Hand it in or Email it in?

We've gone all Google at my place of work. I'm still not quite sure if this necessarily a good idea.
On the one hand, it does mean that things are incredibly easy to share - colleagues can work simultaneously on worksheets, photos and resources can be sent with the click of a button, and it's child's play to create communities and websites, AND there's even the new Google Classroom app to play with.
On the other, it's incredibly easy for well-meaning people with all the spatial conceptualisation of a loaf of wet bread to create huge, arcane and functionally useless hierarchies of folders and subfolders that take one down a dizzying maze of technological befuddlement. Google Classroom is a nice idea, but it's even less feature-rich than Edmodo at present. And, perhaps more importantly, do I really want to be at the beck and call of my students at the ping of a button?
One of the problems if technology in class is that it can make it all too easy, in a way, and what can end up happening is that the technology becomes the object of the lesson rather than a resource to deliver lesson content and the learning objectives. I've had scheduled IT classes in the past where the learners may well be writing something on a blog or wiki, but the reason for writing is obscured by the act of typing and negotiating menus and buttons on a word interface.
Now, don't get me wrong - I love it when students email me their homework. I find that I can mark it and give feedback faster (and, I think, better) when I have a nice pristine electronic sheet in front of me than a sadly tattered piece of A4 torn from a notebook. The question is this: should we insist that all homework is mailed in rather than handed in?

I think that it very much depends of several factors. The first is the language level of the learner. In my Advanced groups, emailing work in is pretty much the norm, and in fact I think that it's appropriate. A lot of these learners are working full time and using English in professional correspondence electronically, so the medium of communication and practice is appropriate. But for lower level learners, it can be a more complex picture. As a rough rule of thumb, I'd say that the lower the level of English, the more handwritten work should be done. Quite apart from avoiding the temptations of spellchecking, it also helps the teacher analyse issues with the way learners engage with the language as they write - all kinds of errors and mistakes are apparent in handwritten work.

The next thing to consider is the learner's native writing system. Clearly, if someone has Arabic as their L1, writing in latin script provides its own challenges - not merely the formation of the individual letters, but also writing in the other direction, ensuring the text is left margin justified, and so on. I also wonder what the act of writing in an unfamiliar direction has on a learner's thought processes.

Two further factors are the age of the learner and their exposure (and attitude) to IT. Younger learners are far more likely to either be proficient users of tech, or adapt quickly to using it. Adult learners, on the other hand, may present challenges in the way they approach computers. for some, it's quite clear that they have a motivational issue with many kinds of technology - very similar, in fact, to the affective filter that some people have ramped up to high levels, leading them to be ineffectual language learners.

So, for example, broadly speaking, if I had a 40-year-old Georgian student in a pre-intermediate class, I'd probably want him or her to hand in a handwritten piece, while a 20-year-old German in an FCE class would be better off emailing their work.

Of course, we could compromise and ask students to write out their work, then scan it and email it.

One more point to consider though: Language is not merely an act of mind and ear and tongue: It it an act of the whole body. I feel that learners who make notes, who write things out, who copy things down off the board, are more likely to be better users of English. Put simply, the act of writing actually consolidates the language in the learner's mind - using the hand confers, as it were, a shape to the words and the grammar. Words and syntax are given tangibility and (literally) made palpable by the application of pen to paper, by the subtle movements and pressures of fingers grasping the instrument. And that is a skill that may be in danger of being lost by solely relying on technology.

