Some peculiarities in using educational technology and other learning resources

Tazhibayeva S.A.

Master of phylology scienses of International Kazakh-Turkish University

Резюме

В данной статье рассматриваются некоторые особенности и методы использования технологии обучения

РЕЗЮМЕ

Бұл мақалада білім беру технологиясы мен оқытудың кейбір ерекшеліктері қарастырылған

Educational technology has always been about much more than improving learning. In the eyes of many proponents, it has been about transforming learning -overcoming traditional educational approaches and supplanting them with revolutionary new paradigms of teaching, learning, and schooling. The flashy new machine in the classroom - whether the film projector or the television or the computer - has represented the pinnacle of modernity in the eyes of its supporters, whether from the government, the business sector, or academia.

If you walk into some classrooms around the world, you will see fixed data projectors, interactive whiteboards (IWBs), built-in speakers for audio material that is delivered directly from a computer hard disk (rather than from a tape recorder), and computers with round-the-clock Internet access. Whenever teachers want their students to find anything out, they can get them to use a search engine like Google and the results can be shown to the whole class on the IWB.

In other classes, even in many successful private language schools around the world, there is a whiteboard in the classroom, an overhead projector (OHP) and a tape recorder. Other schools only have a whiteboard - or perhaps a blackboard - often not in very good condition. In such schools there may well not be a photocopier, though hopefully the students will have exercise books.

Finally, there are some classroom situations where neither teacher nor students have anything at all in terms of educational technology or other learning aids. Jill and Charles Hadfield represent these differing realities in a 'reversed pyramid' of resources. In a world in which the pace of technological change is breathtakingly fast (so that between the writing and publishing of this book new technology will have been produced that most of us are as yet unaware of), it seems that being at the bottom of the pyramid is likely to be a bar to language learning.

However Jill and Charles Hadfield argue passionately, this is not the case [1, 2]. There is a lot you can do with minimal or even no resources. For example, in one situation they taught in, there was a board and the children had exercise books but apart from that there were no other educational aids, not even coursebooks. However with the help of a washing line and clothes pegs they were able to hang up pictures for students to work with. Simple objects like a selection of pebbles became the focus for activities such as telling the story of the pebbles' existence; different words from sentences were written on pieces of paper or card and then put on students' backs - and the rest of the class had to make them stand in order to make a sentence from the word; paper bags with faces drawn on them became puppets; the classroom desks were rearranged to become a street plan so students could practise giving (and responding to) directions. Finally, and most importantly, the students themselves were used as source material, whether as

participants in quizzes about the real world, as informants in discussions about families or as imaginers of river scenes based on teacher description. The internal world of the student is 'the richest, deepest seam of gold that you have [2]. Indeed, Jill and Charles Hadfield propose turning the pyramid the other way up.

The resources that are currently available are truly amazing. As we shall see, they offer an amazing variety of routes for learning and discovery. Yet we should not see them as methodologies for learning, but rather as tools to help us in whatever approaches and techniques we have chosen to use. And we need to remind ourselves constantly of the fact that many classrooms both in the 'developing' and 'developed' world do not have access to very modern technology. Yet this does not prevent students - and has never prevented them - from learning English successfully. In this work, therefore, we will look at a range of classroom resources (both hi- and low-tech) before considering the questions we need to ask when trying to decide whether to adopt the latest technological innovation.

- The students themselves

By far the most useful resources in the classroom are the students themselves. Through their thoughts and experiences they bring the outside world into the room, and this is a powerful resource for us to draw on We can get them to write or talk about things they like or things they have experienced. We can ask them what they would do in certain situations or get them to act out scenes from their lives. In multilingual classes, we can get them to share information about their different countries.

- Objects, pictures and things

A range of objects, pictures, cards and other things, such as Cuisenaire rods, can be used for presenting and manipulating language, and for involving students in activities of all kinds. We will look at four of them.

- Realia

We mentioned above how a simple pebble can be used as a stimulus for a creative activity. However, this is only one possible use for real objects: realia. With beginners, and particularly children, using realia is helpful for teaching the meanings of words or for stimulating student activity; teachers sometimes come to class with plastic fruit, cardboard clock faces, or two telephones to help simulate phone conversations.

