ICTs in English Teaching
Adriana Perez Carreño Chairez, Mexico
Adriana Perez Carreño Chairez is a teacher at the Secundaria Tec de Monterrey in Zacatecas, Mexico. Apart from teacher ESL to adolescents she also teaches Geography in English at this bilingual school. This year she has had her first experience using digital textbooks in Geography and ESL.
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Introduction
The use of ICTs in the classroom
Advantages
The teacher’s role
References
The idea of a young boy that is carrying around boring books about English and gets sent a room to hear a teacher talk about a language he doesn’t understand, can turn out to be absurd. Especially because kids these days are exposed to many technologies at a very early age, and the way they learn is changing. That is why integrating ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) into English teaching seems to be a necessary issue for educators in the world. However, implementing ICTs can imply a big investment and if teachers cannot make good use of these tools, the money and time spent on them is going to be a waste. Also, if the educational budget is limited, looking for a cost-effective and high-performance ICT can be the first priority.
Talking about education is interacting with the evolutional process of teaching techniques and learning concepts, starting from a new historic and theoretical foundation. In this matter, the different educational modalities are an answer to all the needs and demands of any generational, social, cultural, economic, and individual order that modify the dynamics of communication and interaction between the participants of the educational act.
In today’s society, using conventional means to educate becomes harder, because we cannot achieve an educational structure that can meet the current demand of education.
It is imperative the transformation of the traditional teacher-centered model to the learner-centered model which benefits the development of not only the student’s ability of using English but also their autonomy of learning. Most significantly, it guarantees the rapid development of education.
To achieve an effective teaching methodology, it is important to have structuring principles using the internet multimedia-based English teaching. Only by a combination of pedagogical theories and teaching expertise with the merits of new technology, could the teacher design effective teaching strategies that take into consideration all the aspects of the classroom teaching, like types of media, the size and difficulty of information, as well as the topicality, and evaluation of the tasks.
The Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are a set of techniques and advanced devises that integrate the storage, process and transmission of data. Some examples of these technologies are the digital whiteboard, blogs, podcasts, tablets and the Web.
The advantages of these technologies in English teaching is that they provide different means like text, audio, image, animation and navigation allowing the educational task to be adapted to the learning level of each student.
These technological tools provide resources that are used to communicate, create, and manage information. For English teachers, these elements can enhance all the dynamics in class so students can combine listening, speaking, reading and comprehension in a foreign language.
These are some of the advantages of using ICTs for English teaching:
- By using these tools, teachers can easily explain complex instructions and ensure students comprehension.
- Images can easily be used in teaching and improving the retentive memory of students.
- Teachers are able to create interactive classes and make the lessons more enjoyable, which could improve student attendance and concentration.
- It promotes communication and collaboration.
- It allows the task to be adapted to the individual learning process on each student so they learn according to their own personal skills and posibilities.
- ICT use enhances the oral learning skills: production-speaking-oral comprehension.
- Multimedia is the only way to use sounds and relate them with objects and images, to create a cognitive association.
- You can also use multimedia to reproduce your own voice so you can practice and listen, in order to enhance your pronunciation.
- The use of electronic whiteboard when you have to explain, correct or perform an auto evaluation motivates students to increase their attention and participation.
- The creation of virtual classrooms that include on-line activities, allows to take the task home.
- Also through collaborative pages, like blogs and wikis, students can exchange informacion where all the classmates can participate whether they are in the classroom or in their homes.
- This opens an endless window of opportunity to explore and discover new words and their meanings.
- ICTs help to co-create your knowledge, so you become the creator of your own learning process.
- They provide a unique ability to have students create their learning contents, because it gives you the opportunity to create blogs and post to demonstrate understanding and share their knowledge with peers.
- ICTs are exploration, expression and exchange tools for language learning.
Some people might think that with the use of ICTs, the role of a teacher diminishes, but the guiding performance of the teacher cannot be threatened by this for the simple reason that pedagogy always drives technology, and teachers are key to this new educational process.
Using technology has become an important part of teaching and learning within the classroom as well as working with fully online environments. Resources for educating and assisting using technology have become crucial. These resources need to go beyond how to work with specific software and educators need to understand the ways in which these new tools can make a significant difference in English learning. Teachers have to promote effective instruction that is more student-centered, inter-disciplinary, more closely related to real-life events and processes, and adaptive to individual learning styles.
The use of these technologies implies a shift in the teacher’s role from being the sole source of knowledge and instruction to being a facilitator of student’s learning that is acquired from many sources. English teachers should combine the change and updating of education ideas with the application of education technology and use information technology to drive the overall reform of the course system, structure education methods, and strategy.
As technology rises and our current generation grows, we are going to see technology incorporated in more ways than we can imagine. While it may seem scary to move ahead in this realm, we realize that especially with children and teens it’s important to know how much technology can help you but also to give them information to stay safe online and use it appropriately. Educational ICT tools are not for making educators master ICT skills themselves, but for making educators create a more effective learning environment via ICT.
Bates, A.W., & Poole, G. 2003.Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. San Francisco, CA.
Blurton, C., 1999. New Directions of ICT-Use in Education. Paris: Learning Without Frontiers, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
Bueno Monreal, M.J. 1996. Influencia y repercusión de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y de la comunicación en la educación. Madrid: Sociedad Española de Pedagogía.
Cabrero, Julio. 2000. Las nuevas tecnologías para la mejora educativa. Congreso Edutec99. Sevilla.
Echeverría, Javier. 2001. Las TIC en educación. Revista Iberoamericana, Barcelona.
Puente, J.M. 1995. El papel del formador en procesos de aprendizaje con multimedia interactivos. Barcelona.
Please check the Using Mobile Technology course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the ICT - Using Technology in the Classroom – Level 1 course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the ICT - Using Technology in the Classroom – Level 2 course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Using Interactive Whiteboards course at Pilgrims website.
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