To use or not to use

There are so many questions on my mind....questions that I do not have answers to.

My classmates Siti and Su explained a webquest to me during our discussion on skills and strategies. I understood that it can be used to help students in many ways, including analysis of information, selection of information, and construction of written text or any other language skill that is built into the activity. It is definitely an interesting idea but many questions popped up in my mind-what is the difference between a webquest and a more traditional mode of conducting a language class? Is it better? In what way is it better? Is it used so as to better engage the students? Is it used to teach students to write for different media?

I can see how people are using virtual world for entertainment such as games(like the very popular Grand Theft Auto) and to escape from realities of the real world through sites like Second Life. I can even see the edge that WWW is giving to corporations in terms of marketing of their products. BUT I just cannot seem to see the edge that ICT gives to language learning besides engaging students using a medium that they are interested and keen to use. This short documentary by http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s21QgfA7eU&feature=fvst talks about how corporations like Reebok uses Second Life to market their sports shoes, how it has become part of a journalist's work, and how it helped a person with cerebral palsy to do what he could not do in real life.

So, with those questions in mind, I did a search for ict in language learning, using google and I found http://ict.cele.nottingham.ac.uk/ (7th link on the list). As I surfed the site, I was reminded of the online dictionary and thesaurus that I am so fond of using, and I also learnt that I can see how a particular word is used using web concordancer. My first thoughts were that it is a very useful tool. But soon enough, more questions popped up in my mind-are these sentences grammatical? What situations are they used in? Written? Oral? Formal? Casual? Personal?

I did another two more separate searches on google, clicked on at least two of the links each time. I also did a search on webcrawler.com. Have I found my answers? No, not exactly. But I intend to, eventually.

Awakening

I titled this entry as awakening as that was what I felt after doing the two readings this week. However, it is not a awakening to the authors' point of views but awakening to a more rounded perspective of how I would approach technology in my personal life and at work. The key take-away for me is that it is important to be an informed user of technology, regardless if it is a software, hardware, or online application.

I see a lot of truth in what Postman said. These include his argument that there are two sides to it, and that "once a techonology is admitted, it plays out its hand". That is so true, proven by history. Every invention has changed our lives and there is no turning back.

Then again, I thought he was too extreme in saying that television would bring an end to print medium and schoolteachers' career. We have heard this argument since the day television came into our lives but I think we are seeing a peaceful co-existence of the two medium. While we may like watching news on TV for a quick overview of the major happenings in the world and in Singapore, many people still read the newspapers for more news, greater details, and even the advertisements.

He also said that schools are teaching children to operate computers instead of more valuable things. Tell me about it! My kid has to take compulsory enrichment class that teaches keyboarding skills at his school. This sounds like some typing class to me. Why does my kid need to learn typing with proper positioning of fingers? This being compulsory, we have to pay for it but what good is this class going to do? I wonder who made the selection for this class. Is that person from the era of typing and shorthand classes? Besides, how many of these children are already surfing, gaming and blogging? Would it not be better to teach them right at the beginning, to see the merits and possible dangers and obsession that the Net can potentially become? So who is to judge what is more valuable to the kids, should it be the teachers, principals, government, or the parents?

The other point he made about how our society puts a number to a quality of thought and intelligence is indeed enlightening! I mean I am a paper-chaser through my life as a student but working is a totally different matter altogether. At work, I saw how some people can be high achievers even though they were not top students when they were studying. And I have met many wonderful people who are not highly educated. So, indeed, what does that the quantitative value mean to us as individuals? Not much.

Wary of privacy issues all along

One of the issues that we touched on briefly in class at the first session was privacy. This is an issue that is close to my heart as it is this same issue that is stopping me from getting a Facebook account. I am concerned that many people will be keenly aware of what my family and I did, and are planning to do through my Facebook account if I should have one. Yes, I know that I can restrict the access to my account to friends only but my friends may include family, extended family, close friends, colleagues, ex-colleagues and casual friends. These different groups of friends will all be updated with the same information which I may or may not have intended for. Conflicts can occur through such equitable sharing of information. One such incident occurred when one of my friend's elderly relative came to know of her daughter's plan to migrate from a niece who had read about it on her daughter's Facebook account. This incident caused much unhappiness between mother and daughter. This is just one of the many possibilities of how things may go wrong despite the ability to restrict access of one's Facebook account. I do not even wish to think about the possible repercussions through an innocent sharing of my thoughts or my pictures on an open network, especially when I have little view of who is reading or looking at those pictures at a specific point in time.

1st trial with blog

wow! got it! Just like that!