Objects that are intrinsically interesting can provide a good starting-point for a variety of language work and communication activities. Jill and Charles Hadfield suggest bringing in a bag of'evocative objects' that have a 'story to tell' [3]. These might be a hair ribbon, a coin, a button, a ring, a paperclip, an elastic band, an old photo frame, a key and a padlock. Students are put into groups. Each group picks an object from the bag (without looking in first). Each student in the group then writes one sentence about the object's history as if they were that object. Members of the group share their sentences to make the object's autobiography. They then read their autobiographies to the rest of the class.

The only limitations on the things which we bring to class are the size and quantity of the objects themselves and the students' tolerance, especially with adults who may think they are being treated childishly. As with so many other things, this is something we will have to assess on the basis of our students' reactions.

- Pictures

Teachers have always used pictures or graphics -whether drawn, taken from books, newspapers and magazines, or photographed - to facilitate learning. Pictures can be in the form of flashcards (smallish cards which we can hold up for our students to see), large wall picture (big enough for everyone to see details), cue cards (small cards which students use in pair or groupwork), photographs or illustrations (typically in a textbook). Some teachers also use projected slides, images from an overhead projector, or projected computer images. Teachers also draw pictures on the board to help with explanation and language work.

Pictures of all kinds can be used in a multiplicity of ways, as the following examples show

• Drills: with lower-level students, an appropriate use for pictures - especially flashcards - is in cue-response drills. We hold up a flashcard (the cue) before nominating a student and getting a response. Then we hold up another one, nominate a different student, and so on. Flashcards are particularly useful for drilling grammar items, for cueing different sentences and practising vocabulary.

• (Communication) games: pictures are extremely useful for a variety of communication activities, especially where these have a game-like feel, such as 'describe and draw' activities, w^rhere one student describes a picture (which we have given them) and a partner has to draw the same picture without looking at the original. We can also divide a class into four groups (A, B, C, and D) and give each group a different picture that shows a separate stage in a story. Once the members of the group have studied their picture, we take it away. New groups are formed with four members each - one from group A, one from group B, one from group C and one from group D. By sharing the information they saw in their pictures, they have to work out what story the pictures together are telling.

· Prediction: pictures are useful for getting students to predict what is coining next in a lesson. Thus students might look at a picture and try to guess what it shows. (Are the people in it brother and sister, husband or wife, and what are they arguing about or are they arguing? etc.) They then listen to an audio track or read a text to see if it matches what they predicted on the basis of the picture.

One idea is to get students to become judges of a photographic competition. After being given the category of photographs they are going to judge (e.g. men in action, reportage, abstract pictures), the students decide on four or five characteristics their winning photograph should have. They then apply these characteristics to the finalists that we provide for them, before explaining why they made their choice.

Pictures can also be used for creative language use, whether they are in a book or on cue cards, flashcards or wall pictures. We might ask students to .write a description of a picture, to invent the conversation taking place between two people in a picture or, in one particular role-play activity, ask them to answer questions as if they were the characters in a famous painting.

- Cards

Apart from flashcards with pictures on them, cards of all shapes and sizes can be used in a variety of ways. Cards, in this sense, can range from carefully prepared pieces of thick paper which have been laminated to make them into a reusable resource to small strips of paper which the teacher brings in for one lesson only.

Of the many uses for cards, three are especially worth mentioning:

• Matching and ordering: cards are especially good for matching questions and answers or two halves of a sentence. Students can either match them on the desk in front of them (perhaps in pairs or groups), or they can move around the classroom looking for their pairs. This matching can be on the basis of topic, lexis or grammatical construction.

We can also use cards to order words into sentences or to put the lines of a poem in order. Using cards in this way is especially good for kinaesthetic learners, of course. But it is good for everyone else, too, especially if we can get students walking around the classroom for at least a brief period.

• Selecting: cards work really well if we want students to speak on the spot or use particular words or phrases in a conversation or in sentences. We can write words on separate cards and then, after shuffling them, place them in a pile face down. When a student picks up the next card in the pack, he or she has to use the word in a sentence. Alternatively, students can choose three or four cards and then have to incorporate what is on the cards into a story. Students can also pick up a card and try to describe what the word on it feels, tastes or smells like so that the other students can guess it.

• Card games: there are as many card game possibilities in language learning as there are in real life. We can turn the card selection into a game by introducing a competitive element - having students in pairs play against each other or against other pairs.

