The
computer and the Internet - do they have anything to offer?
Just
as the industrial revolution changed the 19th century world
out of all recognition, leading to advances that pre-industrial
man could only have dreamed of, so the advent of computers
has had a dramatic impact on just about every aspect of
modern life. From communication to airline travel, from
medicine to mathematics, from information retrieval to learning,
most aspects of life have changed. In not much more than
thirty years computer technology has emerged from cumbersome
number crunching, to sophisticated operations which most
of us could not foresee.
So
what's in it for teachers and learners of languages? Is
the influence of technology exciting and positive, as many
believe, or anti-creative and anti-person as others suggest?
The
American writer Theodore Roszak, for example, has this to
say about computers and learning:
'people
who are computer enthusiasts often say that that computers
are educational, and rave about all the information the
internet can offer children. But beware if they tell you
that information is everything. Information is only the
answer to a question - it is the kind of question you
ask that is important'.
In
one sense we've been here before; the language laboratory
was going to be the 'big thing' when it first appeared,
and though no one doubts its usefulness, still it has not
dominated language teaching in the way that wilder claims
suggested it might. The same is true for videos or - even
earlier - tape recorders, for example.
And
so, thirty years on, perhaps we need to stand back and see
what computers and the internet can do for language learners
and teachers - and what they can not. That is what this
module is all about.
In
the next two parts we look at whether
computers can replace teachers, followed by suggestions
on how to use computers and the Internet.
Members
- download the Internet Development
Pack or go to The Forum to
find out when the next live chat session is.
Jeremy
