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Monday, September 15, 2008
Project-based learning and Internet in EFL instructions
As I talked to some EFL lecturers who are currently using technology, I have seen some
similarities among their successful integrations even though they work in different environments.
The lecturers mentioned that the most effective use of IT integration in EFL classroom is
adopting a project-based learning. A teacher told me that asking students to work online is not
difficult for the young generation. The key thing is students need to know explicit goals of the
activities. Students would perform the tasks better when they see what they are required to do.
Students and teachers may have to use a lot of skills in order to complete the assigned tasks. In
Brandl’s article(Are you ready to Moodle), there is a number of literatures supporting the
project-based learning with the incorporation of technology in the following ways.
- Integrated Skills
The use of the Internet for research purposes requires a variety of searching skills. It asks for
knowledge of different search engines and how they work, such as whether they are case
sensitive or not. Furthermore, it assumes the user has some information-seeking skills. Fidel et
al. (1999) showed that being somewhat knowledgeable of the topic being searched is necessary
for learning how to search the Web, and that being somewhat knowledgeable about Web
searching is necessary for exploring new topics.
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Language teachers are not computer teachers. What they can do is guiding students to produce a
language output by using technology in the process of doing a project with all integrated skills
needed for the task completion.
Posted by Tessie at 9:20 PM
Labels: Project-based learning; Internet in EFL instructions