Reaction to the video “Digital Tools for Language Teaching and Learning in Adults”

Dania Villegas Ceciliano                        Universidad Latina de CR

Education has changed due to technology and the easy access to internet. Many years ago, the traditional education focused on the teacher, not on the learners. Nowadays, technology has impacted students in the way they obtain information and communicate. As a result, teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) has become a more demanding task. Teachers can use technology to share experiences and to accomplish the goal of teaching EFL. Education is now centered on the students, they have a more essential role where their needs, goals and likes are taken into consideration. There is a limitless sites and web pages of digital tools for helping adult students to learn English. The challenge is teaching English and motivating adult learners to try different applications and use these collaboration digital tools.

 The learner each time becomes more responsible of their own learning and this webinar shows that there is practice for the four skills on line. The speaker in the video shows a metaphor that classifies the learners as the parts of a pen. I hope all of us can become sharp leaders with a good attitude towards learning. From the web, everybody can use tools or resources that improve the language skills. An interesting fact to show is that from the web the learner can adjust the level to be able to understand and succeed. The teachers who use technology in the class every time make students more interested in the learning process. These teachers “embrace change” as the author says, they share experiences and ask for help when needed. The presenter provided an endless list of web sites learners and teachers could use to improve the English skills by impacting students and creating meaningful scenarios to learn.

As teachers, we have to “try” and look for different forms to catch students’ attention and motivating them to be eager to participate and learn by themselves by practicing. One of the applications that called my attention was using a social network (Twitter) to improve professional development. We already have experienced using Facebook and writing blogs in this course and it is rewarding, because teachers can upload material and we can connect each other better, we can even solve problems of communication by having WhatsApp. We have coordinated assignments and posted supplementary materials to help each other.

When thinking about our students, the social networks have become essential tools for teaching and learning. In this case it is pivotal to optimize the potential of them to create spaces to learn and produce learning opportunities. When we understand our audience (students), we can take these tools (social networks) to engage learning. At the end, the educational goal is to help students interact and exchange information, this is what social networks were created for. By showing students skills to learn in collaboration with social networks and applications students will benefit from different educational experiences. This is a reason why there is a new curriculum in the educational setting in Costa Rica to promote learning though the use of Information Communication Technologies. This is not a trend, I believe it is a necessity now and for future generations.