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Friday, July 29, 2011

Reading 10: Media as a medium in Colombian Education: How media and ICT are changing communication and the Curriculum in the school (By Rodríguez, C. and Hine. N., 2009)

Download the document sent to your mails and post a comment answering the following working in groups of max. 3 students:
1. How do you agree and/or disagree with Rodríguez Hine's point of view of how media and ICT are changing communication and the Curriculum in the school?. Provide clear, elaborate argumentation.
2. Discuss and tell which have been the media that has had more influence on your English learning process and how.
3. Which media do you think are influencing new generations of English language learners today? Think of your students, mainly. Mention two or three and tell why.

6 comments:

  1. 1.As Rodriguez Hines points out in his article, we think that ICTs are changing the way people communicate. For instance, he gives the example of a school in Bogota where students make use of radios, tape recorders and a newspaper to communicate and express their ideas, share experiences and provoke a new learning process which involves students’ active participation. In this way, the curriculum and some pedagogical principles are changing in order to integrate students in the learning process.
    2.In our English learning process, CD player and Internet have been the most common and useful media with which we, as students, have been able to take advantages from those in order to improve our communicative skills- listening and speaking. By listening to some news and current facts, we are capable to improve our speaking skills and increase our vocabulary, additionally; the internet is a significant tool that offers very useful learning programs and grammar resources that let us to improve more communicative skills such as writing. By using web dictionaries as Oxford or Cambridge, we can make our project more academics and “natural”.
    3.Well, most of our students are teenagers or young people so we consider that for them social networks are useful means of communication in which they can practice a foreign language like English. For instance, new generation like to chat, post something in English in social network such as Facebook or Twitter. Most learners have this web site to communicate with their friends and they seem to handle it well. In this web page, learners are exposed to a large array of English words like small icons with their corresponding words in English or advertisements that force them to get familiar with the target language.
    Moreover, cell phones with high quality in technology offer games. It is considered to be the gaming platform of the future because most of the students like to play video games. Although it offers many options in English, learners are likely to learn the new vocabulary in order to have fun with this technological tool. Since they are highly motivated to learn what the commands means, they are learning the meaning of some new English words. Third, they can find different web pages on the Internet where they can read messages, newspapers or watch videos as a way to learn English.

    Erika Enciso
    Adriana Sarmiento
    Yessica Rueda

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  2. 1.How do you agree and/or disagree with Rodríguez Hine's point of view of how media and ICT are changing communication and the Curriculum in the school?. Provide clear, elaborate argumentation.

    The authors state that one of the main challenges in nowadays education is the break between the knowledge and the learner’s encoding process; in other words, normally the students’ output is not at the same level as the input, since students have problems at appropriate the information and they do not see what they can do with it. As well as the authors, we believe that ICT’s help to bond both: the information and it encourage students to notice the sense of it. Besides, ICT’s help learners to improve motivation which is fundamental to develop an autonomous sense. We also agree on that ICT’s are changing the way people see the world so it is vital to include it on today’s education.


    2. Discuss and tell which have been the media that has had more influence on your English learning process and how.

    In our learning process, the internet and television have been the most common media that we use to improve our English proficiency since they help us to develop many things like: our communicative skills, listening, writing, speaking, through them, we can acquire new vocabulary and everyday expressions (slangs), and both help us to have an idea about the culture that those English speaking countries have. In addition, the internet gives us countless significant resources that help us to improve any specific problem that as students we can have.

    3.Which media do you think are influencing new generations of English language learners today? Think of your students, mainly. Mention two or three and tell why.


    Social webs: places like facebook, twitter or wikis open the opportunity to keep in contact (in a passive way) or update with friend from another countries or just with your favorite celebrity and his/her music. The necessity of establishing contact by posting lead young people to learn, practice and consult their English learning process

    Internet: This wide resource offers a variety of websites that young people visit for many reasons. Internet is not only a center of information but also a center of entertainment and social webs. These last two components make it really attractive to many young people who find a different and interesting way of making social relationship with others and have fun. Moreover most of the webs on internet are in English. A large percentage of its visited webs are in English. This fact creates a real need in youth people to learn English, who seek to pass their subject as well as to have access to the web pages of their interest.

    Magda Aguilera
    Jessika López
    Viviana Rueda

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  3. FELIX BUITRAGO

    1. How do you agree and/or disagree with Rodriguez Hine's point of view of how media and ICT are changing communication and the Curriculum in the school?. Provide clear, elaborate argumentation.

    -I do agree with the proposal of Rodriguez Hine´s point of view because I think that currently it is mandatory for teachers and schools to integrate ICTs in the curriculum of every subject, not just for English but for other subjects like history, math, social studies etc, since this is a good strategy to encourage students toward learning. Hence, the use of Icts promotes Collaborative learning, what is really outstanding in a globalized world. More over, we as teacher and as students are living in a new age (new technologies and new ways of teaching and learning), we have the necessity of interacting with others through out internet, radio, smart phones, etc. So, it is really relevant for teachers to use ICTs as a tool for teaching and learning.


