Just wanted to say thanks, Elek, for stimulating such a rich exchange of ideas over the past few days. Nora, can’t agree with you at all that it’s in any way a bad thing to hear so many points of view on a lot of different but related issues. It’s been great and I’m sure it’s helped us to crystallize our thinking and come up with new ideas. Of course, at times there has been some overgeneralising but that’s in the nature of these kinds of discussions.

Elek, I think the reason we so consistently fail to see eye to eye (post 30) is that, even though we have a lot in common – we both think that using new technology in education can be very beneficial for teachers and learners – the strength of our ’faith’ is somewhat different. To borrow some terminology from the communicative approach, I have a weak version view of technology: I believe it can considerably enhance the learning and teaching experience but is not essential to good teaching (although I encourage my trainees to experiment with it creatively). I have seen many very good teachers in Hungarian schools who did not use any new media in their teaching (unless you count CDs/DVDs). You, on the other hand, clearly believe that new technology is not only beneficial but essential to good teaching and effective learning: “If you refuse to use technology, the quality of your teaching and consequently, your students will suffer.” This is why, when someone says “I am not anti-technology. But … I am dubious about the insistence that we have to embrace it” I have no problem understanding what they mean but you see it as a contradiction.

As far as the ’cons’ of technology go, I don’t interpret this to mean arguments against using technology, and therefore I don’t see it as a return to square one. To me it means the problems and potentially problematic issues involved in using technology. These issues need to be considered seriously but by doing so we are not returning to square one but moving the conversation on and further developing our ideas and knowledge about how to use the new media and what for. What am I talking about here? What is the ’price’ of technology? I think it’s things like dealing with the issues of privacy and private time for teachers, dealing with the highly variable quality of knowledge on the internet and working out effective ways to evaluate it, facing the dangers of anonymity and vulnerability in the cyber world, e.g. cyberbullying, the possibility that the web encourages superficial reading habits and uncritical information gathering, and many other issues which are coming up as we learn more about how we interact with the new media. I don’t believe this is a zero sum equation: we can be in favour of using technology but still acknowledge that there are many problems with it and seek to address those problems. I believe that we have to be critical practitioners in everything we do, not just as regards using new technology but in all aspects of teaching.

Anyway, thanks again for sparking this whole thing off, and let’s go for a beer and a chat some time

Going back to where I left off:
Mark, as I said, trainers should be ready to embrace technology as one of the many tools they showcase to trainees. I’m always disheartened when colleagues at institutes such as ELTE warn people of the potential dangers of ICT. Of course there are such dangers, I say: go out, explore them, look at what other people are doing and feed the best practices back to your trainees. In order to able to do that, we need all the help we can give each other – simply because right now there’s not much going on as the use of ICT is still in its infancy.
Also, I was not implying that trainers are doing a bad job (and I wrote trainers to include those not teaching at a university but are involved in in-service training), but I would encourage them (all of them) to gain some experience in using ICT – not just to upload worksheets to Moodle, but examine the use of ICT in its different forms and contexts. All this came to mind while reading the mELTing POt issue – I was disheartened by Gyula’s article – so that’s the source of all this.
The solution (as I see it) would be to create a forum – be it online or face2face (possibly both) where examples of good practice could be accessed, we could exchange ideas and try and help each other’s work. This is how I envisage such co-operation:

1 there seems to general consensus that we cannot disregard ICT in education
Once we agree it has a place in teacher training as well
2 we should seek out ways in which it can be utilised.
3 Naturally, issues will arise and discussion should follow on what works and what doesn’t.
4 this should be fed back to 1

I believe this very simple structure would allow all of us to avoid fruitless theoretical debates at the very early stage of this cycle and help us design a construct that is both theoretically sound and would serve as suitable basis for practical instruction in teacher training.

This way trainers (at least at the highest level – by which I mean the level where you are actually writing articles about the issue) will be required to engage in a variety of ICT applications with some help from the chalkface – projects filmed in schools, articles written up (such as Anna’s and Livi’s in the M.Pot). As a result, we’d be moving forward towards the successful integration of ICT into teacher training rather than constrain ourselves to warning teachers ‘don’t touch a computer until have completed a course’ or ‘don’t use the computer lab as very little language work is going to happen’.

