Technology: A Friend or

A Foe?

Ene Peterson Virumaa College of Tallinn University of Technology

ene@peterson.ee

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Things aren't what they used to be

Typical student-centered 21st century classrooms

A typical teacher-centered classroom in the 1960`s

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A New Generation of Students

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Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants

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Teaching digital natives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEDulInv9rE21st Century Learning - Digital Learners

21st Century Learning - Tomorrow's Teachershttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHSv_RFm23g&feature=related

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Dreams coming true ...

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Benefits of Implementing Technology in the Language Classroom Access to authentic websites, online reference tools (

online dictionaries, thesauri (incl visual thesauri), encyclopedias, spell-checkers, concordances (words in their natural contexts)

Web Concordancer has searched corpus

http://www.edict.com.hk/scripts/cgi-bin/Wwwconcgram.exe

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Getting help for specific business or specialty-related situations: turning academic skills into transferable employment skills (looking for a job,

socialising (small talk), making presentations, conducting meetings, negotiating, telephoning)

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Enhanced possibilities for synchronous (chat, skype, instant messenger, audio/ web conferencing) and asynchronous (email, email discussion groups, e-mail pals, texting (SMS), discussion boards, blogs, dialogue journals) communication.

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Develop listening (online audio and video news, podcasts, and speaking skills (online webcasts, conferences)

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Internet-based tasks - web quests - short and long-term

projects (The House of my Dreams. A Trip to my Dream Country.

My company) Creating e-portfolio/ digital portfolio

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From 1.0 to Web 2.0 and Web 3Di

Second / third generation of web based communities

Social networking tools –learning with and from others

Collaborating with others (wikis)

Webvolution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cZTdFTZV5Q

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Technology as a friend

The use of technology (“interactivity” of language tasks) can be motivating.

Learners can proceed at their own space, make their own choices.

Learners can get instant feedback on what they have done and personalized assessment.

The use of technology in and outside the language classroom can make learners more autonomous.

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Using ICT with learners gives them practice for real-life ICT contexts.

It is possible to develop as the receptive (listening and reading) as well as productive skills (writing and speaking) skills via computer-mediated communication.

Keeps the teacher and student learning new skills.

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Pitfalls of the use of technology I. Internet security and

privacy

Cybercrimes from benign spam and cyber slacking to obscene or offensive content, fraud, identity theft, viruses, hacking, cyber stalking …

The risks in sharing and collaborating online

Useful website:

http://www.getnetwise.org/

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II. Lack of information literacy

Digital information overload:

- how to search for

useful material

- how to evaluate the appropriateness of resources on the web

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III. In terms of learning The problem of

trustworthiness and accuracy of online materials (e.g. translation programs, spell and grammar checkers)

?4U. WAN2 TXT? RU n00b? TBL or CUL8R.

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My message:

I have a question. Want to text? Are you newbie?

Text back later or see you later.

Hometask:

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IV. Lack of digital responsibility

Ignoring do`s and don`ts of Netiquette

Read Core Rules: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html

Cut and paste culture

(Copyright violation and plagiarism) Creative Commons

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Internet cheats with the help of “paper mills”

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Summary

Technology is both a friend and a foe. Technology should fit learner needs – not fit the

learner to the technology. Technology is not a panacea that can replace

language teachers and F2F classrooms, it is something that can be used to enhance language learning (Sharma & Barrett,Blended Learning,2008).

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Thank you for attention!