Calling All Foreign Language Teachers

Tony Erben

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317923329
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is a comprehensive guide to help foreign language teachers use technology in their classrooms. It offers the best ways to integrate technology into your teaching for student-centered learning.

1

Introduction: CALLing All Foreign Language Teachers

Tony Erben

Hello fellow foreign language teachers!

This book is the result of four years of effort. It sprang out of a desire to provide foreign language teachers with a comprehensive guide and framework for using and integrating technology into their classrooms.

For the past 20 years, I have been teaching technology classes to pre-service and in-service foreign language and English as a second language teachers, and I have noticed over the years that there is a lack of materials for teachers that provide a guide to learn how to use an array of technologies and once learned, a systematic way to infuse technology into the teaching and learning practices of both teachers and learners. I hope that we can fill the gap with this volume.

For ease of use, CALLing All Foreign Language Teachers is divided into 6 sections and 18 chapters. We are particularly excited about the many practical, student-centered activities highlighted throughout Chapters 4 through 17. Each activity is framed within the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) standards as well as ISTE’s (International Society for Technology in Education) National Educational Technology Standards (NETS). Section I, “Incorporating Computer-Assisted Language Learning,” provides readers with the principles that frame this book and summarizes the research on which the work in each chapter is based. For example, in Chapter 2, Iona Sarieva and Annmarie Zoran use an easy-to-read question-and-answer format to outline how the discipline of second language acquisition and computer-mediated language learning supplies handy signposts for research-based teaching practices using technology in second and foreign language environments. Elucidating the need for an informed application of technology in the classroom, Sarieva and Zoran point to work that is being carried out in the field of instructional technology that can help foreign language teachers make their technology-infused pedagogical practices more constructivist in intent and scope.

In Chapter 3, “Using Technology for Foreign Language Instruction: Creative Innovations, Research, and Applications,” Tony Erben, Ruth Ban, Li Jin, Robert Summers, and Kristina Eisenhower provide a lucid overview of the outcomes of research on the use of technology in foreign and second language learning environments. Their analysis of this research provides the reader with a handy, research-based list of do’s and don’ts for teachers who are using technology, as well as a description of the types of students we can expect to have in our classroom. These students belong to the “digital generation,” for whom computers, iPods, cell phones, the Web, chat rooms, and instant messaging are the norm. In the case of technology, it is often the intermediate school student who can teach us a thing or two about technology. However, this book tries to right the imbalance! We are still trained foreign language teachers with the methodological and pedagogical know-how to teach a foreign language. With this book, foreign language teachers can get their heads around the technology. Ultimately, the marriage of technology and foreign language can help us, as a profession, to rethink, reshape, and reinvent the nature of curriculum engagement, delivery, and learning processes to reflect something that is closer to 21 st-century notions of education. Finally, Erben and colleagues provide a sneak preview of what is around the corner in terms of new technologies and their impact on teaching.

Chapter 4 introduces, or better still, re-introduces teachers to a number of well used technologies. We thought it would be sensible to start teachers off on technologies they know before introducing a world of technologies they don’t know. So, for starters Aubry, Balize, Chen, Siekman, Sarieva, and Roux-Rodriguez have put together a compilation of unique activities centered around word processing, email, and building websites.

Section II, “E-Creation,” is all about using software tools to create resources that will support your teaching and the learning of your students. Sabine Siekmann, Iona Sarieva, and Ruth Roux-Rodriguez show the many ways in which word processing can be used other than for document writing. In Chapter 5, Robert Summers and Ray Madrigal present a much sought-after explanation of the ways in which Microsoft PowerPoint can be used in foreign language classrooms other than for presentation purposes. They outline PowerPoint’s capabilities for creating interactive games that promote second language interaction among students and increase motivation. Another software package that enables both teachers and students to create cards, posters, and other materials that incorporate visuals is Microsoft Publisher. Here, Martha Castañeda and Rui Cheng take readers through the process of creating a cornucopia of visually exciting curriculum materials. In keeping with the theme of creating visually exciting materials. Sabine Siekmann shows readers, in Chapter 7, how to create sound files and import them into Web pages, as well as how to use sound files for teaching and learning purposes. Finally, Rui Cheng and Robert Summers explain how to create and edit online movies using both Mac and PC computers. Their chapter is timely, as it presents software that readily brings together oral, aural, visual, and written media in one online package.

As the name suggests, the section on “E-Communication” centers on software packages that allow teachers and students to engage in various forms of interaction. In Chapter 9, Rui Cheng and Martha Castañeda outline the benefits of joining Listservs. Of course, there are thousands of Listservs on the Internet, but for foreign language teachers and learners, there are specific Listservs that empower both teachers and students by bringing them together as part of a much wider world community of learners. In the next chapter, Sha Balizet presents the reader with ways that teachers can access and use synchronous and asynchronous communication systems through chat and e-mail. Finally, Zhaohui Chen and Debra Cordier introduces a new communication system called Skype, which allows learners to use their computer as a telephone and communicate with anybody in the world. It allows not only real-time speaking but also two-way video and voice recording. More importantly, Chen and Cordier shows us how this newest technology can be used in the foreign language classroom in a variety of innovative and exciting ways.

