that when they are speaking to the class. With a video, they would also have the chance to see and hear themselves. While this can be anxiety producing for some students, the anxiety will be ameliorated by practice. Watching each other's videos would help build community. Another option for community building is to have students work on the videos in small groups.

As I see that written out, I think one thing I should do for the presentation is to choose one class to focus on. That will make it easier to decide on the most appropriate technology.

So, now that I've organized my thoughts a little better, I think it's time to open a PowerPoint document and start putting it together. Monday will be here before I know it!