We are teachers of the language of global communication. And that communication is increasingly digitally mediated. …If our learners are to be fully functional citizens in the 21st century, they need digital skills. We can promote these skills in parallel with teaching English. Digital skills and English can help many of our adult learners get ahead in the workplace, or prepare our younger learners for better future job opportunities. And equally important, they can make our classes a lot more relevant and interesting in the here and now.
Henry Jenkins (2009)
As an educator I need to encompass digital technologies to maintain motivation and interest for students in learning English. I am aware that now many of my students are millennials and so-called digital natives who have easily interacted with digital technology since early childhood. Even if these same students are limited with how to navigate themselves around technology they expect to see it in the course. However, by creating a virtual collaborative learning environment in a language classroom we are embracing a Constructivist learning principle acknowledging that ‘people construct new knowledge with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing products that are personally meaningful’ (Resnick, 1997, pp. 23–24 as cited in Crisp, 2014.)
Having these multimodal collaborative virtual environments in an ESOL classroom, such as the project trialled in the article, would be revolutionary as students could be using all their senses in their learning experience. The idea that there are 3 dimensions of immersion: spatial immersion, emotional immersion and temporal immersion (Doumanis et al., 2018)and being able to create virtual environments where the learners could interact in real-time and have real-time responses would produce this immersion.
Imagine in either a formal classroom setting or in an informal context the language learner having the opportunity to move in a virtual world in a country where English is spoken and interact with people in real-life situations. This is related to t Connectivism with learners having seemingly unlimited access to resources creating unique language learner experiences. Suddenly the language would become relevant and meaningful. I also think that with the students having some sort of anonymity it would ease some of the confidence barriers, while the students having the opportunity to practice chunks or dialogue without the feeling that someone is watching and monitoring. Virtual games could also be collaborative creating a community where the students can peer review and give and get instantaneous feedback. Due to this it can allow teachers to scaffold the development of skills and competencies. (Crisp, 2014).
Gamification and virtual reality in Next generation learning spaces (NGLS) (Crisp 2014) are areas that have a place especially in an ESOL context. However, as it stands at the moment I think it has limitations. Something that I found interesting the TESOLANZ EAP/Assessment Symposium that I attended in July, was that digital technologies even in 2019 seem to be hardly addressed in the ESOL world. It seems to me that many are seeing the barriers such as budgets, resourcing, time and access more than the potential to help with giving students vital feedback and peer review by using technology. There is also the concern that even though the learner engages with the online learning materials it doesn’t “guarantee that the intended learning will occur” and there are often little opportunities for the students to get involved.” (Doumanis et al., 2018, p. 122) These considerations will be impertinent in my classes so that I can align the learning outcomes with the entertainment of the technology.
As James Gee states in his video Learning with video games “the game is only half the picture: understanding the game, explicating it, discussing it, researching the specialised language” this can also be applied the English language classroom and something that needs to be considered.
References:
Crisp, G. T. (2014). Assessment in the next generation learning spaces. In K. Fraser (Ed.), The future of learning and teaching in next generation learning spaces (pp. 85-100). Bradford, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Ho, C. M. L., Nelson, M. E., & Müeller-Wittig, W. (2011). Design and implementation of a student-generated virtual museum in a language curriculum to enhance collaborative multimodal meaning-making. Computers & Education, 57(1), 1083–1097. https://doi-org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.12.003
Dudeny, G. Digital literacy primer. Retrieved from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/gavin-dudeney-digital-literacy-primer
Dudeney, G. 21st Century Skills and Digital Literacies in Action . Retrieved from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/gavin-dudeney-21st-century-skills-digital-literacy-action
Henscheid, Gary. (2015). Cognitive Theory and Motivation in the EFL Classroom. Studies in International Relations. (35) 61-70.
Menon, E., Kneen., J., Mitchell, S., Anderson, T., Warren, C., & Rank, T. ICT: Opportunity Missed? NATE: Teaching English 20, 15-16.
Salen, K. Gamification in Education. Retrieved from https://www.learning-theories.com/gamification-in-education.html
Virginia Forbes Learning Design Portfolio 