Last Monday 29th of March I had the wonderful opportunity to attend to a conference about ICT and how teachers could adapt them for our students. Fernando García was the speaker and he is also the headteacher of a State School in Niebla, a little town in Huelva. This speaker told us that to succeed in teaching using ICT we need: hardware. software, tupperware, mushware and emotionware, I am not quite sure if the last three really exist. But, basically, the main idea was that we can have lots of computers, lots of technology but without practical ideas (mushware) focused on how make them attractive to our students we have nothing. We were shown how they teach different exercises in different subjects. As the students were active doing those activities they were very involved.
I think ICT in the classroom can be a great help, but we and our teachers have to change our way of thinking of how to teach, of how to reach to students. Society is changing and so are the students. Why can't we?
After reading a little about CLIL on the link given in our Moodle, I found Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) a superb idea. From an early age, children can start learning a foreign language while learning another. It doesn't seem so boring as only learning vocabulary, I mean that while you are learning something "useful" you have to communicate and hopefully to think in a different language. That is the beginning. It can be fun for children. And after a few (5-7) years they may be able to study in another country or just watch a film in the original version. If we think that Spain has a big problem with languages, eventhought we have four official languages only a few people use more than one, thinking about showing children the advantages of being multilingual and multicultural and enabling them to be so makes me feel much better.
I think that is the spirit of ELP (European Language Portfolio) is to make children love and see how easier and better life can be if we can communicate with each other in different languages, respecting ourselves and others. Seems the beauty of the different cultures, because it doesn't really matter what you speak, the most important thing is how you are.
Hello everybody,
ResponEliminaThe challenge seems to be to find practical ways that motivate students which most be based on the use of ICT. However, the challenge is not an easy issue because there are many things to be considered when planning it like: the numbers of students, the lack of discipline among others but the most important the lack of recourses even in private school. Those elements must be taking in considerations when planning. But if plan nice and useful activities, students could have fun, on line environment enhance communication, students can be expose to a lot fo softwares and develop different abilities, go beyond the traditional instruction and so on.
So the benefits seem to be huge , however, the challenge go beyond the fact of using technology. We also have to overcome the lack of basic elements.