theory

Technology in the class room environment to accomplish the competences and development of skills in learning English

Technology has pervaded the world that we know today. Every single activity that people do needs some kind of technology from waking up in the morning using an alarm clock or communicating with someone who may live in the other side of the world. This phenomenon increases by leaps and bounds and it is now in the classroom environment.

We as educators must use technology tools as good as possible trying to adjust the needs of the students making them learn in the best possible way letting know that technology is not only made to waste time but that they can learn using it.

One problem that we as teachers will face is the wrongly use of the cell phones in classes and the lack of interest from student to learn with the traditional methods. The following are some methods or strategies that as teachers can be developed in order to combine technology with learning English.

 There exist many strategies that can be applied to establish the objectives and achieve the goals. In this opportunity was considered that in order to achieve the development of skills in learning English, the best strategy to use was the increasing vocabulary and speaking skills through role plays using technology based on the communicative approach. It is important to develop a variety of skills for both communicating to others and learning how to interpret the information received from others. Various surveys have shown that one of the biggest difficulties for students is expressing themselves in speech.

The communicative approach is based on the idea that learning language successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning. When learners are involved in real communication, their natural strategies for language acquisition will be used, and this will allow them to learn to use the language. When real situations cannot be practiced because of time schedule or lack of practice out of the classroom due to the absence of the target language, it is a good way to practice through imaginary situations based on real facts of daily conversational activities. That’s why the implementation of role plays or the creation of video clips and short films in the classroom will help students to develop their speaking skills.

Role playing is an effective way to stimulate conversation in the classroom. You can use flowcharts to outline a situation which you want to use as a base for developing your students' speaking skills. You may want to select a small group of students to demonstrate this method until the whole class understands the procedure, once this is done, you can divide the class into groups, vary the flowcharts for each group, and then ask each group to act out their situation for the rest of the class.

Objective: promote the correct use of technology in academic environments avoiding the wrong use such as cheating, distraction or lack of interest in the class room.

We as educators must be aware of the influence of technology in our daily life. That’s why it is necessary to adopt technology to our own welfare and of course, for the students’.

Being able to create a method where students avoid cheating and chatting during exams and lessons will help to improve the use of technology in the correct way.

One way in which those objectives can be done is teaching students to put their cell phones in a specific place provided by the professor. And personally I think that one excellent option is making that the students feels involved in the activities and lessons because the main objective of this implementation is to help students to increase their motivation to learn using technology correctly.

The professor can make didactic activities including all students such as role plays or short comic scenes like sketches using technology as a tool for example video clips. That’s why it has been put into consideration the idea that the institution has its own video production Equipment and filmmaking in order to improve the English learning of the students using technology as an important tool.

The first thing that the institution must do is to examine if they have the economic resources to invest in the project. Also it is important to analyze if they have the area or room needed to carry out the development of the project. Then, they should see many possibilities to decide what is best if hiring someone expert in film making or prepare or train their own teachers in order to economize expenses.

The skills that can be developed are reading, writing, listening and speaking. Students can learn different topics from the correct use of tenses to reported speech. Students can also learn how to make video tutorials of different subjects or just making a personal presentation.

The main objective of this project is to develop the students’ speaking skills through conversations or dialogues that they find interesting, motivating and funny to make. It will motivate students to be involved in innovative activities where they can improve their interest in the academic subjects.

This project not only will help students of a specific group but also it will allow all the institution to participate of this great academic progress in learning in a different way using the best of technology and the best of English.