“How can blogs, wikis and delicious be used in the Saudi EFL context?”

  Teachers and learners can use the technology in powerful and effective way.  Technology can be  beneficial tool for communication among the students.

The blogs, wikis, and delicious will help the teacher and the students when they work for educational and other purposes. Also, these websites facilitate learning these days.

      In Saudi Arabia, we can use these websites in education fields. When I become a teacher, I will use the blogs to let the students to feel free when they want to write anything , and at the same time to improve their writing skills and the typing on computers. I can choose certain topic and ask the students to start writing about it and then we read the blogs of each other, comment and sharing the information. Also, I can put a reading paragraph and ask the students to read it and answer about certain questions and this also improve their reading skills.

 

     Wiki is used as a way to introduce the students' works, assignments and give them a chance to collaborate with each other to make their final projects. For example, I will let them to divide themselves into groups and I give them topics, so they can choose one and start working on it, and post it in their group wiki and discuss it with other students. This will teach them how to work in groups and how to be collaborative students. Wiki is a web site that allows students to add and update content on the site. This is made by Wiki software that runs on the web server.  Wiki is created by a collaborative effort of the site visitors.

 

     Delicious is a social bookmarking tool that we can use it to store and share the bookmarks with each other. We can teach the students how to have a new account and to bookmark any website or link which is useful for our classes and our courses and how to get benefit from these bookmarks.

 Teachers can use these websites with students to make an interesting activities and lessons.

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants By Marc Prensky

    Now, the students have changed and they are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

-Who are Digital Immigrant teachers and Digital Native students as categorized by the author?

 The most useful designation Marc Prensky has found the new students is Digital Natives students, and these students are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.
 Digital Native students have spent their lives by and using computers, videogames, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age.
Digital Immigrants are not born into the digital world but at some later point in their lives became fascinated by and adopted many aspects of the new technology. Immigrant teachers learn like all immigrants, some better than other and they were socialized differently from their kids, and they are new in process of learning a new language.

-  List down 3 differences between Digital Immigrant teachers and Digital Native students?
 
Digital Native students are used to receiving information really fast, and they like to parallel process and multi-task. Also, they prefer their graphics before their text, and they prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked, and they prefer games to serious work. But Digital Immigrants are different in some points. They choose to teach- slowly, step-by-step, one thing at a time, individually, and above all, seriously. Digital Immigrants don't believe their students can learn successfully while watching TV or listening to music because the immigrants can't. Also, they think learning can't be fun.

-What is meant by Digital immigrant accent? List down three examples of “digital immigrant accents.”
 It is a language that used in Digital Immigrants' lives in the past.
The "Digital Immigrants accent" can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than the first, or in reading the manual for program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it. There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrants accent. They include printing out your email (or having your secretary print it out for you- an even "thicker" accent); needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it(rather than just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL). 

-According to the author, what is the biggest serious problem facing education today?

The biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. This is obvious to the Digital Natives – school often feels pretty much as if we've brought in  a population of heavily accented, unintelligible foreigners to lecture them.

 

-     “Should the Digital Natives learn the old way, or should their Digital Immigrants learn the new?”

Unfortunately, no matter how much the Immigrants may wish it, it is highly unlikely the Digital Natives will go backwards. In the first place, it may be impossible – their brains may already be different.  It also flies in the face of everything we know about cultural migration. Kids born into any new culture learn the new language easily, and forcefully resist using the old.  Smart adult immigrants accept that they don't know about their new world and take advantage of their kids to help them learn and integrate. Not-so-smart (or not-so-flexible) immigrants spend most of their time grousing about how good things were in the “old country.”

- What should the Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives?

If Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives – i.e. all their
students – they will have to change.  It's high time for them to stop their grousing, and as the Nike motto of the Digital Native generation says, “Just do it!”  They will succeed in the long run – and their successes will come that much sooner if their administrators support them. Today's teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students. This doesn’t mean changing the meaning of what is important, or of good thinking skills. But it does mean going faster, less step-by step, more in parallel, with more random access, among other things.  Educators might ask “But how do we teach logic in this fashion?”  While it's not immediately clear, we do need to figure it out. We need to be thinking about how to teach both Legacy and Future content in the language of the Digital Natives. The first involves a major translation and change of methodology; the second involves all that PLUS new content and thinking.

 

    

Welcome my friends

I'm lamees and  I hope by the time I'll enjoy in this site and we all benefit from it . I put my first post in my page of the personal information from 11 Feb ,but now i know from Hiba that i should post it here so Welcome everyone.    :) 

"The Possibilty of Reaching Bax's Normalisation in our Saudi context"

   Stephan Bax discussed the development of the CALL through the past, present and future. He also discussed the phases of CALL which were divided by Mark Warschauer into three phases: Behavioristic , Communicative and Integrative. Bax explained the goal of CALL through the concept of normalization which is the stage when a technology is invisible, hardly even recognized as a technology, taken for granted in everyday life.

     Bax suggested that we can achieve normalization when we use it every day and when we take it as a normal thing in our lives and as integral part as he said. Also, we should change our thinking and attitudes towards computers and get rid of all fears of it. We must see it from all sides not only from the negative side. We can integrate successfully by some factors, such as software, technology, teacher and learners attitudes to change the idea that computers alone are sufficient.

    In Saudi school, it is possible from the ministry of education to provide these technologies. In the school of Saudi Arabia, we don't use computers a lot and as I see  the books are too much to carry especially for the elementary students, so I see it is important the presence of technology in educational side.

     Normalization can be reached and applied to the education in Saudi Arabia in the future by the following possible things: Computers and all devices must be available for all students and must taking it seriously and check them from time to time to fix any problem. The school should provide enough teachers who are able to deal with these computers. Also, the school should provide big classes which are suitable for this situation, and teacher should be facilitator, manager and encouraging the students to use these devices in useful way and to be more creative. Also, teaching the students how to use these devices during the lessons and for doing the tasks and home works. I think it is more comfortable to give the students these devices which have small sizes  as the IPAD . Students must use these devices only in the field of education not taking in only as entertainment tool.