- Cuisenaire rods

Originally invented by the Belgian educator Caleb Gattegno, these small blocks of wood or plastic of different lengths (see Figure 3) were originally designed for mathematic teaching. Each length is a different colour. The rods are featureless, and are only differentiated by their length and colour. Simple they may be, but they are useful for a wide range of activities. For example, we can say that a particular rod is a pen of a telephone, a dog or a key so that by holding them up or putting them together a story can be told. All it takes is a little imagination.

The rods can be used to demonstrate word stress, too: if one is bigger than the others (in a sequence representing syllables in a word or words in a sentence), it shows where the stress should be.

We can also assign a word or phrase to each of, say, five rods and the students then have to put them in the right order (e.g. / usually get up at six o'clock). By moving the usually rod around and showing where it can and cannot occur in the sentence, the students get a clear visual display of something they are attempting to fix in their minds.

Rods can be used to teach prepositions. Teachers can model with the rods sentences like The red one is on top of/beside/under/over/ behind (etc.) the green one. They can show rods in different relative positions and ask students, to describe them. Students can then position the rods for other students to describe (in ever more complex arrangements!).

Cuisenaire rods are also useful for demonstrating colours (of course), comparatives, superlatives, cind a whole range of other semantic and syntactic areas, particularly with people who respond well to visual or kinaesthetic activities.

- The coursebook

For years, methodologists have been arguing about the usefulness of coursebooks, questioning their role [4], defending their use [5], worrying that they act as methodological straitjackets, promoting their value as agents of methodological change [6], or arguing yet again about their relative merits [7], -- Coursebook or no coursebook?

The benefits and restrictions of coursebook use can be easily summarised:

· Benefits: good coursebooks are carefully prepared to off a coherent syllabus, satisfactory-language control, motivating texts, audio cassettes/CDs and other accessories such as video/DVD material, CD-ROMs and extra resource material. They are often attractively presented. They provide teachers under pressure with the reassurance that, even when they are forced to plan at the last moment, they will be using material which they can have confidence in. They come with detailed teacher's guides, which not only provide procedures for the lesson in the student's book, but also offer suggestions and alternatives, extra activities and resources. The adoption of a new eoursebook provides a powerful stimulus for methodological development. Students like coursebooks, too, since they foster the perception of progress as units and then books are completed. Coursebooks also provide material which students can look back at for revision and, at their best, their visual and topic appeal can have a powerfully engaging effect.

· Restrictions: coursebooks, used inappropriately, impose learning styles and content on classes and teachers alike, appearing to be '"fait accompli" over which they control [7]. Many of them rely on Presentation, Practice and Production as their main methodological procedure, despite recent enthusiasm for other teaching sequences. Units and lessons often follow an unrelenting format so that students and teachers eventually become demotivated by the sameness of it all. And in their choice of topics, coursebooks can sometimes be bland or culturally inappropriate.

One solution to the perceived disadvantages of coursebooks is to do without them altogether to use a 'do-it-yourself approach [8, 9]. Such an approach is extremely attractive. It can offer students a dynamic and varied programme. If they can see its relevance to their own needs, it will greatly enhance their motivation and their trust in what they are being asked to do. It allows teachers to respond on a lesson-by-lesson basis to what is happening in the class. Finally, for the teacher, it means an exciting and creative involvement with texts and tasks.

REFERENCES

1. Hadfield J and Hadfield C 2003 a Hidden resources in the language
classroom 1, Modern English Teacher 12/1

2. Hadfield J and Hadfield C 2003b Hidden resources in the language
classroom 1. Modern English Teacher 12/2: 34.

3. Hadfield J and Hadfield C 2003a Hidden resources in the language
classroom 1. Modern English Teacher 12/1: 32

4. Allwright, R 1981 What do we want teaching materials for? ELT Journal
36/1 and in Rosner and Bolitho (edsj

5. O'Neill, R 1982 Why use textbooks⁹ ELT Journal 36/2 and in Rosner and
Bolitho (Eds).

6. Hutchinson, T and Torres, E 1994 The textbook as agent of change. ELT
Journal 54/3.

7. Littlejohn, A 1998 The analysis of language teaching materials: inside
the Trojan horse. In Tomlinson, B (ed): 205.

8. Block, D 1991 Some thoughts on D1Y materials design. ELY Journal
45/3

9. Maley, A 1998 Squaring the circle - reconciling materials as constraint
with materials as empowerment. In Tomlinson, B (ed).