by mpratf » Sun Oct 09, 2016 3:37 pm
Dear colleagues,
These are my answers to the questions:
1. How have you used email and the Internet to help you in your teaching? For example, have you ever used materials from the Internet in your classes? Do you use email to communicate with your students? Do you belong to any kind of teaching forum?
I have an email address that is just for communication between my students and myself. Students send me their compositions at this email address and I send them extra tasks or my corrections. I sometimes use materials from the Internet in my classes if I want to clarify what I am teaching, or to show them a piece of news, a short documentary, … I can communicate with my students by email, but I prefer to use it to send and receive tasks. Well, I used to belong to a teaching forum, but I realized that it was a waste of time, so I quitted. I follow my publisher’s webpage where I can get tips for my classes.
2. What are some problems involved in using the Internet in your teaching? How would you suggest avoiding or solving these problems?
Internet and plagiarism with older students. They just copy and paste everything. They do not even know where a sentence starts or ends. I want them to work with the texts they find on the Internet, so I ask them to transform them. If I write a sentence of their compositions in Google and I find the whole text, they get a zero and they have to write it again. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
As Internet is a huge source of materials, I sometimes find what I want but it is too difficult or too easy for my students. If the materials are good, I try to adapt them to what I want to do in class.
Most exercises on the Internet are self-correcting. My students cannot write compositions on webpages unless there is a teacher who can revise their drafts. I ask them to send their compositions to me and to do the self-correcting exercises on the webpages.
3. Make some predictions about the way technology is likely to affect the teaching of languages in the next five to ten years. For example, what kinds of translation and interactive programs will we be using? Will this make teaching easier? Will it affect the role of the teacher?
I believe that robots will help us read all texts on the Internet. This is going to be very useful to learn language pronunciation. Robots will also teach intonation and rhythm so that the language sounds more natural. Self-correcting exercises will still exist and students will get their compositions corrected on the Internet by computers who will understand “natural and correct” English according to text corpora. This will allow instant translation into lots of languages. I do not know if people will learn languages or just jump from one another by means of a computer. For teachers, I believe that it will be harder to select good content. On the other hand, students will get a more tailored education. Perhaps the teacher will just become a guide in the vast amount of knowledge that will be shared by means of the Internet.
Greetings,
Marta
Dear colleagues,
These are my answers to the questions:
1. How have you used email and the Internet to help you in your teaching? For example, have you ever used materials from the Internet in your classes? Do you use email to communicate with your students? Do you belong to any kind of teaching forum?
I have an email address that is just for communication between my students and myself. Students send me their compositions at this email address and I send them extra tasks or my corrections. I sometimes use materials from the Internet in my classes if I want to clarify what I am teaching, or to show them a piece of news, a short documentary, … I can communicate with my students by email, but I prefer to use it to send and receive tasks. Well, I used to belong to a teaching forum, but I realized that it was a waste of time, so I quitted. I follow my publisher’s webpage where I can get tips for my classes.
2. What are some problems involved in using the Internet in your teaching? How would you suggest avoiding or solving these problems?
Internet and plagiarism with older students. They just copy and paste everything. They do not even know where a sentence starts or ends. I want them to work with the texts they find on the Internet, so I ask them to transform them. If I write a sentence of their compositions in Google and I find the whole text, they get a zero and they have to write it again. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
As Internet is a huge source of materials, I sometimes find what I want but it is too difficult or too easy for my students. If the materials are good, I try to adapt them to what I want to do in class.
Most exercises on the Internet are self-correcting. My students cannot write compositions on webpages unless there is a teacher who can revise their drafts. I ask them to send their compositions to me and to do the self-correcting exercises on the webpages.
3. Make some predictions about the way technology is likely to affect the teaching of languages in the next five to ten years. For example, what kinds of translation and interactive programs will we be using? Will this make teaching easier? Will it affect the role of the teacher?
I believe that robots will help us read all texts on the Internet. This is going to be very useful to learn language pronunciation. Robots will also teach intonation and rhythm so that the language sounds more natural. Self-correcting exercises will still exist and students will get their compositions corrected on the Internet by computers who will understand “natural and correct” English according to text corpora. This will allow instant translation into lots of languages. I do not know if people will learn languages or just jump from one another by means of a computer. For teachers, I believe that it will be harder to select good content. On the other hand, students will get a more tailored education. Perhaps the teacher will just become a guide in the vast amount of knowledge that will be shared by means of the Internet.
Greetings,
Marta
