 |
Andres GMSO - Teaching With Technology |
|
Pedagogical Innovation Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese |
Teaching with Technology Philosophy
As advancements in technology develop and affect every aspect of our daily existence, the teaching experience cannot remain unaware of the possibilities that all these scientific achievements offer. On the contrary, it would be fool of us, teachers, not to include into our skills the handling of computer programs and use of data bases that would help us treat information better and easier. Because it is how we treat and transmit information what is at stake in the classroom environment. In our specific case, it is the information that we communicate to our students and they have to interpret, understand and comprehend. From PowerPoint presentations to the use of the World Wide Web, the possibilities offered by technology and computers act as a powerful vehicle to transmit the contents to be learned. In addition to this, there is the easy access to materials such as music and video files which, thanks to these new technological tools, can be included in each lesson without our noticing a substantial gap between the form to be learned and the meaning to be conveyed. The inlay of selected audiovisual instances into the final product that students receive is seen as a holistic/artistic piece where every part contributes to direct the learners’ attention towards the interpretation of the right sense conveyed, pushing students to the better grasping of meaning and the acquisition of form. These tools also offer the opportunity to recreate real life situations more vividly and eventually, they might even allow us to provoke real-life-live interactions between second language learners and native speakers of the language residing in their home country, as improvements in communicative technologies develop. It is in this sense that the use of technologies can be considered the greatest asset for the teacher. Last but not least, technology is important because it allows us to master our influence over the form and (re)production of texts, voice clips and videos used as teaching materials. Among all the aspects of these materials that we can change and adapt, the aesthetic component is to play a major role when it comes to consider how the students are going to accept and receive any given material. Thus, when we think about how students might better grasp the information we want to communicate, we must not forget the importance of design. Due to the increasing presence of technology in the lives of most people (and especially in the lives of students of second languages, who tend to be youngsters) the presentation of the materials by means of technological devices also contributes to their better acceptance by the students. Let me exemplify this. Few students have read The Quixote; most of them will tell you that they think it is dense and boring. Now place the exact same words by Cervantes not on a hard copy but on the bright glaring screen of a BlogSpot, with fuchsia type on a fluorescent yellow background and gifs of hula-hula dancers moving back and forth at the left and right of the text, and for these same students the novel becomes the masterwork it never ceased to be. Only by using these tools (hopefully not with the taste in the mentioned example) would we be able to easily modify input at our will, bearing always in mind its accurateness and appeal to the students, creating at last the perfect item to use in the language class. To sum up, what has been said so far means that throughout technology, we have available for us the best tools one could imagine in order to make teaching more effective for learners and also easier for teachers. It is easier because the range of cultural products that teachers can now use in the classroom has multiplied by thousands; such are the options that the World Wide Web and other technologies afford. Furthermore, it is more effective because all these options facilitate enormously the correct choice of cultural items and the proper way of presenting them in the classroom environment, making the learners’ experience something far more appealing than it used to be. |
 |
The Penn State University. Copyright 2008. |