New Technologies in TEFL #3 Wikis

 

Dear Readers,

This time we were assigned to get to know and use wikis as a tool to apply towards effective language learning goals in our classrooms.

From observation and talks with my peers, I got the idea that wiki is an unfamiliar program for most of them and they did not have the experience of using it. It was also a new concept to study for me. So far I was familiar with ‘Wikipedia: the free encyclopaedia’, but I did not know that wikis can be a helpful tool to enhance students’ writing skills and collaboration.  In another words as Schwartz et al. (2004) mentioned in their article “wikis can provide an effective, flexible, user friendly and cost effective inference for collaboration, knowledge creation and archiving, and student interaction.”

The fundamental finding I discovered after studying an article called Discussing the Factors Contributing to Student’s Involvement in an EFL collaborative wiki project by Lee and Wang (2012), was that while most of the tools and methods raise peer cooperation which is to divide the work and solve sub-tasks individually and then gather the final output; wikis are used as an important peer collaboration tool which is to solve and create a shared conception of a problem.

 

The results of this study, which was conducted on 103 second year students from two different universities, show that despite many challenges such as: time pressure, roles not taken seriously by the group, asynchronous communication etc. a majority of the students were able to benefit from the project with the use of wikis and group work.

Another article by Wichmann and Rummel (2013) was about improving revision in wiki-based writing, which was called Coordination pays off. It shows that students perceived the main components, the wiki- page and wiki-editing, very useful.

From my personal experience I believe that wikis should be considered as a useful virtual place, where you can lead your learners to collaborate and share their findings as a result of effective engagement and shared work. You should take into account that your first impression of your students to introduce the new technology to use is also important. A negative perspective can impact on their motivation and participation. Every technology has its challenges at first, so be aware of them and find the solutions before introducing it to your students.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I hope it was helpful. Follow me on my weekly reflections about new technologies in TEFL.

Best Wishes,

Lorik

 

New Technologies in TEFL #2 Podcast and Podcasting

Dear Readers,

Today’s topic is about podcasts and podcasting, have you heard about it? Are you an active user of podcasts?

As McCarty said “In recent years, Internet audio has greatly increased in popularity”, and podcasts are one of the digital audio files which are accessible to everyone. They can be downloaded and listened to regardless of the time and place. I find podcasts very similar to the radio. Although the only difference is that, in podcasting you can choose and subscribe to the programs that you are interested in, and you can be involved in podcasting by creating, editing, publishing and listening to them.

Podcasting : an Effective Tool for Honing Language Students’ Pronunciation? is a study carried out by Lara Ducate and Lara Lomicka (2009), which focuses on podcasting as a tool to improve EFL students‘ pronunciation. By studying this article I learned that podcast is being used in education for different purposes, such as: to distribute lecture material, to empower students by giving them opportunities to create and publish for a real audience, to record meeting and conference notes and so on. However, this study aims to develop German and French students’ pronunciation within a contextualized podcasting approach. It investigates the questions related to comprehensibility and accentedness improvement through pre- and post-tests.

The materials used in this study are scripted pronunciation podcasts, extemporaneous podcasts, and pronunciation attitude inventory. The procedure is the following: first students assessed and commented on their peers’ podcasts, then a native speaker assistant listened and gave them feedback. Overall, the results show that there were comprehensibility and accentedness improvement among the students. Although the findings suggest “that podcasting and repeated recordings alone are not enough to improve pronunciation over an academic semester” (Ducate and Lomicka, 2009), podcasts should still be considered as an effective way to assess and improve students’ speaking skills in EFL/ESL classroom.

Another reading related to podcasts is Recipe Exchange Podcasts for ESL/EFL by Jeff Mehring (2006). His project focuses on the use of podcasting in an integrated course, and it gives effective instructions about the usage and training of creating podcasts. He also presents a few lesson plans on teaching and monitoring students’ work on podcasts. I like his idea of students recording their partner’s responses and uploading their recordings. Pair work and integration of students in the use of technology can be fun and fruitful, since they will work together in order to find solutions to any problems they face. As it is said “two heads are better than one”!

After learning about podcasts and prodcasting and its pros and cons, I tried listening and subscribing to my favorite podcasts in my free time. I found it very useful in terms of enlarging my general and academic knowledge. It is easy to access and saves me time instead of having to read about a topic. Because of the fast pace of life, saving time is a big problem to consider nowadays. Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I hope it was helpful. Follow me on my weekly reflections about new technologies in TEFL.

Best Wishes,

Lorik

New Technologies in TEFL #1 Twitter and Blogging

Dear readers,

This is my first reflection on the course I have taken as part of my MA TEFL program which is called ‘New Technologies’ in TEFL. Honestly, I have always wondered about the best ways to bring authenticity and motivation to the learning environment. Now I am shaping my perspective to believe that one of the best ways could be the use of new technologies in the classroom.

As my instructor of this course said “now there is a generation who has not seen life without a computer!” This is a scary and alerting truth to me. It is scary in the fact that by watching videos of digital youth portraits in Edutopia.org, I should accept the fact that there are talented and motivated students in technology who will know much more about this than their teachers and they will teach them techniques on the use of the programs on the computer. Besides, the responsibility of giving the chance to discover this talent is somehow upon the educational system and the learning environment. At the same time, it is alerting in the fact that, with the fast pace of technological innovation, there would certainly be a technology-based and connected classroom in the near future.

When it comes to the connection between Armenia; where I am teaching and living, and the technologies, I think about the Tumo center for creative technologies. Having the chance to visit this outstanding center, I can see the growth of knowledge and experts related to the technology and programming. I wish there would be some ways for us to be able to link learning English and the use of technologies with the help of this center and their experts as soon as possible. Consequently, this is related to the idea of flatness by Thomas Friedman. He claimed that “more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before.” This idea is based on globalization and the future. I believe that I will follow and be up to speed with this development and pave the way for my students in Armenia to be able to compete, connect and collaborate with the world. I also connect chapters of Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, called Outsourcing, Uploading and Informing  to the digital youth portraits in terms of  a new form of collaboration has been created among youths and they continue to use the new technologies in order to create, study and inform the world from their findings.

Two interesting ways that I have learned about the use of technologies in the TEFL program so far, was twitter and blogging. The three journals I have read show the effective promotion of the learners writing fluency, ICT skills, critical thinking skills, motivation etc. by the use of twitter or blogging. As mentioned in the articles both ways are easily accessible, free of charge, have the chance of interaction and many other advantages which persuaded me to start using both to express my personal and educational insights. I should confess that I wonder why I haven’t used twitter and been active in blogging earlier! Maybe it is never too late to start. Thank you for your patience in reading my post. If you want to read more please follow me 🙂 I will share more about technologies in TEFL in my future posts.

Best wishes,

Lorik