Holly Hubbard

Amanda Foss

Chad Strawn

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47133/tegc_ch23  

ABSTRACT

Technology enriches English classrooms by providing students with engaging, authentic ways to develop their language skills. As English teachers, we can help our students improve their literacy skills and oral language proficiency by incorporating digital tools into our language lessons. These digital tools can empower students to collaborate with classmates, and, together, they co-construct meaning for learning both language and content. However, because digital tools are constantly evolving and new types are being created, we need to know how to select the best digital tools for instructional purposes to help our learners acquire knowledge and, also, develop their language skills. Similarly, we need to know how to design digital assessment tools to track our students’ growth in literacy, oral proficiency, and technological proficiency. In this chapter, you will explore reasons for incorporating technology in your language classroom. You will learn how to select the most appropriate digital tools for your students. You will also learn about designing lessons with technology and evaluating results from teacher-made, self-assessment tools. 

Keywords: instructional technology, language classrooms, English learners, digital tools, language development, virtual teaching strategies

How to cite this chapter: 

Hubbard, H., Foss, A. & Strawn, C. (2023). Integrating Technology in Language Classrooms. In V. Canese & S. Spezzini (Eds.), Teaching English in Global Contexts, Language, Learners and Learning (pp. 279-287). Editorial Facultad de Filosofía, UNA. https://doi.org/10.47133/tegc_ch23 

INTRODUCTION

The students in our English classes have grown up in a digital environment. They are digital natives who—even before entering school—know how to use age-appropriate technology. As teachers of these digital natives, we need to become familiar with evolving technologies and be able to maximize our use of digital tools (e.g., apps and websites). To engage our digital natives with meaningful learning, we need to know how to infuse these digital tools into our content and language lessons. We also need to know how to use the running assessment records that usually accompany these tools. When we regularly infuse digital tools in our instruction, our students will be empowered for creating projects with multimodal media (speech, sound, movement, print) through which they can further develop their receptive skills (listening, speaking) and productive skills (speaking, writing). As a guide to integrating technology in language classrooms, this chapter examines multimodal projects, describes successful digital projects, explains digital assessment records, and explores how digital tools enhance learning experiences for digital natives.  

BACKGROUND

Students benefit from learning English through multimodalities. In addition to written text, the students’ multimodal projects include movement, gestures, speech, and sound. All of these serve to expand language learners’ “literacy repertories and means of expression” (Angay-Crowder et al., 2013, p. 42). Multimodal digital projects have been shown to support English learners with constructing meaning (Choi & Yi, 2015). The integration of these projects into lessons expands opportunities for language acquisition in ways that empower and enrich English learners (Smith et al., 2020). Digital tools with visuals, sound, and text provide English learners with engaging opportunities to scaffold their writing and speaking skills in ways that have been transformative to their sense of identity and to viewing themselves as language users (Cummins et al., 2015; Leu et al., 2004). By creating these digital projects, English learners use various modalities to engage with multiple audiences such as their classmates, teachers, and community (Kim, 2018). Studies have shown that multimodal digital projects help English learners make meaning across subject areas and disciplines (Goulah, 2017; Grapin, 2019). By doing so, English learners can develop their academic and social language skills in ways that expand beyond the traditional print-based texts (Miller, 2007).

MAJOR DIMENSIONS

To fully engage digital natives, integrate digital tools in your English lessons. After your English learners master the technology skills needed for a specific class project, both by repurposing already known digital tools and by learning new ones, they often continue using these same tools and, thus, further develop their language skills (Grapin, 2019). 

Select Devices and Digital Tools

When selecting devices and digital tools, think about your lesson plans and the availability of digital tools. Search the internet and explore the wide array of digital tools. When researching each tool, consider how accessible it is, how easily your students can use this tool, and how it can support each of the four domains of language (listening, speaking, reading, writing). It may take some time to find answers to these questions, but this is a necessary step. After selecting your digital tools, spend time teaching yourself how to use them. As you practice each tool, think about the language domains your students could develop by using this tool and determine which domain would be a good fit with a specific tool. Also, think about the possible use of each of these digital tools in your current and future lessons.

Incorporate Digital Tools in Your Lessons

After selecting your devices and digital tools, consider how best to incorporate these devices and tools within your lessons, preferably lessons where language and content are taught together. Think about your objectives for each lesson and decide if you want to focus on oral skills (listening, speaking), literacy skills (reading, writing), or both. Initially use these lessons to build background, enhance vocabulary, and encourage literacy strategies. Project-based learning in literature, history, science, and mathematics provide an excellent context for incorporating technology into lessons at the elementary and secondary school levels (Choi & Yi, 2015; Goulah, 2017; Grapin, 2019). At the elementary school level, students can create their own books and record videos or virtual storyboards with comic strips. At the secondary school level, students can write a book summary, create a project with their own artwork, and record themselves narrating the key concepts from that book. 

