About us

My name is Dorian Hernández, from Costa Rica. I presented this project to the MA TESOL Graduate program in Greensboro College, NC, U.S. on may 12th, 2018. Now, I share it with anyone interested in exploring the advantages of teaching with more technology in the language classroom. About the project THE RATIONALE BEHIND THIS PROJECT by Dorian Hernández I was educated in high school in a way that is substantially different to how I educate my students today. Not only approaches to learning and teaching are evolving, but also the tools that are available for educators and students. Google products and services successfully meet the needs of post-millennials, their target customers. In Chapter Three, I will describe how teachers can take advantage of current software and hardware to turn commercial technologies into pedagogical tools. Today our high schoolers are labeled as the post-millennial generation: they are described, in fact, as internet experts (UWIRE, 2015). Unfortunately, techy teachers who keep up with the learning needs of this new generation are the exception not the norm. This project focuses from a different perspective the situation of phones the schools, which had been perceived as a problem (Obringer & Coffey, 2007), and turns it into a solution. The project is designed to help teachers to update themselves in order to respond to the demands of the generation that is being educated today. Continuous teachers’ professional development on modern technologies is crucial for the education of this and future generations. Retrospectively, current teachers where introduced to internet and mobile technologies, but the generations being educated today where born and raised in a world that cannot be imagined without internet and mobile technologies. Here, we, the teachers, must understand that the way our students experience life and learning is substantially different to how we experience life and teaching. Vito (2013) explained that, nowadays, teachers have the challenge to adapt instruction to involve both a more “global economy and a new kind of student” (p 48). Google can bring this gap together because it first recognized the needs of their customers, who are also our customers as well, in a way. With free predesigned lesson plans, this project trains teachers to implement as many tools as possible in their regular classes. Thus, it encourages a habit to use technology assets in the language classroom, and eventually it increases the teachers’ reliance on modern tools to produce effective lesson plans that fully respond to students’ needs. For instance, they prepare products like reviews, lecture, presentations and tutorials in formats such as videos, Google documents, slides or collages that they share online on platforms such as their blog, You Tube channel or Google Maps. Additionally, teachers can find in the teachers guide specific step by step instructions about how to do every activity. The Google project is designed on an interactive virtual platform so that it helps teachers to experience how to learn with technology tools in a virtual learning environment before they try to teach in this way (Guasch, Alvarez, & Espasa, 2009). For instance, the teacher will be introduced to the Google family. Here, some of the applications of interest for this project that belong to the Google family of G Suite are: Gmail, Google Hangouts, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Forms, Google Slides, Google Sites, Google Contacts, and Google Groups (Google, 2018). They are essential for this project because they all offer many opportunities to integrate modern technologies in classroom activities related to the process of learning a second language. Moreover, these Apps can be accessed by any learner anywhere in the world with a smartphone, tablet, or smartwatch and the Google account provided by the school system, or any other private or public Google account . Finally, other important mobile web applications for this project are: Blogger, Drive, Google Keep, Google News, Google+, Google translate, Google Maps and You Tube. They all frame experiential opportunities for the user to interact with the digital world in ways they are very familiar with. Thus, learning becomes significant for students lives (Ausubel, 1963). This project has many functions. First, it provides language teachers with a systematic process to easily incorporate technology in their lesson plans. In other words, any teacher willing to incorporate this project to their teaching practice receives a booklet with a collection of lessons plans to give an ESL class using one or more of the previously mentioned Google products. Also they are granted access to a website with specific tutorials about how to successfully use each tool. Second, this project is designed to be approachable by all teachers and students. Therefore, it involves Google services that many teachers and students, who own a Gmail account, are already familiar with. Finally, many visionary teachers could be interested in doing EGL because there is great potential in using existing popular technologies in innovative ways. Accordingly, it is particularly important to notice that this project, which will be called EGL, creates for both teachers and students new and exciting learning opportunities that highlight and evidence fun applications of fundamental language learning theories. Furthermore, despite some people might be less likely to explore the enormous world of possibilities that mobile technologies imply, EGL should attract them by working as a solution to the rapid turn that modern education takes towards the assimilation of technology. Thus, EGL is also important because it allows current professional educators to take small, but significant steps to innovate in their classroom environment and positively effect on students’ attitude towards language learning. For that reason, it will be an accomplishment of this proposal to give language teachers a strategy that escalate the blooms taxonomy with a subtly innovative method that overlaps everydayness without the stress that often accompanies formal learning settings. Cuban, Kirkpatrick and Peck (2001) studied the apparent paradox of high access and low use of technology in high school classrooms. They observed that many teachers where occasional users or nonusers of the provided tools. In fact, some teachers even insisted to sustain traditional patterns of teaching practice (Cuban, Kirkpatrick, & Peck, 2001). In conclusion, it is necessary that educators use current learning tools to effectively design innovative exercises, cases and assignments to approach learning with short form experiential assignments that encourage the use of technology, provoke the information literacy, and strengthen communications skills (Vito, 2013). References Cuban, L., Kirkpatrick, H., & Peck, C. (2001, January). HIgh access and low use of technologies in high school. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 813-834. Google. (16 de February de 2018). about our company: Google. Obtenido de Google.com: https://www.google.com/about/our-company/ Guasch, T., Alvarez, I., & Espasa, A. (April de 2009). University teacher competencies in a virtual teaching/learning environmen: Analysis of a teacher training experience. (J. Clandinin, M. L. Hamilton, M. Lunenberg, J. Gore, & C. Rodgers, Edits.) Teaching and Teacher Education: An international Journal of Research and Studies, 26(2), 199-206. Obringer, S. J., & Coffey, K. (2007). Cell phones in american high schools: a national survey. The Journal of Technology Studies, 33(1), 41-47. UWIRE. (2015, May 13). Post-Millenial generation: Internet experts. The Vista, University of Central Olkahoma, Edmond OK, p. 1. Vito, M. E. (2013). Collaborative, experiencial and technology approaches for 21st century learners. American Journal of Educational Studies, 6(1), 47 - 64.