III. Specific technology solution

· What technology tool(s) did you consider using?

As far as new technology tools are concerned I consider Search Engines, Nicenet and Blogger. However, the most powerful tools to solve the problem of poor academic reading skills resulting in low motivation to academic subjects might be class Wiki and Wallwisher.

· What technology tool will you use to address the problem?

Firstly, it is necessary to take into consideration Wiki. Wiki is a web technology used for collaborative publishing on the web. A group of co-authors can add and change the content of Wiki page: add new texts and images, rewrite text, add and link pages. As regards to education Wiki can be used as a classroom resource center and a collaboration environment. A teacher can easily aggregate all course material in a Wiki site to keep everything under control and in one place: lecture scripts, presentations, tasks, readings and etc.

Wiki can be used as a discussion mode. On the discussion page the students can discuss the content and the issues surrounding them. They can introduce, enlarge and annotate study materials.

Wiki enables the students to realize productive information cooperation; Wiki provides the students with access to data on the web; opportunity to organize an efficient pedagogical management and study of a teaching process. Moreover, due to Wiki it is possible to create websociety of students who can exchange essential information, be highly motivated to pursue new knowledge and collaborate with each other.

Secondly, in order to meet students’ needs and course goals I intend to implement Wallwisher/ Padlet. This online noticeboard maker is user-friendly, multipurpose and easy to use in a various ways: as formative assessment tool; to collect feedback from the students; as a wall for research project to share ideas; in brainstorming activities; as a class wall to add poems, reviews, character analysis, etc.; as community wall (to comment on events, feasts, etc.); to share online links and resources.

· What is your goal for this technology tool?

On the one hand, Wiki and Wallwisher as technology tools aim at developing students’ academic reading skills needed to acquire such subject as Theoretical Phonetics, on the other - the implementation of technologies helps to increase students’ motivation to academic subjects in particular and consequently to foreign language learning as a whole.

· What do you want your students or the technology tool to do?

According to the goals of the research main applications of class Wiki with reference to the plan cover the followings: the educational platform where all needed resources for study an academic subject (Theoretical Phonetics) are placed; discussion board for sharing ideas and comments after doing academic readings; students’ showcase of their practical assignments; platform for sharing resources: articles, presentations, links to websites, videos, literature with peers and the teacher.

Additionally to Wiki, with the aim to set up an English-speaking community beyond the classroom, a Padlet will be built and used as a means to gather feedback from a large audience; reflect and comment on the pees’ posts; give out assignments.

· Is this technology new for you? How did you learn about it?

I got acquainted with the aforesaid technologies doing on-line “Building teaching skills Through the Interactive Web” course with University of Oregon, American English Institute, Department of Linguistics. I have not used these tools in my teaching experience before. They are absolutely new educational tools for me to master. I am eager to incorporate them in FLT and get some positive results.

· What do you think might happen when you try/use the technology with your students?

Employment of new technologies in the process of academic subjects teaching in the target language is supposed to change the mode of teaching and learning. By incorporating Wiki and Wallwisher as learning tools students are expected to be engaged in active learning. They are expected ‘to be transformed from passive recipients’ of other people’s knowledge into active constructors of their own and other’s knowledge.’ (quoted in Going Deeper: Formal Small-Group leraning in Large Classes by Karl A. Smith, New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 81, Spring, 2000, p. 25)

Wiki and Wallwisher as new technologies will enable the students to cooperate and collaborate with the participants of the learning process via on-line discussion boards and on-line learning platforms. ‘Learning is a social process that occurs through interpersonal interaction within a cooperative context. Individuals, working together, construct shared understanding and knowledge’. (Johnson, Johnson& Smith, Active Learning: Cooperation on the College Classroom, 1991, http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/guotes.htm )

Furthermore, new technology tools are supposed to increase students’ motivation to target language learning. The students are representatives of “a new hi-tech generation”. Their life is impossible without information technologies and the Internet. Consequently, the usage of new technologies as a component of teaching-learning process might develop their positive attitude to foreign language learning.

Finally, new technologies incorporated in the process of learning might foster learners’ autonomy because under the existing conditions of insufficient time for learning inside the classroom, a greater part of learning takes place outside the classroom. So the students assume responsibility for, and take charge of, their own learning to achieve better results and be successful at the end of the studied course.

· How will this be different from what you have done before?

Compared to the mode of teaching used to be in my experience some time earlier, this way of teaching by means of web technologies will combine together my teaching and students’ learning activity in and beyond the classroom, thus, making the teaching-learning process three-sided and continuous where the teacher, the learner and the interaction between them via Internet technologies are three main components of this up-to-date innovative process.

Wiki and Wallwisher are beneficiary tools for me as a teacher who is forced to run lessons in poor technology-equipped classrooms and whose students constantly search information in different digitized devices.

Wiki and Wallwisher are rather teacher-friendly because they may give an opportunity to administer the teaching-learning process from the relative “safety” of my home (it is the more of a convenience factor) – especially since I am at the institute only for approximately a half day.

IV. Final product

As far as final product of the plan is concerned I have created Theoretical Phonetics Wiki with Padlet pages which I intend to incorporate into lecturing of Theoretical Phonetics during spring semester next 2014-2015 academic year with the South-Kazakhstan State Pedagogical Institute, Shymkent, Kazakhstan.

You can see the class Wiki created in accordance with an overall goal of the presented plan at

https://sites.google.com/site/theoreticalphonetics20132014/.

The composition of Wiki pages corresponds to Theoretical Phonetics course syllabus. There are materials for 5 lectures, assignments for 5 individual practical classes, manuscript of lectures, additional academic readings, necessary teaching-learning video and audio resources, links to useful web sites.

You can also see discussion Padlets built at http://ru.padlet.com/golikova975/gt2lk14e5l4o.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1475