Technology in English Classes 2013 CUE Workshop

Editor's Notes

• #2: I am a retired U.S. Navy linguist who taught Russian for 8 years prior to moving to Japan to teach EFL at Hirosaki Gakuin University. I have used CALL and technology in my language classes since the beginning and see technology as an amazing tool which enables language teachers to bring the world into their classrooms. I hope to share some of my experience and knowledge through this presentation.
• #3: This Google Forms-based survey is meant to establish the technology experience of the attendees so that I can gear my presentation for the appropriate CALL level. The questions asked were:Do you use technology in your lessons? How comfortable do you feel about using technology in your classroom? *(Not at all) 12 3 4 5 (Very comfortable)How often do you use technology in your lessons? (Once a Month) 1 2 3 4 5 (Daily)Please check the types of technology you use in your lessons. Video Audio Internet-based activities Computers Mobile tech (Cellphones, tablets, etc.) Learning Management Systems (Moodle, Blackboard, Lang Cloud, etc.) Other:
• #5: As language teachers, we have been using a variety of technology tools in the language classroom for years and that has helped us to better educate our students. Using a variety of tools—any tool will suffice (audio, video, web-based, etc.)—helps to improve our students understanding and retention. Sadly, the idea that today’s students are digital natives has proven to be false, so that means that we must do the extra work to ensure that students clearly understand how to use the tools we want them to use. They do desire to use technology, but they must understand the purpose behind it before they will accept it as beneficial. Finding the right tech tool to help students meet the learning objective is vitally important to making CALL successful. Reference: Bersin, J. (2004). The Blended Learning Book: Best Practices, Proven Methodologies, and Lessons Learned. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
• #6: Most of the major, large-scale studies into the use of technology by students have been conducted in America by Educause (see the ECAR research study). There was recently a similar study conducted in Australia (See Waycott et al, 2010, “Digital divides? Student and staff perceptions of information andcommunication technologies”) which showed that students and teachers separate their use of tech into personal and professional categories. Cellphones & social networks (facebook, twitter, etc) are used for personal activities; computers and learning management systems, blogs, wikis are seen as professional / educational tools. The students want to use their educational tools for learning, but do not want assignments to bleed over into their personal space too much. Teachers must find a balance between the tech tools they want the students to use and how it will meet their learning needs without encroaching into their personal tech realm.
• #7: Students see the benefits of using tech tools to learn, but they are not digital natives and require a LOT of detailed instruction on how to use the tech tools we want them to use. As teachers, we need to make it easy to use the tools we want them to use, otherwise the students’ motivation and willingness to participate in our activities will disappear.
• #8: When introducing new tech tools into your program, it is important to demonstrate why the tool will help them and what their benefits will be. Teaching your students that the world is flatter now than ever before and that the need to be proficient in English is greater than ever before is vital. Regardless of the career they pursue, being proficient in English will make them more valuable to their employer. Creating positive experiences with technology in our classrooms will serve to increase students’ motivation and excitement. This will translate into continued autonomous learning in the future.
• #9: I start small in introducing my students to the use of technology as a learning tool. During my Freshmen English courses, I have the students work in groups to learn about the Peanuts Gang – a long-time part of American culture by searching the web for information about each character. Then I have each group present about their character. After that, we discuss Halloween and watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown to teach them about Halloween. Students enjoy this lesson and see that they can use their cell phones as resources for information that they use in class. I continue to include activities which require web searches via their cell phones in classes throughout the year. This serves to get the students used to using their cell phones as learning tools.
• #10: While students are comfortable with cell phone technology and using the Internet, they really have not, as a generation, begun creating content on the Web. However, teachers can bring the world into their classrooms by introducing international collaborative events. (More about these below.)
• #12: The relatively low percentage of computer-owners among high school and university students indicates that the future of CALL in Japan will focus on mobile devices. Even in late 2013, less than a third of the students surveyed in both public and private universities (n=200+) owned computers. Because of this, language teachers need to gear their activities to take advantages of the benefits of mobile technology and how it might be used in language learning. One activity we can use to help our students experience the world via technology (mobile or computer) is an international collaboration. My students participate in a collaboration with students at my university’s sister school, the University of Wisconsin. Using a collaboration wiki page (aomoriuwrf.pbworks.com) UW students of Japanese share information about themselves and their hometowns in Japanese; my English students do the same in English. Students then comment on one another’s wiki pages and ask questions about the information shared.
