Using ICT in ELT

The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan - we learn what we do. Postman and Weingartner's Teaching as a Subversive Activity (p.28-9) comment thus: This means that the most important impressions made on a human nervous system come from the character and structure of the environment within which the nervous system functions; that the environment itself conveys the critical and dominant messages by controlling the perceptions and attitudes of those who participate in it.

The message is:

- the perceptions you are allowed to build
- the attitudes you are enticed to assume
- the sensitivities you are encouraged to develop

The classroom is an environment too. The way it is organised carries the burden of what people will learn from it.

This is the end of my P & W quote. Their work pre-dates ICT by about three decades, although they do discuss educational technology, such that it was in the 1960s, later in the book, see p.149. What is of such interest in the medium being the message is that the new media of ICT and in particular Web 2.0., is a new environment. If it has been demonstrated that " the most important impressions made on a human nervous system come from the character and structure of the environment within which the nervous system functions", then claims such as "digital natives" are wired differently, think differently, are likely to be true.

We could take from neuroscience science studies as reported in How People Learn:

Research evidence suggests that activity in the nervous system associated with learning experiences somehow causes nerve cells to create new synapses. ... Alterations in the brain that occur during learning seem to make the nerve cells more efficient or powerful. (Bransford, Brown, Cocking (1999:107)

Luke Meddings, writing in the Guardian (2006) about the PARSNIP stranglehold on coursebooks, and not ICT, makes a similar point:

The real issue is not the content, but the delivery mode. Depending on a coursebook to supply the stimulus for language learning is like expecting youth TV to deliver the authentic experience of being young. Youth is about experience, not representation (discuss). Learning a language is about constant experiment, not rehearsal and performance.

Prensky claims that “today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors” (Prensky, 2001:1) He contends that “Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet.” (Prensky, 2001:1) and advocates that “today’s teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students” Prensky, 2001:2). This view is supported and illustrated by Professor Philip Zimbardo in the video, The Secret Powers of Time, viewable via Youtube. In Sir Ken Robinson's talk, Bring on the learning revolution (see TED), he echoes not only Prensky and Zimbardo, but Postman and Weingartner as well. The idea of a watch being a single function device crops up in addition to the now obvious reference to digital natives.

Conversely, if there is no verification of the environment making the most important impression on our nervous system, then we are back in cloud cuckoo land. "Most important" is clearly not quantifiable and reads not scientifically, but that may be due to the readership the authors had in mind.

The abstract to Learning with technology: A constructivist perspective

by D H Jonassen, K L Peck, B G Wilson contains a great deal of valuable information.

The medium seduces

How many well-intentioned hours have been spilt by teachers creating matching exercises, crosswords and gapfills using programs such as Hot Potatoes without any thought being given to how students can learn from them?

For help making them, try Tools for Educators.

Bloom's taxonomy blooms digitally.

Halliday

In short, Systemic Functional Linguistic theory states that particular aspects of a given context (such as the topics discussed, the language users and the medium of communication) define the meanings likely to be expressed and the language likely to be used to express those meanings.

- The short link for this page is http://bit.ly/MAELT_ICT
- James' daily use of ICT in teaching is being recorded in this journal.
- You can download Educating the Net Generation, as a complete book.
- See Russell Stannard's mega site, TTV.

Links to other ICT in Language Teaching here: