An ICTTEACHER in the language class
Written By jansegers on Jul. 16, 2007.
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The modern language teacher has to make the shift towards using the internet for his teachings.
Apart from some technofobic minority of digibetes, almost all young people are embracing this new medium.
More and more knowlegde is available online, including the bulk of the litterature master pieces of the past.
For nowadays writers it's becoming impossible not to have a discussion panel of fans and professionals online.
Almost all major writers have already their societies online, even the medieval litterature is present on the web.
Latin is florishing as never before (unlike other languages, Latin doesn't need any diacritical sign - no accents, no trema, no c cedille,...)
since the beginning of the World Wide Web.
Computer exercices that are autocorrecting themselves immediately are giving the fastest and most individualized feedback people can dream of.
The teacher has become a guide into the exploration of the world and he/she is consulted by his/her pupils when they are before sometime they can find out for themselves, aspecially about the grammar of the language.
Classroom teaching can be vodcasted for future reference, the standard cours material can be put on the web for the same purpose.
I'm starting to like modern education like it's in the making...
Pieter Jansegers
http://jansegers.blogspot.com
The ICTTEACHER blog
Rich
Written Jul. 16, 2007 / Report /
I hope you're not a language teacher.
RightOn
Written Jul. 16, 2007 / Report /
Sounds more like SPAM than anything to me.
jansegers
Written Jul. 19, 2007 / Report /
To Rich and to RightOn...
please state some arguments for your statements
BTW, I am a language teacher, a French teacher to be more precise.
My point is that teaching itself is undergoing the internet revolution at this moment and I'm quite happy about this...
Look back at this posting in 36 months and most of what I stated in it, will be current practice at that moment, so I believe...
peroty
Written Jul. 19, 2007 / Report /
While I think you may be on the right track, schools are horribly draconian and entrenched in the ways of old. I think it will take an awfully long time for any kind of shift like this to occur. 36 months, no. 36 years perhaps.
jansegers
Written Jul. 19, 2007 / Report /
Peroty
Even schools are changing at a rate never seen before...
Computers needed some time before being adopted into the school curriculum, indeed.
But the possibilities of the internet have altered the complete human society.
Most of the Latin teachers nowadays are pointing their students to the richness of the web - the entire classical litterature is out there, just for free...
The Nuntii Latini site brings the news of today in Latin
http://www.yleradio1.fi/nuntii/
And so on, and so on...
The internet is imposed itself in less then a generation to the bulk of the society and even teaching is changing as we speak.
RightOn
Written Jul. 19, 2007 / Report /
I'm not sure I favor teaching based out of curriculum from the internet. I don't like much of the material provided by the government as it is, what would make the internet any better?
To me it would seem that a move from a traditional classroom to a web based on would double or even triple the workload of the educators. Kids writing reports based on "facts" from Wikipedia... plagiarizing content from news blogs and other sources... it's all very prevalent in TODAYS schools, much less those of tomorrow.
I know I wouldn't want to have to fact check every word in a students report times 45-100 kids for everything they hand me.
There is just as much misinformation as there is information out there and I think diving in without some form of restraint would turn educators into police officers.
Mike
Written Jul. 19, 2007 / Report /
I thought this post was spam also. The way you wrote it makes it sound like you lifted the entire post from somewhere else, either your blog or another site.
RightOn
Written Jul. 19, 2007 / Report /
Thanks for the backup there Mike... that's what I was thinking when I first read it.
peroty
Written Jul. 19, 2007 / Report /
I had the same thought, but it seemed a little too thought out when I actually read it.
Do I decided to bite. lol
And yes, schools may be changing faster than ever before, but the tiny town I grew up in, while ahead of its time, is still generally afraid of the internets and the evils it brings.
Rich
Written Jul. 19, 2007 / Report /
Have you heard of the Cupertino Effect? You might be interested in this and this. Not particularly relevant, but it was what came immediately to mind when reading that sentence.
(Good read for anyone curious about the wrongdoings of spellcheckers, actually.)
jansegers
Written Jul. 21, 2007 / Report /
Sorry for my writing style... I think the form of it is that of the enthusiasm of a Verhofstadt (Belgian prime minister of the past two governments), a bit grandiloquent...
Anyhow: our pupils have to learn how to put the internet at good use, because the rest of their working life, they will have to master the information flux of it.
Teacher will have indeed some what different tasks then in the past; their approach will have to be more and more academic.
The university papers of today will be soon standard practice at secundary level education.
Going against this evolution would be catastrophic in my mind.
Students will know more then their own teachers about some aspects of the field their studying, but why not ?
Agism is just another form of racism. Why would a 15 year old adolescent be less of a human then a 35 year old adult ?
We'll have to respect our pupils as individuals, as human beings with great potential and we'll only be able to guide them through their studies.
If I suspect one of my students not to have produced a copy himself, I just check the ability of the student in question to explain me some words used by him...