Week 1 - Warschauer (2004)

This week's reading regards how CALL could enhance the opportunity of language learning development in the classroom. This article was a great read and really innovative in the way of CALL in the classroom. It's a little eye-opening for a student like me who grew up in the 90s in primary school and the early 2000s for high school that was learning about this "internet" thing for the first time with millions of other global citizens.

I know how to use a textbook. I was taught how to use a textbook. I was taught how to use the glossary. Most of my students want to just pull out their phones and use the Word Reference app in class. I'm up to date for the most part on globalization and technology, but I'm still a nervous-nelly when it comes to integrating it into the classroom. I'm overall excited about it, but the nervous part comes from this fear that I have as a citizen and educator that takes pride in the way I was taught in schools and the character that I learned through it because of hard work. I never used Google in school growing up. Not once. Didn't even really start using it until like 2004 or something. I used encyclopedias and my teachers put me in groups that would have to look up resources the hard way. That taught character and it really paid off when we received the good grade.

Now part of me feels like students have so much access to anything and everything, that there is no incentive to work for it. If they can just use technology to give them the answer, will they retain it?

I was just chatting with my best friend over this same topic tonight at dinner. What if those of us born in the 80s, who grew up in the 90s and so forth just understand education in a different manner because of the way we were taught? Maybe I'm comfortable with the textbook because I understand it. Maybe my students are comfortable with technology in the classroom because they understand it, unlike textbooks.