Week 6: Is Technology a Problem?

After reading the two articles required for this week, I learn significant things of each them. The first article made me think about if technology is producing a decline in the critical thinking and analysis of the students. Now a days, we see that students does not have a reading habit, they tend to spend a lot of time in their social networks instead of reading a book; it may be fault of schools that does not enhance reading programs or students have a lack or parents supervision about their studies habits. Whatever the problem is, we see that our students are surrounded by a technological society that does not permit the produce of critical thinking and the analysis or circumstances in the environment in which students grow.

As we know, the introduction of technology in the classroom could have negative effects in the learning process if we do not have a control of the use that students have of the resources. However, the growing use of technology can benefit our classes. We as teachers, need the technological resources for our classes, for example to project a video about the topic of the class or make a forum to discuss some doubts of the class, but we don’t have to depend of technology, because it does not “cover” all the necessities of our students.

Even though technology could affect the learning process of some students, we have to know that not everybody learn in the same way and it is our responsibility as teachers identify the learning personalities of our students.

Week 5: Integrating Internet in Language Learning

When we talk about Internet, we imagine a World with unlimited educational resources that we can integrate in our classes. The article “Call Me… Maybe: A Framework for Integrating into ESL, introduces a new perspective about the use and applications of Internet in ESL.

While for some, the Internet is a resource that does not help at all to education, for other people, the Internet is a useful learning tool that we can use as a medium of instruction, or as a source of content. However, the Internet has had an accelerated growth in recent years, and now it offer numerous tools, such as mobile applications, websites, etc. in order to make the learning process a good experience. In that way, we realize how useful it can be in order to practice, teach and learn a new language.

Something that I learned from this article is that the Internet can help to reduce the anxiety in students, promotes learners autonomy (because they are responsible of their learning), increase learner’s motivation and engage students in the learning process; and is our responsibility as teachers that our students achieve that.

As a conclusion, this article is useful because it shows different ways to apply Internet in our classes (as a medium of instruction, or as a source of content). It provides good examples of websites that can be useful in our classes and also the article open the doors to Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL), and provides examples that how mobile devices can be useful to support our lessons. 

Week 4: Postcasting and lessons

As future teachers, we have to know how technology works. Also, we have to know, the hardware and software that we have available for our classes and how to apply them in our daily life. After reading the two articles: A reflexive enquiry and Integrative CALL into the classroom: The Role of Postcasting in an ESL Listening Strategies Course. I have learned significant things about the use of postcasting that I will apply in my future career as a teacher.

These articles reminded me an experience with a virtual course in the current semester at University. I am taking British Literature, in this class is mandatory to upload a comment and discuss about a topic that the teacher provides at beginning of the week. Initially, it was strange take a virtual course, we can’t see the teacher and he upload the indications, but now, is easy to us use our technological resources as cellphones, laptops or desktop computer to record the comments. In this course, we apply postcasting, and it is an amazing experience, we discuss and learn even without the physical presence of the teacher or classmates, we only heard and comment every post after reading about the topic and it is really interactive the learning process that we are having.

As a conclusion, I can say, that from these articles I learned that we as future teachers, have the responsibility to learn how the technology that we have available is useful in order to develop some main skills like listening in our students and made of postcasting or whatever form to learn a nice experience.

Week 3: Autonomy in Learning Process

After reading the article "Effectiveness of the Integrate of ICT Tools and Activities to Foster Awareness as the First Stage to Reach Learning Autonomy". I found some interesting aspects of the use of ICT tools in the Learning Process. First, I have to say that this article caught my attention since I started to read it. I found pretty interesting how students develop their language profency in all of the skills of the Second Language and create awareness in their develop as learners.
Second, another thing that caught my attention from the article, is the number of authors who are quoted in the article (for me, that is important because it shows that it is a true research), and as they see that the use of technology not only improves student's profiency, but also helps to grow student's motivation and autonomy.
Thirdly, there is an aspect that we as future teachers have to take into account and is the fact that we have to provide useful explanations and find good strategies to help students to understand every topic and get concerned about student's progress. As a conclusion, I have to say that this research encourage me to do my best as future teacher, to strive to create good strategies to help students in their progress as learners, and of course, all this takin advantage of all the technological resources available to me.