Reading about social software in the articles from last week really got me thinking, once again, about the actual (or should I say "practical") usefulness of technology in the classroom. In this post I'm going to focus on two social sites in specific: del.icio.us and citeulike. I realize that these are the ones that were suggested on the TIFLE homepage, but that is not why I would like to comment on them. I simply find them the most interesting, especially from a pedagogical perspective. I'm going to first start out by saying that I find no pedagogical use for these tools whatsoever. In fact, I was a little confused last week as to why exactly we were even discussing them in a class that is supposed to be aimed at helping up incorporate technology successfully into our pedagogy and teaching methods...and the articles we read only marginally increased my level of comprehension.
The truth of it all, for me, is that I cannot seem to find any one particular way that such software or websites could aid us in teaching our students. It's true that they can help the students to connect, or to publicly recognize their common interests. Still, what more do these social software sites offer our students? Is it reinforcing any of the 5 Cs that we are so constantly hoping to reinforce in the FL classroom? Except for offering the students a means of connecting with each other based on their interests, I can't see how it's doing any of those Cs.....maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.
In general, this topic is very frustrating for me because I feel sort of on the fence about it. I think that we should definitely put time and energy into investigating the ways that technology can be useful to us in the classroom, but I still think we need to be very careful that we don't get ahead of ourselves. Just like I stated in my last post, it's not a matter of bringing stuff into our teaching that no one is familiar with. TIFLE, for me, is a peculiar topic in regards to research, because we always seem to be missing the mark....what I mean by that is that we are either stuck investigating--and reading about--topics that are no longer relevant (think discussion groups and email) or topics that are not quite relevant just yet (think Blogs and wikis), or that may never actually be relevant to us in teaching (think social software). I think all of these things merit research and consideration, but if we're going to successfully incorporate this technology into our classroom, I think we need to first focus on what the students are familiar with and what is the most current, and the most relevant. And for me, social software is just not where it's at.
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3 comments:
Moniqua, I enjoyed your post. I feel like those tools are obviously useful for teachers and advanced students who are developing expertise in certain areas. But for a Spanish 1 student... Hmmmmm. You raised some good points.
I see how they can enrich courses in that teachers can share resources with other teachers (and hopefully students would then benefit). I think they could be useful to have like a class bookmarking tool to which students could contribute resources they discover. Am I overlooking some other important aspect of the potential of these social bookmarking tools? I wish I had teaching experience...
It is so true, that in the process of catching up with latest technologies we have no time to think about pedagogical implementations of them.
I think that you touched on an important point However, I think that a software like Flick which allows students to create maps with linked of not using any technology in the classroom just for the sake of using it. As you mentioned with the social software, if there isn't a specific purpose for it, for a specific group of students, then it is probably not worthwhile. However, I think that social softwares like Flickr, where students can create maps with linked pictures, could be good for things like teaching geography and culturally significant cites. So, I think that it is entirely dependant upon the needs of a specific class.
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