Ed-Tech: For the Right Reasons
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 10:28AM
[Marcy Webb]
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Reflections
Post a Comment The following is the comment I left recently in response to a post on this blog. Certainly proverbial food for thought for foreign language teachers.
I think this is what turned me off to Twitter when I joined the first time back in 2008. It had been appropriated by the tech-ed folks, talking about this, that, and a third, and many talking about nothing much in order to advance real learning and teaching. Not sure where they all went, but, Twitter is a much more interesting place now to be. Just a little rant. LOL
Anyway, as a FL teacher, tech-ed is just now beginning to permeate the ranks here in the US. It seems to have saturated the ranks in the UK. In fact, much of my UK Twitter colleagues talk ed-tech and not much else when addressing matters related to the FL classroom. Me? I’d rather have the kids engaging with me and with each other in the target language, than figuring out how to use the latest bell and whistle to communicate in the target language. After all, isn’t this what communicating is about? To me, it isn’t about using Twitter, FB, Glogster, etc., it’s about demonstrating what one knows and is able to to with the *language*, not what one knows and is able to do with via a tech tool with the language. I’m all about the four skills and culture. If there is a tech tool that can enhance the way I teach and the way my students learn, I am all for it. Otherwise, I guess I’m old-school in that regard.


