Week 6: Creating a good learning environment

“Don’t think about covering the material. Think about uncovering it so your students can better understand it.”  I want to start with this quote, because it has so much power and reason on its own.  We as teacher need to think on what we can do to help and encourage students to think critically, to have them interested, and to arouse their curiosity, and at the same time, think on how technology can help us to accomplish what we want to teach our students. Instead of asking how  we are going to integrate technology into a lesson, we should think about what we as teacher want our student to learn, and if it certain technology will helps us to transmit and achieve what we want, it is all about prioritization on teaching. 

A belief of mine that was totally confirmed, is that technology can help us to the accomplishment of the learning objectives we have for our students. Technology will help us to make our students to feel comfortable and to believe in their capacity to learn. We need to remember that we as teacher will deal with  different learning personalities, some students ( and will include myself also) like visual information  and other will like auditory inputs. so, why can't we integrate technology to provide our students a good learning environment?, we can use pictures diagrams, films or podcasts as a resource to keep them interested on what we are teaching.

To conclude, we as teacher need to keep motivation and curiosity on what we are teaching, we must pose questions, topics, activities that intrigue and fascinate our students.

Week 5: Integrating Internet

Internet offers a variety of benefits to everyone who is willing to use it. The enormous amount of information available and the many uses one can have through the internet have made it the most valuable tool. The available material, programs, websites and other services of the internet offers, allows to ease and transform people’s life and increase their knowledge.Something  to point and I think every teacher should remember is that the use of internet in education increase learners motivation and reduce learners anxiety, engage learners and promote learners autonomy.

I would like to talk about two important factors where we can integrate internet this week. First, the Internet as tutor, can be use for advice, facilitate analysis, or conduct activities. Traditional activities such as gap-fill, multiple-choice, and matching exercises allow students to learn through practice and through trial and error.  And second, the Internet as tool, he Internet can be used for a deeper level of student engagement and interactivity by helping stimulate creativity and it can also foster communication and collaboration, I think that this two factors come hand by hand because both of them should be importan and take it into account into English Language Teaching (ELT).

I will like to conclude with this quote: ‘’On the Internet, students of English have an authentic context in which to share their lives.”  

Week 4: Training to succeed with technology.

The use of technology has become increasingly important in language teaching and learning. The successful use of technology, however, requires that language teachers have the necessary technical competence and pedagogical knowledge under to take advantage of how they are going to apply this sources in the educational field.

What surprised me about this article and really make me want to read more is that  teacher training programs have emphasized the importance of equipping teachers with the necessary skills and expertise to develop CALL materials. But, why is this so important? we need to remember that with technology, teachers play the role as facilitators, that must in many ways know and be aware of a variety of material available for improving their language skills and more important teacher learned how to use the material effectively.

The integration of technology is seen as an important goal for students and teachers. Like for example in the article is mention that  students now meet in a computer lab for each class period, thereby minimizing the barrier between class and CALL. Another example is podcasts, that  could be used as a supplement to textbook materials, and as authentic listening material, so in this way  students gain and acquire information on specific aspects of the language such as idiomatic expressions or grammatical constructions, and besides that, as a way for students to communicate with each other in other countries, like a real-time communication. 

Thus, it is the responsibility of those who are in well-equipped to demonstrate that CALL can be integrated into study programs with the necessary technical competence and pedagogical knowledge to train teachers in order to provide quality and efficient integration of technology to educational field.

Week 3: Encouraging autonomy

Something I want to remember from this articles is that autonomy implies students being able to take responsibility to their learning process; being able to self-regulate. But, is important to remember as well that teachers as facilitators have to be able to respond to the needs that students have, should also encourage students to create autonomous attitudes and promote self-evaluation and self-monitoring to help them get to get to know themselves as learners.

As we learn in the previous article the importance of a CALL pedagogy is to  anticipate learners’ needs. So, it seem that it demands more responsibility of students, to be more independent and self-motivated. So, from this, I want to share and remind to teaching colleagues that the role of the teacher is to offer support and preparation, this means, and is better explain with one of my favorite quotes from this article, “ the role of the teacher implies being aware of what is to be done, the reason behind it, and how to make it happen.”

To conclude, I might say that infusing technology in the classroom may contribute in a huge way to the growth in learners motivation, autonomy and thinking skills.