Principles of Technology Use in Educational Settings

PRINCIPLES OF TECHNOLOGY USE IN EDUCATIONAL
SETTINGS
In the Introduction to this book, we referenced Appendices A and B the ISTE/NETS
technology standards. Rather than repeat them here again, we wanted to highlight
some best practices for using technology with ELLs. These do's of technology use
will provide a realistic motivation for content-area teachers to steadily integrate
technology into the classroom.
Know Your Students

In order to use IT on an ongoing basis in your lessons, it is important to become
familiar with your own students' familiarity with technology. Most students will
readily text message a friend on their cell phone, or know how to access a social
networking site such as http://www.myspace.com orhttp://www.facebook.com, or
download music to their iPods and MP3 players but this does not necessarily mean
they are techno-literate.
One way to gauge students' computer literacy levels is to conduct a needs
assessment at the beginning of the year. Teachers can easily construct a short
survey or adapt one found online such as the one located at
http://www.mccsc.edu/survey.html. The results of the needs assessment will enable
a teacher to better judge how much technology to infuse into a lesson and how
much scaffolding a teacher needs in order to support student learning.
However, it is very important to be aware that teachers cannot expect students to
learn technology and English and content all at the same time. Remember, just as
teachers need to take baby steps when trying to infuse technology, so too do
students when they are equally trying to get their heads around the technology.
Choosing Materials
Instructional technology is marvelous for accessing authentic materials as well as
creating original resources. Well, as teachers we need to be aware of creating tasks
that fit the students in terms of their learning potential and computer literacy level
(Chapelle, 2001). In addition, venturing out from students' strengths can serve to
motivate especially ELLs to use the specific aspect of English they need to master
(Erben, Ban, Jin, & Summers, 2007). Erben et al. suggest that using purposeful and
contextualized IT materials allow students to apply their knowledge of their world to

content and language learning tasks. For ELLs this translates into the following
potential IT activities:
For ELLs at the preproduction stage (level 1), choosing technology that supports
text with images such as photos, graphs, or charts is highly advisable since it links
text with its visual representation and acts equally as a mnemonic device.
For ELLs at the early production stage (level 2), in addition to those listed for level 1
ELLs, choosing ITs that promote vocabulary, grammar, and listening acquisition
such as exercise builders, as well as digital stories, audio podcasts and online videos
(YouTube) is recommended since all ELLs will go through a silent period when
learning English. This means that, before speaking, ELLs will spend a lot of time just
trying to understand their linguistic environment. To help them at this time it is
more important to create language rich opportunities to further their listening
comprehension strategies.
For ELLs at the intermediate fluency stage (level 3), in addition to those listed for
level 1 and 2 ELLs, it is important to use ITs that promote speaking, reading and
writing skills such as synchronous VoIPs (skype.com, gizmo.com), online elaborated
texts and process writing tools such as writeboard.com.
For ELLs at the speech emergent stage (level 4), in addition to those listed for level
1, 2, and 3 ELLs, it is important to promote an ELLs CALP, in other words, their
subject-specific language ability. ITs that would naturally support this are tools that
work in tandem with each other. Examples of this include a website or VLE that
combines multiple links to e-communication tools, e-listening tools, e-creation tools,
and e-assessment tools (see Part 3).
Students Working with Technology

One of the biggest challenges of technology integration into classroom tasks is the
shift in the role of the teacher (Doering & Beach, 2002; Parks, Huot, Hamers, &
Lemonnier, 2003). As our nine-point continuum of IT use indicates, it is inevitable
that, the more a teacher employs instructional technology in the classroom, the less
teacher-centered and the more student-centered a classroom will become.
Technology-enhanced classrooms have been found to promote discovery learning,
learner autonomy, and learner-centeredness. In 2000, Kramsch, A'Ness, and Lam
pointed out that new ITs are changing our very concept of authorship. Students not
only write text but change the very rules by which texts are written (Warschauer,
2006). In other words, new ITs are creating new possibilities of student agency. For
ELLs this translates into ELLs directly seeing the results of their learning choices in
terms of ever-increasing English language abilities. A further means by which
teachers can promote learner autonomy through the infusion of ITs is to allow
students to work collaboratively in pairs or small groups where they can engage in
interactive problem-solving or cooperative projects.
Language Use
Research in language learning and IT use in classroom settings has over the years
clearly come out in favor of its beneficial effects on second language development
(Lee, 2004; Belz, 2001). Especially in networked collaborative interactions, use of
emails, bulletin boards, and chat rooms has been found to promote lively
exchanges between native and non-native speakers in addition to fostering
scaffolding of ideas and grammar (Toyoda & Harrison, 2002). More importantly,
using ITs to foster collaborative communication among students has been shown to
foster proficiency in all language skill areas-speaking, writing, reading, and listening,
including intercultural communication (Jin & Erben, 2007). In an interesting study,
Lotherington and Xu (2004) investigated the computer-mediated communications
between English and Chinese speakers using instant messaging. Their analyses
found that the second language learners were strikingly creative in their use of
spelling, word order, discourse, and sociocultural conventions-a clear indication that
the use of instructional technologies for communicative purposes promotes
language play, an important factor in second language development. There is a
place for both types of communication in the classroom and the trick for teachers is
to try to create IT activities that foster both types of interaction-communicatively
accurate interactions and communicatively effective interactions.
Challenges of Technology Use in Classrooms

Whenever one is working with ITs one needs to be aware of the potential
frustrations and how to avoid them. At the most basic level are the "technical
difficulties," which serve to frustrate teachers more than anything else. These
"technical difficulties" can range anywhere from a burnt out bulb on an overhead
projector to the computer screen freezing on you during the middle of a PowerPoint
presentation. Other potential problem situations, especially those that can create
classroom management situations, are when the teacher has students visit a
website to conduct research and many of the links on the website are broken or
when the students are ready to utilize a particular online tool and the server that
hosts the website is temporarily down.
There are also other types of limitations with which teachers should be familiar. In
many school districts across the country, school district administrations have
security blocks in place so that students cannot access questionable sites from
school computers.
Nowadays, with websites such as YouTube at http://www.youtube.com, much of
what students and teachers can access contains video material. For ELLs, seeing a
person during communicative acts helps scaffold comprehension because an ELL
will also look at a person's body language and facial expressions to help encode the
meaning of a message. For example, look at the following textual interaction over
email.
Another challenge that may concern many teachers hoping to infuse IT into their
classroom is the issue of classroom control. In a traditional class, the teacher is the
center of teaching and learning. Thus, it is easy for the teacher to monitor what
goes on in the classroom. Often teachers see tight control as a means to safeguard
positive student behaviors. Since ITs do facilitate learner centeredness and student
independence, students used only to teacher-fronted approaches may feel lost in a
poorly designed technology-enhanced classroom. From a behavior management
perspective, teachers need to train students to work effectively in different types of
learning environments. IT-infused classrooms are no exception. Therefore, to ensure
optimal use of technologies in a content-area class, a pedagogically sound teaching
plan is necessary. Both teachers and students should be aware of the general
principles when carrying out online activities and when using ITs.

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PRINCIPLES OF TECHNOLOGY USE IN EDUCATIONAL

Know Your Students

contextualized IT materials allow students to apply their knowledge of their world to

Students Working with Technology

Challenges of Technology Use in Classrooms

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