You could be forgiven for feeling slightly sorry for anyone who dares to go out on a limb and write a book about teaching English with technology. Inevitably, certain portions of it are likely to be well out of date before the book even hits the bookshop shelf.
However, if you are the sort of teacher who uses technology a lot, a particular caveat you may not be aware of (in application to yourself) is that you may have gone too far beyond certain basics to be of any practical help to learners (and potentially other teachers) who have very low tech skills and/or very little experience with technology in the classroom.
I discovered this for myself today when I started putting together some notes and ideas for a PD workshop I've been asked to do for teachers and service providers dealing with CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) learners in my local region. Two of the things I had to grapple with immediately were:
(1) How to be of practical help to teachers with very limited experience with technology
and
(2) How to be of practical help to teachers of learners who may have little or even no experience with technology, not to mention very little in the way of formal education (for example, refugees from certain contexts)
I've been using technology with or alongside my teaching for more than a decade. I now work full-time as a fully online-based language teacher. My learners are, generally speaking, pretty good at embracing and using technology for their study.
The task in front of me felt a little bit like asking a Formula One racing car driver to give a practical session to people looking to obtain their first learner's permits. I could almost see their eyes 10 minutes into the workshop: "Why don't you go hop in your nice flash racing car and do a couple more practice laps around the Monaco circuit, big shot... And no, we won't be there to watch you."
Well, I decided that I needed to get back to basics. I rummaged around in one of many boxes crammed with teaching resource books that I hadn't gotten around to unpacking since our most recent move to a new house, and fished out How to Teach English with Technology by Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly. This is part of the excellent series of teacher resource books edited by Jeremy Harmer, titled - as you might expect - the How to ... series.
Now, How to Teach English with Technology was published in 2007, with publisher dithering probably accounting for another 1-2 years between time of actual writing and appearance on bookshelves. Hence, at best, I might expect the content from this book to date from about 2006. Four years is a long time in the edtech multiverse, and it is interesting to note that towards the end of the book there is some general information about Web 2.0 and things like MySpace, but nothing really about things like Facebook or Twitter. This is what I was alluding to at the start of the post about edtech books potentially become obsolete before they've even wriggled their way out of the publishing process...
However, a glance through the beginning of the book revealed a couple of instant answers to the two quandaries I mentioned earlier...
How to use technology with learners with low tech skills and perhaps low levels of formal education?
Start with basic word processing activities. Then move on to basic email. From there, move into things involving basic websites...
This makes perfect sense.
And this book has entire sections dedicated to those and other aspects of ICT, all written in plain, approachable language, with highly practical recommendations for activities. One section (or layer) of ICT for language education flows quite nicely into the next. Without being prescriptive, How to Teach English with Technology presents an approachable sort of road map.
A road map even a Formula One driver could learn a lot from.
And certainly one that people looking to obtain their learner's permit could look at and approach with only a slight amount of initial panic.
So for me personally, it's turning out to be quite fun to chew a bit on my own caveat, and look at teaching with technology from an entirely fresh (perhaps even 'innocent'?) angle.
My thanks to Gavin and Nicky for this great resource book - which is no doubt going to be a real boon for a group of local teachers and their learners.
And I'd also like to send the authors a note of congratulations.
For writing a book about teaching with technology that is already more than 4 years old, slightly pre-dates the relative explosion of Web 2.0 (in terms of social media and education circles, at least), and yet remains incredibly useful and highly relevant.
Well done!
:-)
