Teacher Training in Technology: Overcoming Limitations

1. Teacher Training in Technology: Overcoming Limitations THOMAS ROBB KYOTO SANGYO UNIVERSITY

2. Helping teachers to help themselves • in: Teacher Education in CALL, P. Hubbard & M. Levy, (Eds.), John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 335–347. • How to encourage teachers to keep abreast of advances in technology

3. Problems with Tech Training:Learning not acquired or applied • Mismatches between what has been studied and what is actually needed in the classroom. • Instructors typically having little control over either the hardware or software made available to them • Teachers without training needing to pick up skills on their own. • Few opportunities to practice and review what has been learned. • A lack of local support that forces teachers to do their own troubleshooting.

4. Preparing autonomous CALL teachers Teachers need… • a solid knowledge base, • the confidence to attempt to use new technology and extend their use of the technology they are already using • an awareness of available resources.

5. Self-Help Resources • Software manuals and built-in help function • Third party manuals • Web searches • Membership in associations and mailing lists • Communities of Practice

6. Institution/Curriculum-level Measures to Encourage Enhanced Knowledge • Survey your institution's technical support environment. • Hire a CALL specialist. • Recognize and reward self-training. • Reward innovation. • Set up a faculty development program. • Allocate a sufficient amount in the budget for training and resource • Encourage networking. personnel. • Provide funding and release time. • Brute force method – required use

7. Technology Implementation That Does Not Rely on the Teacher Due to limited class hours, effective language learning requires that students spend as many hours as possible working with the language outside of class. • Thus to consider how teachers can implement technology in the classroom, either by • Direct use of specific technologies when teaching, or • Indirect use for materials preparation Ignores the issue of direct use of technology outside of class by the student

8. Two Examples • Both examples reflect a desire to have the student work with the target language outside of class with aspects that are best done individually. • Results in more in-class time for teacher-led activities, or ones that require the teacher’s presence

9. Listening Video Cloze Activity Extensive Reading MoodleReader Module

11. Implementation • All students are centrally registered for the Moodle course containing the activities. • A calendar of deadlines for doing the activities (related to each unit in the textbook) is supplied to all students. • Each instructor’s class is a separate group within the course so that grades can be viewed and downloaded by class

12. Extensive Reading Two problems plague the spread of ER • Management of the books • Holding the students responsible for their reading • The MoodleReader module addresses the latter problem.

16. Conditions for curriculum-wide technical implementation • The authority to require it • An adequate server and necessary software • The human resources (ideally tech-proficient teacher) to implement and support it, including back-up the system • A mechanism for making the student grade reports available to the individual instructors so that they can incorporate the grades into their students’ final evaluation.

17. References • Robb, T. (2006). Helping Teachers to Help Themselves. Teacher Education in CALL, P. Hubbard & M. Levy, (Eds.), John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 335–347. • Robb, T. (2008). The Moodle Reader Module for Extensive Reading. Available: http://moodlereader.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=14 • Robb, T. (2008). Youtube video. Search for “moodlereader” on http://youtube.com