Week 6: How Technology Wages the Language War For Us

  In this week's unit, I was exposed to a very large amount of tools and how they can help us in our language teaching. As I read the words on my screen, the ideas of how to integrate the tools into my practice teaching (which after this semester is ending, but no worries, next year I will have the chance to implement them) starting dancing around my brain. So without further ado… the five tools and my opinion as to how it can be used in such a way that makes our lives as teachers easier.

1) Voice Chat - specifically - Whatsapp Voice Chat.

You know how in the classroom not everyone gets a chance to speak? And how when we tell our students to create dialogues we never have enough time to go through them? Or how there are always those students who feel uncomfortable speaking in front of their peers?

Whatsapp Voice Chat is a wonderful way to work on speaking skills that doesn’t require much class time, nor does it require public speaking. The great thing is that most if not all Israelis have whatsapp on their phones. As a homework assignment, you can tell students to respond to a certain question for one minute and to send their responses to the teacher. This also gives the teacher time to think of appropriate feedback that can increase accuracy in their speaking.

2 and 3) Debating through a VoiceThread

Hey, look! This is me killing two birds with one stone. (Is this picture the wrong kind of graphic? Haha...oops 😅)

Keeping in mind the previous comments about time management in the classroom and the fear of public speaking, these are two tools that can work extremely well together. The teacher can open a voice thread and assign his/her students a debate topic and their argument. Students will then have to respond to one another’s arguments and communicate in English. The students are working on their speaking skills, and it doesn’t even take class time because it is homework ;D

Theoretically, you can have students record themselves on technological devices they bring into the classroom, however that is up to the teacher to decide if he/she thinks that is a manageable assignment and that they students will stay on task and not get distracted - for more information about this debate, see the third slide of Avraham Roos’s VoiceThread and develop your own opinion about the debate.

4) Graphic Organizers:

Graphic organizers are a great way to encourage students to organize their thoughts onto paper and to brainstorm different ideas and ultimately write whatever essay or presentation they needed to write. They can be used in a lot of pre-reading and pre-writing activities. This website gives teachers access to a lot of different types of graphic organizers that can be downloaded and used. - https://www.teach-nology.com/worksheets/graphic/

Also, because it has now become somewhat of a joke amongst friends, my “obsession” with the resource known as Canva also gives options to create different graphic organizers… so take a look at their templates as well. (Happy Lielle? 😛)

5) Spell Checkers and Grammar Correctors.

I know this one may be a bit of a controversial opinion, but hear me out. I think we need to encourage students to use spell checkers and grammar correctors in a way that is meaningful.

Guided self-correction is a lot more effective than a teacher correcting the student with a red pen and a small comment on the side of his paper. It also makes our work as teachers a lot easier when we allow students to use these tools.

Students can use websites like https://spellcheckplus.com/ and https://app.grammarly.com/

Reliance on the tools is not a good thing, but if we specifically tell our students to highlight and explain the mistakes in their papers, then we turn the tool into a remarkable resource that doesn’t require as much effort on the part of the teacher.