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!