Digital Blog Post #G

Chaper 10

Promoting success for all students through Technology

The section technology for teaching diverse students talks about the challenge that increasing diversity brings to class. Students are from different backgrounds, their families from different cultures. Multicultural education is a term used to describe how teachers go about affirming the expansive diversity of student interests, needs and talents. Each child regardless of gender, social class and ethnic, racial or cultural characteristics should have an equal opportunity to learn. I agree with that. Everybody should have the opportunity to go to school and learn. Our school is in an area where many people from different backgrounds live. Mostly Spanish speaking families apply each year for our VPK classes. We welcome everybody regardless of background. We have Spanish speaking teachers to make it easier for parents to understand and integrate their children into our school. We also work with services for low income families to make it possible to get proper education for their children. The parents are encouraged to read English books and watch English TV with their children to learn English as a second language easier. We use CD players for music and storybooks on CD, We have a TV for short educational movies and we have a computer in each classroom to give the children access to learning software. I use the computer often with the children to show them small education videos and stories about particular topics we talk about during a month. A computer also gives more access to learning songs and stories to show to the children. The children love to listen and dance to counting and spelling songs we find on Youtube or other similar websites. I believe, Singing is a fun way to teach English as a second language. I found a song on a CD that was played in English and than in Spanish. I learned the words and now the children love to sing it almost every day with me. When they have free computer time on our "Fun Fridays" we encourage them to use fun educational games to practise their spelling and counting.
     The second section I am talking about is Adaptations for Classroom learning with Technology. The book describes that every teacher is an instructional designer deciding everything from seating arrangements to instructional activities. Yes, I agree with that. A teacher needs to be very creative in designing projects, classroom layouts, lesson plans and monthly decoration. Our VPK classroom has different centers with different materials offers for the children from math, language, writing, reading, manipulative toys, science and art. All those centers and the material are color coded to make it easier for the children to clean up their work in the right places. We have season area that is decorated with different themes every month.

     The book says, technology offers two main routes for designing the classroom so students with diverse learning needs can readily access key ideas and concepts. First, it supports changes in classroom activities and second it supports changes in how the curriculum is delivered. I think that is true. Technology is a great way to teach children English as a second language. We can offer picture cards, word walls, matching letter games or different math games to teach counting and number recognition, but learning software is a new exciting way for children to learn which finds the way to our classrooms in big steps. While during my school time technology included TV and Tape recorders, today s children have the great opportunity to learn with modern fast technology.  They can work individually with those educational games and be able to hear spoken words and see written words at the same time. for english language learners we could find games that work bilingual. Our class has bilingual books and word-cards. Teachers are encouraged, if possible, to say the Spanish word and after that the English word when talking to the children so that they can get used to the new language. For learning technology, bilingual learning software could be used to let children hear stories or games in both languages. This video shows and describes 21st century learners.

     The next section I would like to talk about is using the technology with linguistically diverse learners. This section of the book suggests websites to use for students to teach and learn English as a second language. When I started college here in Fort Myers to receive my AS Degree for Early Childhood education I also had trouble to understand some of the things I learned in some reading and writing classes. This made me to use Online language translation services like the book suggests to use. There are dictionaries available online for every common language to translate to English or from English into another language. I also remember when I took a beginner writing class as a prerequisite to composition classes, I used Multilingual Web resources like the book describes and suggests to use. The book states that increasing numbers of educational websites provide material in more than one language. As an example, the book uses wikipedia which provides entries in many different languages and during research for essays I sometimes use a German and an English version of a topic from wikipedia to compare the information. I played around with the Newspaper map website that the book writes about. It shows newspapers from all around the world. But I have to say, if you know the website adress and the location of your different language newspaper, it would be easier to go directly to the website or enter it into google, that looks much less confusing. I found an article called "Using Technology to Help ESL/EFL Students Develop Language Skills" by Renee Ybarra. It talks about teaching English as a second language to students. The article says that the author believes that computers can play an integral part in providing ELL students with valuable language experiences as they learn a new language. This article focuses on how computer-assisted instruction (CAI) can be a supplemental teaching tool for teaching English language learners. Additionally, a discussion of the benefits that have been found in using CAI with ELL is also provided.
I agree strongly that learning a second language with technology can be exciting and fun for students but teachers should find a healthy line between technology learning and pen and paper handwriting learning to be sure students keep track of both.

 

citations

  

 Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Nessbitt, Barbara (2007), A vision of K-12 students today, retrieved from www.youtube.com

Ybarra, Renee (2003), Using Technology to Help ESL/EFL Students Develop Language Skills

Freitag, Julia (2015), travelling around the world with computers (image) retrieved from www.canva.com