Kati, 2 brief points, there are classes for me to teach today, as I have just been reminded
1 Virtual space is NOT the same as offline space – your common sense doesn’T work there. I, every now and then, go to a pub w/ friends to let of steam and talk about things. Never have I met a student there – we’re simply moving in different circles and I know where to go and where not to meet or avoid them. This is not the case online! You cannot decide what you share w/ friends and your students. Once the pic is uploaded w/ you wasted at a party, it’s there for all to see – not just your friends, your students as well. There is a post I’ve written on this in Hungarian on http://www.tanarblog.hu .
2 I find that teachers are interested and willing to learn about ICT – I expected young, enthusiatóstic teachers to show up at my training sessions, and I was surprised to see that most of the participants are experienced teachers wanting to learn something new.
Sorra, I really must rush now ..

These students do wonderful things with technology that feed into our classes. they bring in laptops with internet connections which we use in the class, more and more students have internet connections on their phones which they access in our classes and as this increases and we model the kinds of things that will become more and more common in classrooms all over Hungary.

I think my methodology students get loads of ideas of how to use new technologies in teaching. And we are not restricted by what may or may not be possible at a given time and place. I try to teach them to think on their feet, use what is available and where possible get involved in discussions at school about what new equipment is bought and why. This isn’t about what trainers may or may not have experienced themselves,this is about engaging with the world as it is today and exploiting all the possibilites available to us.

Sure it would be great if we had projectors, IWB’s or even ordinary white boards in all the classrooms at ELTE, I hate getting f—— chalk all over my clothes and in my laptop but in the absence of these things we can still engage 100% in the educational debates of the day on ICT.

Was just thinking after Gutenberg came on the scene whether people were saying we had better not use books because not everybody has access to them…on that note it’s gd nite from me:)

Why can’t we just talk to our students about the ways they think technologies can be used in learning English inside and outside the classroom based on the existing resources in the group and the school and with the teacher and take it from there. I think this is a lovely story from which we can learn a lot! And thanks to everybody who has co-operated today in this discussion, I have really enjoyed it although it means I shall get to bed a lot later than planned now….it’s worth it, innit? Anyway this is what Stephanie wrote:

“Yesterday I had my in company FCE class in the company computer room. A high tech type of place with a huge TV hanging on the wall and a computer at each desk. The class members wanted to use the computer/an extract from a DVD and the wall TV – to access some information. I said – OK, but we need to set this up together. (I am not very technical and freely ask the class members who are – to help with these things – and they happily do) Anyway – there were problems. We tried and failed and tried again. Every so often I kept saying, “Well let’s leave it and we can do X, Y or Z instead” But they didn’t want to – fixing it became a challenge. It took 60 mins to fix (yes a whole hour – during which I suggested several times that we do something else) during this time we had the Spanish “tech expert” in who also couldn’t do it!

All the time – lots of lively discussion – lots of modals in context – lots of personalization. “I’d love to have that TV hanging on my bedroom wall – I have one like that in my living room – but just think how wonderful it would be to watch that from your bed..” We had a variety of accents – German, Chinese and the Spanish tech guy making a guest appearance.

In the end it was fixed and the learners finally got what they wanted. My first thought was what a complete disaster!! But on reflection was it?
There was real communication – language in a meaningful context, using language to get things done and lots of very authentic models of various expressions of frustration from me………so I don’t know……..I am not a huge fan of technology simply because it seems to go wrong every time I go near it in a class situation. (but clearly this is more to do with my own fear than any kind of doubts to the usefulness of technology when it comes to real communication) Still – maybe if the class members are willing and happy to use the setting up and working with technology as part of their classroom process/language process and if I am willing to let go of control so that can happen – maybe there is potential….?”

To tell the truth, this discussion does not make me happy at all. I think there are too many issues discussed at the same time, e.g. availability of computers, attitudes of teachers and students of different ages, methodology courses, personal likes and dislikes, just to name a few, and as a result, there is a lot of generalization and misunderstanding voiced.

In my experience, even university students differ in their ways of using ICT. Many of them get to see an IWB at the Methodology course just before their teaching practice. They use the computer for very many different reasons in many different ways. And they do not worry about this. For them, it is quite natural. They use it if and when they need it.

Are we doing this in the classroom as well? Don’t we need this discussion just to make ourselves more comfortable with all our fears and worries? Is it bad to be different?

I just have the feeling that we could learn much more from each other if we started discussing the WHENs and HOWs, as TB proposed.