Differentiate Based on Student Needs

Consider using digital tools with appropriate scaffolding to differentiate instruction based on students’ individual language acquisition needs (Rance-Roney, 2011). For each selected tool, carefully explore your teacher-level web account for that tool and identify the teacher supports available when using this tool. Such supports could be a video tutorial or another ready-made resource to facilitate your use and your students’ use of this digital tool. Now equipped with supports, teach students to access and operate this digital tool. As needed, provide additional support. Decide how to differentiate support for students with different needs. For example, students with higher language proficiency usually need less scaffolding, and students with lower language proficiency usually need more scaffolding. Provide scaffolding to these students by pairing them with peers who are more comfortable using English. Scaffold by giving students access to additional resources such as word banks and sentence stems. Finally, scaffold by reducing or expanding the number of options or decisions that students will make when creating their project. 

Use Rubrics to Assess Student Learning

Digital tools are also effective as assessment resources because they provide you with a running record of student progress over time (Choi & Yi, 2015). Before introducing a digital tool to your students, decide how you will assess what your students learned from having used this tool to create their projects. Start by listing the learning expectations that you want students to master. Based on these learning expectations and your lesson objectives, select the most appropriate rubric from among many that are accessible online. Or create your own rubric. These same assessment rubrics can be used by students to evaluate their own learning.

PEDAGOGICAL APPLICATIONS

When incorporating digital tools in your lessons, create opportunities for students to further develop their receptive and productive language skills. The use of digital tools to develop language skills is demonstrated here through two projects: digital theater and book tasting.

Digital Theater

Digital Theater creates an exciting venue for incorporating digital tools to promote language development. If your school is sufficiently resourced to provide tablets to each student, your students can use these school-provided tablets with free or low-cost apps to create digital puppet shows or plays on an app such as PuppetPals. Students can select from among diverse characters and backgrounds provided by the app, take photos of themselves and convert their photos into characters, or draw characters and animals to incorporate into their story. After students have decided on their characters and backgrounds, they begin to build their story. They plan and outline their story using a comic strip format. This format has bubbles in which students write captions for what their characters will say. 

When students are ready to create their digital theater production, they click the record button for their selected digital application such as PuppetPals. After doing this, they provide animation by moving their characters around the screen. The students also add voice narration or speak for the characters. Multiple students can work together to create this digital project with several different characters. In the schools where we teach English as a second language (ESL), our English learners have created digital theater productions of Animal Farm, Where the Wild Things Are, and Beowulf, and they have enacted interviews with historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela. One scene from our students’ digital Animal Farm production is provided in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Example of a Digital Puppet Show That Summarizes Animal Farm

Note. This is one of the backgrounds available in the Puppet Pal app

Because this digital theater production uses puppets, shy students are often willing to speak even if they are reluctant to do so during other activities. Being the puppet’s voice can make an English learner feel empowered because if errors occur, these errors are the puppet’s fault (and not the student’s).

Book Tasting

Book Tasting works well to motivate students about reading. The teacher places several books at stations positioned around the room. Students walk to the different book tasting stations. At each station, they taste the books by looking at the pictures and reading a few pages. After all students have chosen their own book, they read their book alone. After finishing their books, they work together in creating virtual book reviews. These book reviews are recorded using a digital device. The students then share their book reviews on various platforms.

To prepare students for doing their virtual book reviews, first explain the elements to be included in this type of book review (title, author, brief description, hook, and rating). After that, show your students how to organize this information and then model how to record it. Consider providing students with a self-assessment rubric that describes what is expected of them when doing their virtual book review. When designing this rubric, consider including criteria such as book elements (title, author, genre, summary), language use (variety of sentence structures), audience engagement (eye contact, gestures), and presentation skills (clear, well-rehearsed, respectful). 

After modeling how to record this virtual book review, have your students work in groups to reach a shared understanding of what is expected and how to go about it. After becoming well versed in this process, students record their individual book reviews. In our classes, students have usually used one of these apps: PuppetPals, Book Creator, Canva, VoiceThread, Storybird, Little Bird Tales, and SeeSaw (URLs are provided in the Expanding Further section). These are just a few of the many apps that can be downloaded from educational websites and app stores. However, instead of using an app to record their book review, students can use a standard voice recorder or video recorder.

Through these creative virtual projects, our English learners have participated in numerous opportunities for using English in engaging and meaningful ways. Their recorded book reviews have provided us, their teachers, with a running record to assess all modalities of language. We have also shared our learners’ virtual projects with their content teachers, such as for literature and history, to demonstrate these students’ content knowledge and growth. We have even featured these book reviews as QR codes posted in the school library close to where these books are displayed. And, finally, we have shared these videos with teachers and their students in neighboring schools as examples for how they can also do their own digital book reviews. 

