Technology in the Classroom

In this day and age, I personally believe that technology has an important role in the foreign language classroom. With technology, as teachers, we have so many more possibilities of ways to teach material in the classroom than without it. With that said, it should be noted that technology shouldn’t take over the classroom, but rather should be used as a tool to enhance the student’s learning experience. Determining when and where to use technology can be a difficult decision for some, but I think if one asks themselves the right questions, they can determine for themselves whether the tech should be used for a lesson or not. One example of a question would be is the tech too distracting for the kids? And if so, what would be some ways to minimize that?

         
In determining the value of a tool, I believe it personally depends on what the end goal would be. For example in my current placement, in order to work on the listening comprehension with the students, we watched the news from a German website 3-4 times, and discussed as a group what was said and reported. I found this also really useful because it incorporated culture into the activity, and students were able to hear a little bit about current events in Germany.

In my own future classroom, provided I have the right resources, I will try and incorporate technology as much as I can. Thinking back on the reading about Facebook, rather than ignore what the students use everyday, I think it would be useful to incorporate it, since they are already often on the Internet. Furthermore, I am lucky enough to have my own iPad, which since I began TAing, has been a extremely useful learning tool. Before the tech panel however, I was only familiar with a few education apps, one of them being Educreations, which is very useful. It allows the instructor to give record virtual lessons using the iPad as a white board. Luckily there was an iPad expert in the panel, and after the presentation, I now have a lot more ideas of how I can use mine in the classroom. My personal favorite of all the apps was Sock Puppets. Using this app, I think I could challenge my students to be very creative with their language, and at the same time, this would be a good project for them to self-assess their own progress, which personally I find a better way rather than just having the students record their voices using a voice memo app. It’s a chance to use meaningful language, and have fun!