When I was mentoring my students' project works on Chinese literature/philosophy or history in Singapore, I was always suprised at their outstanding presentation skills by using the digital media tools and their rich searching experiences via network, although I played a critical role of guiding them regarding the contents, the curriculum concerns, the reliability of the information, the aims of the project...and so on. One of the projects of my students won the top rewards of the National Project work Competition. Indeed I was so proud of my students, and even thank them for presenting my ideas and thoughts in such a creative way that many people came up to congratulate me on this achievement. On the other hand, I knew that my students contributed equally as I did to this success, or to certain extend, they did more than what I did to make this project more attractive /understood and interesting by using the digital media tools. I can say, those of my students help me learn together with them, and yet, I must admit that they are far more better than me in the area of Information technology. I do not feel I am a powerful educator in front of them any more.
From then onwards, I wanted to equip myself with such knowledge so that I can apply these modern educational technology not only to a more qualified project mentor, but also to my own classroom teaching.
That has been my very motive of learning Educational Technology and Information Literacy since then.
Lately I came to realise that a foreign language teacher's limitation in using this technology in classroom. For example, the online reading in target language is impossible to the foreigners; the authentic learning experience can hardly obtained without enough vocabulary and fluency of speaking of the target language. But I do hope some new approaches to make learning of a foreign language more interesting, to engage students more in learning process, by taking the advantage of the digital age, will be discovered along the way.
After all, I love this statement:
" We start with no assumptions about your past experiences, your students' ages or backgrounds, or the technology tools you have available. Regardless of your role or background, we assume only that you are open to new ideas--and that you like learning."
That is why I am here. I love learning.
Well...we'll see what we can do for ya. Many of these tools I think can be adapted to Language Learners. Looking forward to your reflections alone the way.
ReplyDeletethank you Jeff. This is the first comment on my first blog post. I will remember this. Appreciate!
ReplyDelete