I agree with the authors of Internet for English Teaching that it is a complex process when teaching and assessing students through the Internet. I’m not very good at using IT, making use of IT in my daily teaching does pose a great challenge. As mentioned by the writers, it takes a lot of time setting up an on-line project.
To me, I think it even takes me a lot of time establishing a task, like a discussion board to my students at the initial stage. In my school, we have an E-class system and I am one of the teachers who is responsible for setting up the interactive forum or discussion board for the senior form students. At the very beginning, I spend much time familiarizing myself to the functions of E-class. Then, I need to think of the tasks and search relevant online articles for student reference. As mentioned in the article, some websites change their addresses over time and I need to check whether they are functioning on and off. After setting up the on-line task, I have to introduce the whole thing to the teachers and students. However, once the task is well-developed, it can be done very smoothly. During the briefing session, teachers need to tell students teachers will check student participation record and give them feedback. Teachers and students share their opinion interactively through this platform.After reading the part, I wonder if all students can really benefit from sharing a computer. If we would like our students to acquire IT skills through using new technology, will they really benefit when not all of them have equal chance to expose to it?
To me, I think it even takes me a lot of time establishing a task, like a discussion board to my students at the initial stage. In my school, we have an E-class system and I am one of the teachers who is responsible for setting up the interactive forum or discussion board for the senior form students. At the very beginning, I spend much time familiarizing myself to the functions of E-class. Then, I need to think of the tasks and search relevant online articles for student reference. As mentioned in the article, some websites change their addresses over time and I need to check whether they are functioning on and off. After setting up the on-line task, I have to introduce the whole thing to the teachers and students. However, once the task is well-developed, it can be done very smoothly. During the briefing session, teachers need to tell students teachers will check student participation record and give them feedback. Teachers and students share their opinion interactively through this platform.After reading the part, I wonder if all students can really benefit from sharing a computer. If we would like our students to acquire IT skills through using new technology, will they really benefit when not all of them have equal chance to expose to it?
4 comments:
Hi Joyce,
Thank you for the informative blogpost. I agree that setting up internet projects takes a lot of time and energy, especially in the initial stages.
Regarding your point about sharing computers, I personally feel that sharing computers is likely to enhance interactions. So for me, it is more of a matter of promoting interactions in English around the computer. I think that when students share computers there is a better dynamic for learning from one another as well, and that would include learning computer literacy skills. Just a half-baked thought.
I do agree that a better learning dynamic will take place if students communicate in English in English lessons but it is difficult to monitor if there is only one language teacher in the room and students are doing different tasks.
Hmmm. If the students can't see the value in communicating to one another in English then we need to up the stakes. It seems to me that some sort of tandem learning project would help. See if this is any use: http://www.epals.com/
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