Alumnas: Calisaya, Florencia- Cayo, Antonella- Moscoso, Laura- Ortiz, Daiana Curso: 2 C

PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE- CHAPTER 12

STATE OF ART

In ten years that teachers have been training to use technology in ELT, the pace of change has
been slow. However, there are signs now that the pace is beginning to accelerate with the advent
of more user-friendly tools and software, and greater opportunities for more formalized training.
Indeed, it is rare these days for any teacher not to have made some small investments in the use
of technology in their work, from a teacher who uses a word processor to put together worksheets
to the more active users who are members of online communities of practice groups.

In general secondary and primary education, one of the more remarkable success stories has
been the uptake of interactive whiteboards (IWBs). But the pace of change will vary for different
groups of teachers. Some groups will move very quickly to adopt new technologies and new habits
while others will remain largely unaffected by technological changes. There will be no one big
movement or trend, but rather a range of trends, some fast moving, and others slow.

HOW TO KEEP UP-TO-DATE

Accessing different websites and joining in online groups raise the issue of how to manage a
potential deluge of information and ideas. Calculate the amount of time you would spend every
day going to all these sites to check on the latest postings. This is where RSS, or Really Simply
Syndication, can make a huge difference to our everyday lives by helping us cope quickly and
efficiently with the large amounts of new information produced daily.

WEB 2.0

Web 2.0 perceives the transition of the World Wide Web from a disparate collection of websites
to a fully-fledged computing platform, which delivers services and applications. This is resulting in
a vast collection of websites and services which are more social in nature, inviting people to share
what they find, what they do and what they learn in a wide variety of contexts. You may read
about social bookmarking, where people keep their bookmarks or favourites on a website instead
of on their own computer. These bookmarks are tagged and described, and anyone also using the
sit can benefit from your collection of useful addresses.

One of the more important skills to be developed in the future will be change large quantities of
information into useable chunks, and we will all need to develop faster information processing and
evaluation skills if we are to make the most of this new platform.

The use of social sites, like My Space, Facebook, Linked IN, Instagram or Youtube, should
encourage the more eclectic approach to teaching, and it is to be hoped that the teaching
experience will be further enhanced by the teachers ability to provide tailored practice and
personalised learning opportunities for each individual. It will also have an impact on continuous
professional development, with teacher creating their own personalised pages, drawing together
blog feeds, video materials, essays and articles from a variety of sources into an ever-changing
personal development site of their own.
Alumnas: Calisaya, Florencia- Cayo, Antonella- Moscoso, Laura- Ortiz, Daiana Curso: 2 C

THE FUTURE OF ONLINE LEARNING

One of the real growth areas over the next few years will be in the area of distributed learning and
training. In a training area, some organizations have already been using this system for years to
reach its teachers throughout the country, and with considerable success. Other organizations also
use online training solutions for teacher training via a virtual learning environments (VLE). A VLE
allows you to create online courses and to enrol students in them. Inside the courses themselves
you can combine various resources with more interactive elements, like quizzes, questionnaires,
structured lessons, forums and chat rooms, to make up the course content. What we expect to see
happening is more online training. We will also expect to see a change in the way people learn
languages, and the way they continue with their professional development.

Finding out more

A good place to get started would be to investigate VLEs which we have focused on already, and
Content Management Systems (CMS). A CMS is an online repository which can be stocked with
web pages, documents, downloads of multimedia files and other resources. It can be managed by
a group of people, making it a useful collaborative environment in terms of pure information
sharing.

VIRTUAL LEARNING

Virtual reality is a term which has been around for so long with so few tangible results. Yet
things have developed considerably in the past few years, and products are now starting to appear
which make use of this other world for training and education. You may see virtual reality
environments referred to as MOOs (Multi-User Dimension Object Oriented) or simply as MUDs
(Multi-User Dimension/Dungeon/Dialogue).MOOs sprang up out of online gaming, hence the
dungeon reference in the name. Basically, this means that they are networked environments
which allow interaction between several people, and also interaction with virtual objects. You may
also see them referred to as MUVEs (Multi-User Virtual Environments).For many years these were
purely text-based places in which people text chatted and described objects and actions, but
recent developments in computing and video speeds, as well as faster Access to the Internet, have
allowed for richer, graphically-based environments.

Finding out more

The most popular of the virtual reality worlds is currently Second Life. Set up by the former chief
technical officer of Real Networks (the people who make Real Player), it is described on their
website as a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the
public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by over three million people from
around the globe. From the moment you enter the world, youll discover a vast digital continent,
teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. To use Second Life you will
need to download the program from the Second Life website and register for a username and
password. It is free. You will also need to upgrade your QuickTime Player to the lastest version.
Once you have done this, log in and start to explore. It is a strange virtual world peopled by the
same curious mix as exists in real life.
Alumnas: Calisaya, Florencia- Cayo, Antonella- Moscoso, Laura- Ortiz, Daiana Curso: 2 C

For educational purposes, Second Life provides an ideal and safe environment in which to work.
Objects which react as they do in real life can be created, and in our research we came across
plenty of training scenarious including Japanesse classes, disaster relief training, first aid training
and a heart murmur treatment simulation, among many others. While the authors wrote this
chapter, they sat in on variety of classes and courses in Second Life, and were constantly amazed
by the degree of imagination used in combining real-life classes with in world (i.e. inside Second
Life)sessions, including one course in Rhetoric and Composition being run by a professor called
Sarah Robbins at Ball State University, Indiana, which meets once a week at the actual university,
and once a week in Second Life. These innovative uses of new technologies give pause for thought,
but also encourage us to look beyond our day-to-day practice to examine how we might
incorporate them into what we do. In Second Life there are also opportunities for more complex
events such as seminars and conferences, as various combinations of media types, from
PowerPoint presentations, through audio and video streaming media, to various types of exercises
like quizzes, feedback forms and questionnaires.

A world like this, with all its media possibilities, web browsing and audio has plenty of potential in
all sorts of areas, and it will be the case that we will see more opportunities for language teaching
and training inside these worlds as communications and graphics possibilities improve in coming
years. Already, a Company called Language Lab is planning to open a language school inside
Second Life, and much more is sure to follow.

M-LEARNING:

It includes the uses of mobile phones, MP3 Players, Personal Digital Assistants and devices using
Windows Mobile Computing platforms. It works well in environments where access to these kind
of technologies is more normal and accepted or where lifestyles demand more flexible solutions to
training and learning.

Finding out more: JAPAN is a good example which has an excellent website to learn more about
their projects with language learning and mobile platforms.

Beginners m-learning activity: introduces mobile technologies into the classroom and serves the
purpose of showing learners what can be achieved with technology.

Advanced texting activity 2b/-2b=? it is a quotation from a Shakespeare play to be or not to

The activity: mobile phones and texting should be a poplar topic with learners of all ages, so
should generate a fair bit of discussion.

Follow-ups: there are plenty of possible follow-ups. You may want to try a rewrite activity in which
learners produce a short text in texting language and then rewrite it properly.

Composition key: whatever you experiment with, be it online, virtual or mobile, you must ensure
that equal access is available to all of your students, and that you teaching and your student`s
learning is enhanced by the chosen approach.