In ELA learning process, reading, writing, speaking, listening and language are five essential components. I believe all of these are basic elements in learning any language.
Trading children to read can help them learn to make connections among different ideas and create their own ideas. By reading, children can gradually build up their ability to discern and logicality. Writing is always related to reading which requires learner’s ability to plan, revise, edit and so on. Writing makes people thoughtful and having a better comprehension of what they learn. Speaking and listening are the most basic skills during our daily communication because people live and work together, and they need to express, share and integrate information by what they see or hear. Any of the above skills are built on the language which specifically means vocabulary and grammar.
I believe iPad is the best technology tool in assisting language learning. It provides multiple methods for learners to learn a new language and even other subjects. It provides applications for people to receive information visibly and audibly. Games in it will attract learner's attention and increase their learning motivation as well.
A friend of mine is an English teacher (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). He said that there is the issue of resources, course fit, skills, context, culture and usefulness, and also the issue of control. Teachers do feel that they are losing control through technology use.
I do think the iPad is great tool because of the abundance of resources out there. Unfortunately, they are costly and it just makes the technology and achievement gap that much bigger for students from low-income families.
回复删除I personally am an Android person, and there are plenty of tablets that are comparable and less expensive that students could use. However, companies, games, academic programs make creating apps for the iPad a priority over Android which I see as the only draw back.
The issue of technology taking over is a big concern at my school where we have all students on the autism spectrum. We work very hard to improve our students' social skills and sometimes technology can become a hindrance while other times it can be helpful. Social media for example helps people find others with similar thoughts and interests which can be great motivators for our students to have meaningful face to face interactions. Like everything, I think it's all about balance.
I can't agree more with about the balance.
删除Everything needs a balance to accomplish the perfect!
Hi! I agree that iPads can be useful tools in the classroom. There are endless applications that can be used. It is a shame that there is a lack of resources.
回复删除I like the discussion here. When we work with teachers, or when we try to integrate technology, we usually adopt the technology that is free and consider it's "affordances" in delivering the instruction. "Technology affordances" provide a design methodology for matching learning tasks with learning technologies. The working definition of “affordances” is provided based on the need to describe the action potentials of the technologies (utility). In other words, with the accessible technology, there must be a pairing instruction to match the learning tasks. That is why we need to understand the teacher's instructional needs and find the appropriate technology to best enhance teaching and learning in the classroom. More discussion, please...
回复删除Jingyi, please link my blog to yours. :)
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