Articles

New Technologies for 21^st Century Teachers

Language teachers of the current era consider their teaching experience as a challenging one, as they need to provide learning experiences to students through latest technologies. They have to acquire a working knowledge of using those technologies in order to offer such an experience to students. It is believed that teacher training programs give opportunities to teachers to update their knowledge of new technological tools. Why do we need to provide such hands on experience? The reason is that, when teachers get a working knowledge it would help them to deliver lectures very effectively, offer training to students by using the tools and also make a positive impact on students’ learning even beyond the four walls of a classroom. Let us see how these factors could be achieved. A few experts in ELT have shared their views and have also demonstrated the possibility of providing a different and interesting teaching and learning experience by using a few digital tools.

Dr P.N. Ramani, English Studies Consultant, mentions that teachers can create interactive and engaging presentations using tools such as Zoho and Prezi. He believes that creating and editing audio clips will help teachers to customize their presentations. According to him, presenters will also be able to present confidently in conferences, as it paves the way for growing professionally.

Digital technology is moving at such a fast pace with new services being rendered continuously that provide a platform for open access to learning. According to Dr. Revathi Viswanathan, ELT Consultant & Teacher Trainer, teachers have to learn the ways to curate, organise and share digital resources through sites such as Digigo and Scoop-it as they prove useful to the educational needs of students. Further, she believes that blogging provides an interactive space for the students to develop writing skills. In addition to this, teachers can create a digital classroom through digital portfolios by using Seesaw, a web based tool. It provides them a platform for active participation of both the student and the teacher.

Another trainer for Educational Technology, Dr Xavier Pradheep Singh, St. Joseph's College, Trichy stresses the need for gamification to encourage the learning process. He believes that teachers can use digital quizzes to test the knowledge of the students in a competitive manner with the help of Nearpod . According to him, teachers can create interactive video content through Edpuzzle, by focusing on audio-visual aspect of learning. Dr. Xavier emphasizes that teachers have to concentrate on creating posters and infographics in order to offer a very interesting learning experience to 21^st century learners.

This issue presents the worksheets prepared by the trainers during the national workshop conducted by ELT@I in collaboration with Loyola college in December 2019. The trainers focused on the tools mentioned in the short write up given in this issue. The purpose is to highlight the possibilities of using the digital tools for enhancing students' learning within and beyond a classroom.