    2. Discuss and tell which have been the media that has had more influence on your English learning process and how.

    During my experience as a student and teacher the media that has influenced my English knowledge has been internet. Through out this tool I have practiced grammar, listening, reading and writing, and I have improved autonomously my English level. Since my firsts years at university I noticed that the internet offered many accurate resources for improving in the three skills described above. For example: I used to practice listening by listening to radio news on the internet (MPR news). Reading by reading interesting stories on the internet and writing by using tutorials about how to write and using tools like “correct my text”.


    3. Which media do you think are influencing new generations of English language learners today? Think of your students, mainly. Mention two or three and tell why.

    I think that internet in going to be the most influential tool when learning a second language. For example the use of internet through cell phones, smart phones and computers. With the help of this tool student will interact with students from other countries.
    Another media can be the use of smart phones. With this tool students can interact and get in touch by sending messages, pictures and videos. Also, this device can incorporate dictionaries, translators and tutorials, to improve the students learning and to encourage learning toward students interests.

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  4. 1.I agree with the authors, theres is not doubt ICTs have changed and continue changing the way people communicate. Nowadays we are always in contact in some way or another with this, so taking ICTs to the classroom is highly relevant and this should be considered as something necessary.
    Our challenge as educators is to make Ss conscious of the use of ICTs for education in the way that they can use thousands of resources found to ease their learning and at the same time enjoy their process, so that ICTs in the classroom might be seen positively.
    2.During my English learning process television, internet and some social networks were useful. Listening, vocabulary and even real expressions were some of the skills increased by movies,videos,chat rooms and online games.
    3. There are two media that I think should be strong influences to those new generations of English language learners.I will categorize as one social networks(facebook mainly) where they are expose to interaction with people from other cultures and countries, also most of the applications are in English and if they want to play on them they are constantly reading in English and exposed to English vocabulary by draws or images that make things easier to undertand.
    For number two I will talk about video games or online games were they are in contact with a lot of vocabulary and to play them they have to manage some key words, on the contrary they will not succeed in the game.
    Carolina Ríos

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  5. 1. We agree as Rodriguez states that mass media nowadays have a great impact on students’ way of thinking and acting and that they generate different responses from both, positive and negative aspects as we can find among school students population that currently they have broaden their social space not only physically but also electronically through social networks and chatting software. It is fair to say that students have seen almost everything via internet so the challenge for teachers is to show them knowledge in such a way that they feel attracted to it. Then it comes the other main statement by Rodriguez: What for? What oportunities does education open for students? It is because of this that we also agree on changing the curriculum in the school. It is necessary to update the teaching methodologies and strategies used to put together curriculums in schools and start taking into account the use of ICTs inside and outside the classroom in order to fulfill at least a part of the expectations students have nowadays from the world and therefore the education.


    2. Internet is the kind of media that has had more influece in our experience of learning English. It was our first resource to use, to practice, to correct mistakes and to get new information about the language. We personally believe that this kind of media is one of the most common ways to learn a new language and practice it. We still use it as it is full of real language that is used to model what we produce.

    3.It is a little obvious to mention the fact that internet has become the most influencing tool not only for students of languages, but also for other areas. The bad thing about this is that students take all that appears on internet as a final truth; Ss, especially in secondary school, won’t stop to think about sources, and copyright issues, making this a flawed tool.


    Other highly influencing media are TV and Radio, since many Ss are quite aware and give a lot of importance to what happens through these means. It is important to mention, that in comparison to internet, these means are much more purged since their contents are selected more carefully. As it was mentioned in the reading, a project on Radio was quite stimulating for the Students at the Agustiniano, taking into account that all that was broadcasted was edited previously. This was a work that involved production, and a passive reception, however it proved to be influencing and good for Ss.


    Jesùs Ortega
    Jaime Cruz
    Juan Carlos Duràn

    ReplyDelete
  6. 1. How do you agree and/or disagree with Rodríguez Hine's point of view of how media and ICT are changing communication and the Curriculum in the school? Provide clear, elaborate argumentation.
    Rodriguez presents his experience and claims that secondary school students are engaged in designing school newspapers, broadcasting radio shows and using ICT in classrooms as opportunities for communication and learning. We strongly agree with Rodriguez and her point of view that the mass media and technology have a huge influence in students. Thinking about education in a new and different way in which students can take advantage of their knowledge in terms of technology. We have to be conscious of the resources and in most of the cases the lack of them to carry out a project like this in the different institutions in our country. We as teachers have to be very creative and innovative at the moment of planning our classes in order to make them meaningful and attractive for students. Making students aware of their role as learners in a more dynamic and autonomous way. Taking the classes outside the rooms to reinforce the process by the use of the different technological devices they have and use in their everyday lives.

    2. Discuss and tell which have been the media that has had more influence on your English learning process and how.
    Television, the internet, magazines and newspapers played and important role on our learning process because we use them every day and we are in frequent contact with these means of communication, many topics that appear on those media are very interesting and catch our attention and helped us to develop many of our capacities in an implicit way.

    3. Which media do you think are influencing new generations of English language learners today? Think of your students, mainly. Mention two or three and tell why.
    Television, internet and video games are influencing new generations of English language learners because they are constantly exposed to these media and they really enjoy using them.
    Andres Ortiz, Elisa Duarte, Adriana Becerra.

    ReplyDelete

English Grammar