Seven Principles for Technology-Enhanced Classrooms
The fourth principle, that Good Practice Gives Prompt Feedback, is a challenge in even the smallest of language classrooms because one teacher is speaking to many students with vastly different target language skills. And it’s even harder for every student to be able to speak back to the teacher and receive regular, personalized feedback. Technologies like DiLL (Digital Language Lab) can help buffer this situation by allowing students to process aural input at their pace and then respond when they are ready. One of the most common classroom activities teachers used on DiLL is called a Lesson Task. This is where a teacher selects or creates a listening comprehension activity to which students can respond at their own pace.
Here is an example of what the student hears + my response (if these clips are truncating in Firefox, try Safari):
Teacher Prompts + Student Response
Here are five student responses to the same questions (what the teacher hears when reviewing student responses online):
And here are two quick examples of Angelica Guerrero’s fifth graders presenting on Hispanos Famosos. In this situation, there was no audio prompt. Students were asked to simply present to the computer as if they were presenting to the class. This is a wonderful way to give each student a chance to practice speaking out loud without making the class sit through an entire hour of just listening to each other’s work. The teacher can review the student recordings on her own time and give feedback privately to each student. She can also distribute the recordings back to the students so they can hear their own voices and recognize their own mistakes.
Age-appropriate and language-level appropriate conversation is key to language acquisition and we are fortunate to have a tool like DiLL, which can facilitate an experience approximating the immersion experience without the pressure to immediately respond. Other tools that we haven’t really tested yet include chat rooms, classroom blogging and/or chatting, communicating from classroom to classroom or country to country using Skype, and “typing-only” classes, where information is relayed via communication technologies only.
As for other real-life language simulation, I’ve been keeping my eye on the development of safe, educational, online spaces in something like Second Life, where students could potentially converse with native speakers of their target language who are their own age, or play virtual scavenger hunts that require the use of their current language skills. Even if a student isn’t completely enamored with language per se, I can see a big advantage to using language in the context of virtual realities. The target language might suddenly become relevant to increasing numbers of students if it becomes a real tool that they can use to communicate, explore, and make stuff.