101 uses for an iPad in the ESL classroom

....or are there?
Sorry about the title if you were expecting yet another breathless blog about how iPads/tablet computers were about to totally revolutionise teaching FOR EVER. From what I can see, most of these over-excited breathless scrawls are either a) written by people who don't have much teaching experience, and think the iPad is going to do all the work for them, b) poorly written, with plenty of formatting and spelling mistakes because they've been written on an, uh, iPad, or c) they've been written by people who are being paid to flog all sorts of pap.
Well, I've been given an iPad as part of the college's experiemnt in using iPads in a Further Education environment. The trial is called the iPad Trial, amazingly enough, and has been going for the past year. From what I've witnessed so far, the iPad Trial seems to largely consist of wandering around with an iPad, occasionally using the notepad function to take notes. In other words, it's like having the world's fanciest, most expensive clipboard.
Having said that, I've been very curious indeed about the possibilities of using tablets in education, all the more so since it was announced that tablet computers have apparently outstripped the sale of PCs in the States. And I'm always happy to have my assumptions disabused or indeed smashed to bits and stamped on. So I was glad indeed to get hold of a nice, shiny, slightly used iPad and invited to go forth and trial it.
First thoughts?
My GOD, it's nice. It has a nice heft to it, although I don't think I'd like to cart it around in one hand all day. I love its tactility: using a keyboard even after just a few minutes of literally stroking the iPad felt odd. It's a sleek, purring pussycat covered in velvet and butter. I started off by uploading all the really important apps - Angry Birds, Temple Run, BBC iPlayer and the Guardian. And again, MY GOD, this is one fast machine, and the display! Awesome! It really does make your average pc or netbook look like a plodder.
So far, so typical reaction - there is no doubt whatsoever that the ipad is one handsome beast, and like anyone else who's ever picked one up, I felt a real WOW! moment.
Then I decided to put it through its paces, and think how I could use it in class.
My immediate thought was that it would be a supremely useful device on 1-to-1 classes, and for CALL lessons for learners who had little or no experience with PCs. For example, we have a group of retired Gurkhas in the college this year, and I could see how using a device that uses instinctive gestures to navigate rather than using a mouse would be enormously helpful. I could also see how I could carry round video and audio files, PDFs and documents for easy access in class.
The trouble is, how do these actually teach, and how do they do the job better than a desktop PC in class, or indeed, a piece of paper and a CD?
I then turned to the College Moodle VLE - it looks beautiful on screen, yes, but what's this? I can't edit or add anything, because of course iPads don't support certain things like Flash. So I can look, but I can't touch, as it were.
I tried downloading an app for editing files - it allows me to edit Google Docs as word or Excel files, but - what's this? - if I try to edit the same files on a PC, Google Docs won't allow me to - I can, again, look but not touch!
And that's the thing, so far: The iPad is wonderful to behold, but when it comes down to it, it's not very productive - not with the written word, anyway: The music and art apps seem to be much more promising. It is mainly a thing for consumption of content, not its production, and that concerns me somewhat in language learning - you can't have one and not the other.
It's also a somewhat solipsistic experience. The iPad, or tablets in general (or, for that matter, and somewhat ironically, smartphones) are essentially about the individual user. To make the whole iPad thing have a chance of working in class, every learner should have access to one - and that is unlikely to happen some day soon, not until prices crash significantly, and their capacity to be used for production increase.
I suspect that the real game-changer in terms of the use of tablet computers in education will be the new low-cost 7-inch tablets that have arrived on the scene - they're easier to carry, for starters, and they have the legs to do the things that you might need. If one of the manufacturers includes a stylus, you've got a product that is seriously usable in class.
Well, I've had the Ipad for a whole 5 days now, so maybe I'm still a bit prejudiced, and as I said at the beginning, I'm happy to be disabused of my notions. In the meantime, it still seems to me like a gorgeous clipboard. And something that's good as a cheeseboard.

Brand New, Shiny New, Shiny Brandy New Tech in class: Worth it?

As some of you may know, I have a twitter feed (@pjgallantry, since you ask), and I follow plenty of my fellow educators through it. I'm also, as some of you may know, a bit of a tech geek - I love brand new shiny gadgets and websites and all sorts of electronic wotsittery. And I have a Vice-Principal in my institution who is eager, excited and and indeed deliriously delighted about all forms of e-learning. Putting all these things together, you would think I'd be happier than a dog with two dicks about being able to combine all the helpful ideas on Twitter, my own techno-enthusiasm, and having the support of a senior admin guy to help my students learn English, wouldn't you?
You couldn't be more wrong.
All I see is a hopeless mishmash of poorly joined-up enthusiasm with little actual thought of what it entails practically and pragmatically.
Let's start with the most fundamental of all - access. Not every student can afford an ipad, or an Android-driven tablet, or even a smartphone. Believe it or not, some students, especially older learners, don't even want a smartphone, or a tablet - and some find using computers difficult. Does this make them losers who don't deserve to learn? Hell it does. If learners are not at least beginning their learning from a level playing field, then neither true learning can occur, nor can the teacher honestly say they are teaching - all they are doing is playing at teaching.
point two: materials. The major publishers have, as we know, taken quite a long time to latch on to how e-materials can be produced. Some more tech-savvy teachers have produced decent materials that work on a variety of platforms, but even so, what is out there is horribly uneven in terms of quality and, pace the first point, accessiblilty. Currently, if any teacher is truly serious about offering equal opportunity of learning to all their learners, they need to have (near-) identical materials available online, as an app, in pdf, as a .doc or equivalent and as a good old bit of paper.
point three: just because we, as educators, get excited about a new piece of tech or a new website or whatever, it does not necesarily follow that a) our students will be equally excited or b) that the brand new shiny thing we have discovered is actually, genuinely useful or game-changing in the class. We might love Twitter or Vimeo or whatever, but unless we consider how pragmatic it is to use it, and how often, it is far too easy to overindulge ourselves to the detriment of learning - but because we're using the new tech or website, we can convince ourselves taht actually we're teaching well, or the students are learning well!
I'd like to suggest a few points that anyone who is getting excited about new tech/software should think about.
1) What does this do that the old method doesn't? If the answer to this is 'nothing' or 'I don't know', then don't use it. Either work out how it is different, or leave well alone. This applies to websites, software and hardware.
2) What does this do better than the old method? Answer as above, really
3) Will my learners benefit from some discovery that excites me? If the answer is 'no', the leave it out of class.
4) Do my learners have access to this online resource I want the class to use? If they don't, then you are the one disadvantaging them. Rethink your approach.
5) Can my students afford this piece of tech? If the answer is 'no', then why are you basing your lesson around it?
One thing I have noticed amid all the excitement over tablet technology - the students I have don't have tablets, but they are quite avid users of smartphones. However, it is glaringly obvious from their use that they see them as accessories to learning rather than necessarily portals for learning - in fact, they browse language sites and apps rather than rely on them. This is an important thing to note, as it means that they have do with language apps on their phones what they naturally do with the other software on it - use it in a casual, relaxed way. If I made them use their phones in a more concentrated 'LEARNING-STYLE' way, they probably wouldn't use them as effectively. Instead of making dedicated learning-rich apps, it might be better to create ones that encourage and support the natural way people browse their phones for information.