• #13: In this slide, you can see examples of my student’s wiki page and the comments she received and responded to with a UW student in both English and Japanese. Getting started in this project takes a LOT of work on the teacher’s part to prepare the students, help them create their pages, and encourage participation. However, once the students get into the activity, they tell me that they enjoy it and learn from it.
• #14: Finding partners for such collaboration activities can be difficult. The first place to look is to contact your institute’s sister schools which have Japanese studies programs. The collaboration must benefit both groups in order to get the students’ engagement. Two other options are to use the ePals website – a location for foreign language teachers to find partners or groups / classes to share collaboration with. Teachers can first interact with other teachers to plan collaboration activities and find partners for their students to interact with. Another site is The Mixxer (www.language-exchanges.org) allows teachers to create groups within The Mixxer’s site and to organize interaction with other language classes active on The Mixxer. These sites are great places to find classes to collaborate with on language exchanges.
• #16: As educators, we need to continue to seek professional development opportunities to keep our skills honed. Sharing our experience and knowledge with one another is an excellent way to learn about new tools, programs, and technology resources. These resources provide a wealth of new tools, research to explore, and places to meet other tech-savvy teachers to share with.
• #17: VOAnews.com provides excellent resources for ELLs on their Learning English page (shown above). The resources are divided into two levels (1 & 2) and each level has many listening comprehension and reading comprehension activities for the students. Level 2 also has Business English activities.YouTube also has thousands of videos created by language educators to explain grammar, conversation tips, speaking styles, presentation guidelines, and may other topics. Naturally, it takes some time to review and find the best videos to show your class, but some of them are very professionally done and are excellent assets for your classroom.
• #18: VOAnews.com provides excellent resources for ELLs on their Learning English page (shown above). The resources are divided into two levels (1 & 2) and each level has many listening comprehension and reading comprehension activities for the students. Level 2 also has Business English activities.The Mixxer (www.language-exchanges.org) provides a forum for students to interact with other language learners and to write short essays / blog posts in their target language and receive feedback from native or proficient users of the language. Students can also give feedback to others who are studying your student’s native language. The Mixxer is an excellent resource for language exchange (for more information about using The Mixxer, see my article in The JALTCALL Journal Dec. 2013 edition available at journal.jaltcall.org).
• #19: The Mixxer (www.language-exchanges.org) provides a forum for students to interact with other language learners and to write short essays / blog posts in their target language and receive feedback from native or proficient users of the language. Students can also give feedback to others who are studying your student’s native language. The Mixxer is an excellent resource for language exchange (for more information about using The Mixxer, see my article in The JALTCALL Journal Dec. 2013 edition available at journal.jaltcall.org). Writing Planet is a great website which provides students with very thorough feedback on their writing activities – and then follows up with links to video tutorials which address the problems uncovered in their text submissions.
• #20: The Mixxer (www.language-exchanges.org) provides a forum for students to interact with other language learners and to write short essays / blog posts in their target language and receive feedback from native or proficient users of the language. Students can also give feedback to others who are studying your student’s native language. Once students become comfortable with their partner on The Mixxer, they can take the next step to chat with their partners via text chat first and then in person using video chat (but only after they feel comfortable with their partners). The Mixxer is an excellent resource for language exchange (for more information about using The Mixxer, see my article in The JALTCALL Journal Dec. 2013 edition available at journal.jaltcall.org). VoiceThread is a great website for students to practice speaking and leaving audio recordings about a given topic / prompt. Then they can collaborate with their classmates by leaving responses to one another’s comments.
• #21: When assessing our students’ work, it is important that we measure their ability to perform tasks that have a real-world connection. When assessing my general English classes, I have created an assessment that measures the workplace skills of group work, translation, digital literacy, and information presentation. I have the students work in groups to collaborate on creating content for the university’s English-language Wikipedia site. The site was very bare three years ago when I first began this project, and now you can see by the screenshot on the right that there is a wealth of information about the university included for the many international exchange students we have to learn about our school prior to arrival. In addition to updating the university’s Wikipedia page, you can also have students update local WikiTravel articles, or create new wiki pages as a forum to share information with the public. This was presented in more detail at JALTCALL 2012 and JALT 2012 and the presentation is available by contacting the author.