Where do you stand at present on using new technologies in the English classroom?

With our world becoming increasingly digital illiterate I believe it is a positive step forward, children using and becoming progressively more confident regarding technology. After reading the article Writing the future in the digital age, it has been made more apparent to me that children need to understand and have familiarity with different technologies, because  as Merchant, 2007 states, this developing digital literacy will become “more significant” in the years to come. This digital literacy is one which will need to be embedded within our educational system to prepare children for the world outside of education, which revolves around technology. I think, if children use technology appropriately and have limits both at home and in school, why wouldn’t this be something positive? I think that eventually within our classrooms you will see the use of technology and digital literacy more and more, however it is a cause for concern, how educators bridge the gap between children’s personal experience in technology with information and communication technology which is taught in school (Merchant, 2007). As our society is revolving and developing into a digital age, I believe children using technology will be inevitable and that our classrooms should encompass this shift in society utilising children’s popular cultures and the technologies they are interested in and are comfortable using. It has been emphasised that incorporating children’s technological interests results to enhanced learners and learning as well as seeing an increase in children’s motivation (Lambirth, 2003).

Where I stand at the moment regarding using new technologies and media within English teaching is that I have a great interest in using technology in order to improve English teaching, making it current and relative to the children in my class. I feel after undertaking this module, I will feel more confident with how I can incorporate technology and ICT teaching with the English curriculum. At the moment, I would see using the Interactive Whiteboard as a type of technology within English teaching, however, I feel there are many more technologies which can be used to adapt and develop the teaching of English within classrooms; which I would like to discover over the course of this module. I feel the challenges of this module will be focussing my blog entries from an ICT perspective rather than from an English one. I feel this would be a challenge because we are working closely with the English specialism and I do have an interest in English. However, using the readings, I can critically evaluate them from an ICT perspective and relate them to me as an emerging ICT specialist.  

Bibliography
Lambirth, A. (2003) ‘”They get enough of that at home”: Understanding aversion to popular cultures in schools’ Reading 37(1) pp.9-13

Merchant, G. (2007) Writing the future in the digital age Literacy 41 (3)pp118-128