The next section comprises three chapters and in their own way, they are very important. Under “E-Extensions,” Iona Sarieva and Annmarie Zoran introduce Nicenet, a free course-management system similar to Blackboard and WebCT. Aline Harrison’s outline on WebQuests in Chapter 13, introduces us to inquiry-based tasks in which the user is guided to scan specific Web sites to accomplish a certain task. Harrison provides useful links to Web sites where foreign language teachers have developed WebQuests. In Chapter 14, “Exercise Builder: Using Hot Potatoes,” Zhaohui Chen presents us with an online tool that enables teachers to create a variety of activities.

The penultimate section takes us to that part of the curriculum that no teacher or student can do without: assessment. In this section, Rui Cheng in “Electronic Portfolios” and Ruth Ban and Jane Harvey in “Electronic Surveys: Inquiring With Authentic Language,” discuss alternative assessment strategies that can improve the ways in which teachers evaluate student performances. Cheng shows the reader how to create and use electronic portfolios using the Microsoft Excel. She talks about the practicalities of using online portfolios to showcase students’ work. Complementing Cheng’s chapter, Ban and Harvey describe SurveyMonkey and other online survey tools and explain how to use these as pedagogical tools in the classroom.

Last, but not least of all, the final section encourages readers to embark on their own ongoing journey with technology in their own foreign language classrooms. Unlike our students, we foreign language teachers do not belong to the digital generation; however, we can more aptly relate to our students through the use of technology in our teaching. In Chapter 17, Erben provides readers with an array of ready-made technology-infused activities. Each activity accesses multiple technologies and integrates all of the previously presented technologies. The last chapter by Annmarie Zoran encapsulates what the Internet stands for—namely, a world wide forum of information. Some of it is extraordinarily good and useful, and some of it is just plain bad. The task before us is to sift through the good, the bad, and the ugly and to access Web sites that are student and teacher friendly, particularly those that are user friendly to the foreign language learner. In “Gates in Cyberland,” Zoran has collated a wonderful array of Web sites for foreign language teachers, as well as language-specific sites and teacher-oriented and learner-oriented sites.

Finally, I want to thank each and every contributor to this book. First, I wish to thank Iona Sarieva, my coeditor, whose help, dogged tenacity, and attention to detail helped to make this book a reality. Second, I want to thank all of the authors, most of whom are practicing foreign language instructors yet, at the time this book was written, had another life as students in the doctoral program in second language acquisition and instructional technology at the University of South Florida. All of them participated in a course called “Applications of Technology to SLA/FLE,” and this volume is the result of their labors. Now, many have graduated and started their own academic careers at other institutions of higher learning, both in the United States and overseas.

Dear reader, it is our collective hope that once you have read through this book and tried out the many technologies and activities described here, you will continue to embrace new technologies as they are invented. Indeed, we can already see a half dozen new software products that will continue to transform the work that we will do in the coming years—their names will undoubtedly become a part of the English language, just as they will become a part of our learning lives. These include wikis, blogs, podcasts, interactive television, and iPods, to name but a few. Stay tuned, but for now, please enjoy CALLing All Foreign Language Teachers.

These up and coming technologies will be featured, with accompanying activities, on the following website: http://terben9397.googlepages.com/ callingallforeignlanguageteachers.

Section I

Incorporating Computer-Assisted Language Learning

2

Guiding Principles: Second Language Acquisition, Instructional Technology, and the Constructivist Framework

Iona Sarieva and Annmarie Zoran

What Standards?

During the late 1990s, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, working together with a task group, designed content standards known as the “5 Cs” to be applied in the K–12 curriculum (ACTFL, 1996). The 5 Cs—communications, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities—were designed to improve foreign language education. Schools have turned to these standards as a framework for the development of materials and curricula for foreign language programs. One of the goals of this book is to incorporate the 5 Cs in a technology-enhanced environment for foreign language learning to achieve the common goal of developing and maintaining proficiency in at least one foreign language (ACTFL, 1996).

In addition, standards have also been developed by the International Society for Technology in Education for both students (NET*S; see ISTE, 2000) and teachers (NET*T; see ISTE, 2000); the goal of these standards is to create a mechanism for the smooth and seamless integration of technology into the curriculum, thereby empowering teachers to use technology in their classrooms to develop higher-order thinking skills and to participate in other discourse communities. We have used both the ACTFL and ISTE standards as the basis of the materials developed for this book in order to facilitate knowledge construction and language learning within our nation’s schools.

What Is Technology Integration?

Integrating technology for the mere purpose of using technology should not be the goal of any foreign language program. However, integrating technology can empower foreign language teachers to enhance language learning and provide a platform for achieving standards.

Jolene Dockstader (1999) makes a distinction between what technology integration is and is not: Technology integration should not be considered a “cybersitter” for students, nor should it be used without a purpose. Technology integration, according to Dockstader, should be used to “enhance student learning,” to have “curriculum driven technology usage,” and to organize “the goals of curriculum and technology into a coordinated, harmonious whole.” Technology has many purposes: It can be used to provide more in-depth information on a specific topic, to access authentic target language materials, to gain ex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Meet the Contributors
• 1. Introduction: CALLing All Foreign Language Teachers
• Section I: Incorporating Computer-Assisted Language Learning
• Section II: E-Creation
• Section III: E-Communication
• Section IV: E-Extensions
• Section V: E-Assessment
• Section VI: Taking Your Own Journey