In this chapter on technology, you learned about selecting digital tools, incorporating these digital tools in your language lessons, differentiating for student needs, and using assessment rubrics. You also learned about digital theater and book tasting as examples of student projects. By introducing these digital projects in your language classes, your students will enjoy using digital tools to learn English just like our students have been doing. Be creative and have fun!

Here are some key concepts about using technology:

• Multimodal digital projects can help students make meaning across content areas, expand their literacy practices, and acquire English.

• Digital theater projects and virtual book tastings are examples of lessons that include technology and help develop productive and receptive language skills.

• Before starting to incorporate technology, identify available resources.

• Research the availability of digital resources and apps for potentially using them in your lessons.

• After identifying the learning objectives and assessment goals for a lesson, decide how to incorporate a digital tool into this lesson. 

Based on your knowledge about technology, develop meaningful answers to these questions:

1. How has technology impacted your learning? What technological resources do you already use? How can you apply these resources to the teaching of English?

2. How can technology be used to create collaborative learning opportunities within the language classroom?

3. What are the benefits of using technology to assess student learning?

4. Describe a technological resource that can be used to simultaneously promote listening, speaking, reading, and writing

To practice using what you have learned about technology, do the following:

1. Look up several digital resources that you could use in your classroom. Take notes about learning opportunities that each resource could provide. 

2. Write a lesson plan featuring one digital tool. Consider the learning objectives and create a rubric to assess learning.

Here are some free online resources for using digital tools and rubrics in your classes:

• Capacity for up to 40 student-created publishable e-books. https://bookcreator.com/  

• Free infographic design website. https://www.canva.com/ 

• Rubric creator. https://www.rubriccreator.com 

• Rubrics in K-12. https://schoolbox.com.au/blog/how-to-use-rubrics-in-k-12-education/ 

• Student subaccounts to create digital word walls. https://www.pbworks.com/education    

• Vocabulary learning to practice in four language domains. https://www.learningchocolate.com/ 

Technology, literature, and rubrics are also addressed in other chapters of this book: 

Chapter 2 The Diversity of Global Englishes by L. Barratt

Chapter 11 Using Social Media to Enhance Language Awareness by S. Terol and J. Amarilla

Chapter 24 Teaching in Virtual and Hybrid Classrooms by Y. Grevtseva and E. Zyrianova

Chapter 27 Implementing Actionable Gamification Design in ELT by F. Esquivel

Chapter 28 Teaching English to Young Learners Through Authentic Literature by S. Ruffinelli and C. Ortiz

Chapter 29 Using Theater to Teach English by C. Ortiz and M. Vaky

Chapter 43 Strategies to Teach Integrated Skills by L. Fuller

Chapter 47 Authentic Assessment of, for, and as Learning by G. Díaz Maggioli

Chapter 49 E-Portfolios to Assess Language Learning by B. Jiménez

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Choi, J., & Yi, Y. (2015). Teachers' integration of multimodality into classroom practices for English language learners. TESOL Journal, 7(2). 304-327. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.204 

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Goulah, J. (2017). Climate change and TESOL: Language, literacies, and the creation of eco-ethical consciousness. TESOL Quarterly, 51(1), 90–114. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.277 

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Kim, S. (2018, February). “It was kind of a given that we were all multilingual”: Transnational youth identity work in digital translanguaging. Linguistics and Education, 43, 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2017.10.008  

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Miller, S. M. (2007). English teacher learning for new times: Digital video composing as multimodal literacy practice (EJ786380). English Education, 40(1), 64–83.

Rance-Roney, J. (2011). Jump-starting language and schema for English-language learners: Teacher-composed digital jumpstarts for academic reading. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53(5), 386–395. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1598/JAAL.53.5.4  

Smith, B. E., Pacheco, M. B., & Khorosheva, M. (2020). Emergent bilingual students and digital multimodal composition: A systematic review of research in secondary classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(1). 33-52. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.298 

Holly Hubbard teaches K-12 ESL with the Etowah County Schools in Gadsden, Alabama (USA). Holly holds a doctorate in instructional leadership with a concentration in social and cultural studies from the University of Alabama (USA) and an education specialist (Ed.S.) degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is interested in how ESL and content teachers collaborate and how students can use technology for acquiring language.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0480-2393 

Email for correspondence regarding this chapter: holly_hubbard@ecboe.org

Amanda Foss teaches K-12 ESL for the Etowah County Schools in Gadsden, Alabama. Amanda is a National Board Certified Teacher in ESL and has a master’s degree in ESL and an Ed.S. in TESOL from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is interested in how long-term English Learners build their language identity. She is also interested in how technology can support the four domains of language.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-4826-2554 

Chad Strawn teaches K-12 ESL for the Etowah County Schools in Gadsden, Alabama. Chad also teaches adult English language acquisition at Gadsden State Community College. He has a master’s degree in ESL from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Chad is interested in helping English learners be successful in their new learning environments by using technology. He is also interested in how teachers collaborate to support English learners. 

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6040-5867 

Cover Photo by Ilya Sonin on Unsplash