Blogs, wikis and delicious

 

How can blogs, wikis and delicious be used in the Saudi EFL context?

Frist of all, in order to use these technologies in our Saudi context, we should have an idea about these websites:

 

 

¨ Blog:
A blog (a combination of the term web+ log) is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first).

 

 

 

 

 

¨ Wiki:
Is a website which allows its users to add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser usually using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor.Wikis are powered by wiki software. Most are created collaboratively. Wikis serve many different purposes, such as knowledge management and notetaking. Wikis can be community websites and intranets.

 

¨ Delicious:
Is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005.

 

 

In my opinion these website can improve the students' skills especially writing and communication skills. Also it provides better educational services; it helps to learn through sharing information and discussion. It helps to activate learners ' skills and increase their ability for creative thinking in different way because of the communication between different educated people. It also provides amount of fun and entertainment for learners but this fun will be for education purpose. It enhances the spirit of communication between the teacher and students. The Saudi teacher can benefit from these websites when she/he wants to evaluate and assesse her/his students' skills just by clicking on the area she/he wants to check.   

 

 



 

Digital Natives Vs. Digital Immigrants

A. Who are Digital Immigrant teachers and Digital Native students as categorized by the author?

¨ Digital immigrant teachers are those who were not born into the digital world but they have become fascinated and adopted by some or many aspects of the new technology.

¨ Digital natives are those who born and spent their lives surrounded by and using technology.

 

B. List down 3 differences between Digital Immigrant teachers and Digital Native students?

¨ Digital Native students:

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast.
They like to parallel process and multi-task.
They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards.
They prefer games to "serious" work

¨ Digital Immigrant teachers:
Printing out a digital document to edit it rather than editing it online.

Bringing people physically into office to see an interesting websites rather than just sending the URL

Printing out E-mail.

 

C. What is meant by Digital immigrant accent? List down three examples of “digital immigrant accents.”


¨ It’s a language learned later in life.
¨ It’s the way the digital immigrants speak and behave that show and appear their lack in using technology.

¨ Examples:-
Digital immigrant accents can be seen in many things like
Turning to the Internet for information second rather than first
Reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it.

 

D. According to the author, what is the biggest serious problem facing education today?

The biggest problem facing education today is that our digital immigrants instruction who speak an outdated language, are struggling to teach a population that speaks a new language.

 

E. “Should the Digital Natives learn the old way, or should their Digital Immigrants learn the new?”

Marc said that the old ways are inappropriate for the new generation of learners because their brain may already be different. For me both of them should learn other's way. Teachers should know technological terms and how to use technology and they should integrate and join it into the lessons as well as curriculum to match students' digital mind, but this doesn’t mean use technology all the time. Also, students should know at least the basic tradition ways of the teacher without using it. Learning process should mix between both ways.

 
F. What should the Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives?

Digital immigrant teacher are able to reach Digital native students if they have the willing to change and they should make some work and effort.

 

 

Delicious

The first time to use a various websites ..

Now I have my account in DELICIOUS

https://delicious.com/#samahghamdi


ENJOY everyone ♡ ♡ ♡

Reflecting in reading 3

Stephan Bax argues that, "Our aim should be to attain a state of `normalization' in which the technology is invisible and truly integrated"

First of all we should have an idea about (CALL) and (phases):

What is CALL?

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) is succinctly defined in a seminal work by Levy (1997: p. 1) as "the search for and study of applications of the computer in language teaching and learning"

 

Warschauer (1996) and Warschauer & Healey (1998) took a different approach. Rather than focusing on the typology of CALL, they identified three historical phases of CALL, classified according to their underlying pedagogical and methodological approaches:

1)      Behavioristic CALL: it depends on stimulus and response, computer instructs the students and the students learn from computer. The audio-lingual method was commonly used, and the students were provided with drills and practice.

2)      Communicative CALL: it focuses on communication rather than form and avoids drills. It's usually used language games, reading and text reconstruction.

3)      Integrative CALL: It based on multimedia computers and the Internet.

What is normalization?

According to Bax, normalization is the stage when the technology is invisible and even hard to recognize it. CALL has not reached that stage yet. In order to achieve normalization stage, computers should be used every day by language students and teacher as part of their lessons, but they won't be the center of the lesson, but they will play a part in almost all.

 

 

 

 

 

In Saudi Arabia classrooms, we can see a lot of differences in learning process. In the past, it was just a teacher faced the students most of the time to teach them specific curriculum and organized information in traditional and sometimes useless ways, but now we can observe something different.

Now days, education system have been changed and the teacher became more aware in using technology although there are some teachers who have lack knowledge in how to use it. Teachers are starting use some equipment which can assist them in learning process like: smart board, projects, computers..ect. In order to achieve and reach normalization, we have to start from the head of the education system. Ministry of education can assist in learning process by providing the schools and universities with the technological equipment and providing these institutions with qualified teachers who are able to deal with technology. Also, they can provide the teachers who have lack knowledge in using technology with some courses that teach them how to use it. Teacher should encourage the students to use technology in doing their works and the teacher's role is as a facilitator who guide the students how to explore the information until they can teach themselves without back to the teacher. The students should be able how to use technology in order to help them to improve learning.

Welcom

Welcom to my BLOG ..

This is my first post ,  I hope this BLOG will be useful and interesting :)