The last two plenary talks in the forum were devoted to technology in learning languages. They were coming from different places but, in my opinion, had ultimately the same message.
Alla Nazarenko started with a short history of distance learning in MSU. Back in 1990s the University had an idea of making their preparatory courses available to people outside Moscow. But they noticed a distinct disadvantage of this project right away : the students were ALONE in their learning from the start. The answer came in the form of imitation of a regular classroom and the backbone of the new idea was DISCUSSIONS. Having other students interact with you,"seeing" your partner and teacher's involvement seemingly improved the situation.
On the other hand, students are not passive objects of the educational process and their
* responsibility
* motivation
* self - organization
are all crucial in every kind of learning. A good example of this principle is MOOCs which normally have a huge dropout rate. This led the teachers to the understanding that technology is just a vehicle for learning but not a cure. Alla then continued to demonstrate how their department successfully developed a few blended and distance learning programs.
Gavin Dudeney comes from edtech background and he feels that this area has started getting a bad press in the world of elt. From his point of view, the numbers were the reasons for it. Any number - big/small/irrelevant and soon meaningless. Our obsession with numbers feeds in social networks (number of comments, friends, retweets), publishers and app developers use it to sell us a "new" book/technology/system (if 1000000+people use it, so should you).
Numbers take over our life and substitute the simplest things which sometimes are impossible to measure. Gavin's concern is that everything in the class will be assessed in the future. But can it help anyone? Sure some ways can be more EFFICIENT, but are they the BEST ways to go about making research into elt?
Gavin's answer is to turn our gaze to classrooms from all over the world where educators still teach face-to-face, use their students as a resource and use technology as a means of enhancing the learning process.
Resource to check out: edtech concerns podcast
