Social Networking Group

This website shows that connecting to other people in order to learn the knowledge of the field in which is interested is important in learning in digital era. Technology allows people to have a community on internet website.

EFL Classroom 2.0 is community of many of English teachers and learners. It seems to be very useful to current teachers in EFL context or those who are planning to teach English in EFL context. People can get a lot of useful resources, materials, and ideas for their classroom through this website. Also, they can experience indirectly through many teachers who are having or had teaching experience in EFL context. In addition, through this web site, teachers can share ideas with other teachers and discuss teaching strategies or skills. Even for learners, they can get helpful materials for learning English as well.

Tell A Story Using Google Maps

I got a very good idea for teaching storytelling using Google map from Graham Wegner's blog. He said that this is a great tool for creating narratives, histories, mathematical journeys etc. I really liked the idea of using Google map for his story of journey as an educator using Google map. Here’s the link to the story he created as the example of a storytelling.  I think, if students use this tool for making a storytelling, they can present their autobiography or a story of journey very effectively, especially, in a multicultural classroom. Also, I believe that this tool will be very good to get students interested in a classroom.

http://gwegner.edublogs.org/

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Pay attention

       It seems what this video is trying to say is that today’s people can’t live without technology and use technology for almost human activity, especially in teaching. I could realize how much students who are digital learners spend time on using technology by looking at the statistics through this video. Also, it made me think about how much I need to use technology in my future classroom. After watching this video, I felt that I need to use technology to teach, reach, and  engage students more effectively.

SLA, Language Teaching, and Technology

Chapter 1 in his book, Blake pointed out that “the process of learning second language other than the mother tongue is an intensive and time-consuming activity” (Blake 2008, 1) by showing the Foreign Service Institute (FSI)’ s estimate. According to FSI, it takes from four to six years to reach functional proficiency in a second language. Most SLA theorists agree on that, in order to make the process of L2 faster and more effective, L2 learners need to contact with the target language more, and formal L2 teaching is often unsuccessful because learners did not received sufficient input in the target language in EFL context or even in ESL context. Therefore, Blake suggested that technology can offer not only efficiency, but also sufficient input in both ESL and EFL context.

Blake argued that learning language is best learned and taught through social interaction. For example, interaction of learners and their interlocutors, and mutual comprehension of each other’s message meaning assist language learning. Therefore, he suggested that online websites, applications and CDs and computer-mediated communications (CMC) via networking functionality and technology will be good tools to assist learning language.

I also agree with Blake’s argument that L2 learners need to contact with the target language as much as possible through social interaction of their peers and instructors with technology tools. When I compare my current English proficiency with that of past four years, it has been improved a lot. I could learn English from Facebook, text messaging, online website, and movies etc. As a person who is planning to teach English in Korea, I am willing to use technology in my future class so that my students can contact with English as much as possible. I believe that it will help students learn English effectively.   


Blake, Robert J.  & Dorothy M. Chun.  (2008)  Brave New Digital Classroom: Technology and Foreign Language Learning.  Washington, D.C. :Georgetown University Press