The integration of ICT in our EFL classrooms.

It is difficult to deny that the inclusion of ICT in the EFL classroom can benefit the learning environment, and also the students’ learning process. It is true that most teachers are not prepared to deal with technology inside the classroom, or they may just refuse to do it because they follow a traditional teacher-centered way of teaching. However, today’s students live in a world surrounded and ruled by technology, and teachers of English must take this factor into consideration when planning their lessons. In this sense, it is necessary for them to update their teaching methodologies by introducing technology in the EFL classroom.

Mark Prensky explains that students who attend to school today, were born surrounded by technology. They use it almost every day, in every aspect of their lives. This students are “Digital Natives” since they use technology and think and process information in a new way, quite different from their teachers who were born some years before the technological boom and have to adapt to these new ways of communicating and learning. In this sense, teachers are considered “Digital Inmigrants” who need to adapt to the new current times, and re-think about the methodology they implement to teach any content to this new generations of students (2001; 1-3).

Following this line, in the chapter ‘Claves para integrar las TIC en la escuela’, Batista et. al (2007) proposes three keys about how to include ICT inside the classroom, and particularly thinking about the teaching in a foreign language.

The first key refers to how to establish a relationship with technology, how to create learning environments with ICT, and learning in relation to technology possibilities which are of considerably importance if we take into consideration the fact that adolescents nowadays are surrounded and shaped by the use of technology (2007; 35)

The second key is one which should be considered of extreme importance since it deals with the volume of the information, and the skills that are needed for the handling of the information, trying to avoid 'data smog’.  That is why he suggests distinguishing the useful, credible, interesting or important information. This is particularly relevant if we want our students to learn how to handle available information on the web. There must be cautious instructions on how to select information, what sources available are relevant and what others are not (Batista et. al. 2007; 44).

Lastly, the third key proposed in that chapter exposes some other ways to organize the information to be taught and the use audiovisual elements, as well as the inclusion of multimedia and the hypermedia to teach contents from a different perspective (2007; 53).

To sum up, it is possible to say that the inclusion of ICT in the English classroom is not just using a computer and a led projector to teach the same contents as years before. Teachers must take advantage of the use and implementation of technology inside their classrooms, so that they can help students to become aware of the amount of information that they might come across with, select, transform and create knowledge that could be useful for somebody else. I this sense, they will hopefully transform their way of learning and change their perspective as regards learning at school.

References

Batista, M. A., Celso, V. E., Usubiaga, G. G. (2007). Tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en la escuela: trazos, claves y oportunidades para su integración pedagógica. Bs. As.: Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología de la Nación.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. MCB University Press, Vol. No.5.