Teacher Training: A Question Of Technology

As more and more colleges and institutes purchase technological resources to enhance their curriculum, the need for parallel teacher training is increasing. Successful teacher training courses on technology require effective course development. How can this be done?

In 1996, my colleague Karen Goettsch and I began sending out questionnaires to see how teachers felt about the different types of technology, asking questions about audio, video, computer software, the Internet and email. We wanted to know what teachers were using, what kind of training they were getting, and what kind of training they wanted to get in the future. Teachers by and large responded that they felt it was not enough to get training in using technology. Most teachers primarily wanted to know how to integrate technology into their existing classroom curriculum; to learn how to evaluate different types of educational technology, develop lesson plans, and determine whether it was worth it all.

We used this research to write a book on the topic and to develop various workshops on teaching ESL with technology. We began teaching a class through the Hamline University Graduate Studies program in St. Paul, Minnesota. In this class we work to make teachers more comfortable with using a wide range of technological materials. We emphasize the need for teachers to analyze their students and work from there. Above all, we stress that technology should not be used just because it is currently the latest craze, but only when it can truly enhance their classroom curriculum, and facilitate learning.

Since we began teaching this course we have had requests from other educators on how to develop an introductory course on teaching ESL with technology. These are some of the questions we have tried to answer:

What type of pre-course needs analysis and preparation can be done?
It helps to contact teachers in your course ahead of time to determine who their students are and what types of classes they’re teaching. You’ll need to know whether they teach ESL at an elementary or high school, an adult basic education program, an intensive English program, or a university course. Do they teach classes which focus on basic skills, like reading, composition, speaking and listening? Or do they teach content courses, like survival English, work place English, TOEFL or the GED? Knowing who their students are and what classes they teach can help you highlight areas in your sample guidelines and lesson plans that these teachers will find relevant.

On the first day of the class, if not before, you might want to give teachers a questionnaire to determine what types of technology they’ve already used in their classroom. It helps to make some kind of outline to prompt more detailed answers.
This questionnaire can serve three purposes. The primary purpose, of course, is to let you know how much experience your teachers have with each type of technology. Secondly, it prepares teachers for the types of examples you plan to use for the class, introducing them to ideas and vocabulary that might be new to them. Finally you can use it as a group or pair discussion exercise which serves as both an ice breaker and a confidence builder as teachers begin to see that they often have a lot to contribute to the class in the way of personal experience. You may also want to add a question at the end of this outline, such as: "Please briefly outline your expectations of this course and what you hope to gain during the next five sessions."

How can you present each type of technology?
We typically divide our syllabus up by the various types of technology and then begin with fairly familiar technology, like audio and video, then continue on to Internet, computer software, and email. Beginning with audio and video builds teacher confidence by slowly introducing them to a field where they often don’t feel totally comfortable. It allows them to see how old skills; materials evaluation, lesson planning, and curriculum development apply to familiar technology.
While we hold all our sessions in the computer lab, not all the audio and video we present is on the computer. We show lesson plan samples with music CDs, taped radio and telephone messages, videotapes, and taped TV. Then we present lesson plans with Internet audio and video websites. So in the first sessions teachers begin working with audio and video presented in a variety of ways, both old and new.

I can hear you asking, "Why even include audio and video?"
Although audio and video are not always viewed as cutting edge technology, they’re still used in the ESL classroom more than computers. In fact, authentic audio and video, as well as instructional audio and video are currently being developed in many new and innovative ways, and so deserve to be examined as two of the major educational technologies in use today.
For every class session you will want to work in plenty of hands on time, perhaps 20-30 minutes for every hour of material presentation. Hands on time allows teachers to ask additional questions or re-examine the sample lessons you’ve already demonstrated, or to explore supplementary samples, reviews, or articles about that particular technology through the Internet.

For audio and video we always give teachers a handout of Internet websites, news audio and video websites, lyrics and music segments available online, as well as ESL audio and video lessons already created on the web. For the Internet we usually provide a handout on the major ESL websites as well as regional websites, such as local events, tours, museums, real estate websites that could easily be of interest in developing lessons for students. After demonstrating four or five types of software, we provide teachers with a wide array of demo copies to experiment with and appraise for their own classes. In addition we give them a page of websites which guide them to lists of computer software reviews and companies, where they can download or order demos of software they think might better fit their own classes. During the hands on time you can encourage the use of evaluation guidelines to help teachers begin their own sample lessons as course assignments, and develop ideas for journal reflections on how they might integrate each technology into their own curriculum in the future.

Practice what you preach by using technology to teach your own class. Put your class syllabus online. Set up a listserv or a bulletin board for class discussions. Assign articles that need to be downloaded from the Internet. The teachers in our class ranged from being extremely computer savvy to almost computer phobic, but amazingly it was the teachers with the least computer experience who loved using all the various technologies the most. They especially liked downloading articles as part of the learning process. They said it made them realize that they didn’t need to be computer experts to use technology for educational purposes. They felt that if they could handle the technology comfortably, certainly any of their students could. So have your teachers manipulate the various technological materials in as many ways as you can, especially while you’re there to guide them, until they begin to feel comfortable with a variety of technologies and begin to perceive what potentials they hold for enhancing their own classroom curriculum.

What specific guidelines and sample lessons should be provided?
Guidelines: Sample guidelines should provide teachers with a step by step checklist of what they should consider in order to begin using any type of technology. This should range from focusing on pedagogical goals, to analysis of the material, and finally to the technical matters of using that specific technology. You will want to provide at least one sample evaluation guideline for each type of technology you wish to present, so that teachers can see the basic similarities in analyzing any type of educational material, as well as the concerns which might be specific to certain types of technology.

Sample Website Evaluation Questions:
Who are your students (language level, interests, language goals)?
What are the curricular goals for this course (specific skills, or content)?
How can this website meet these curricular goals?
What is the language level and register?
What is the content of the website?
Are the words and images appropriate for your lesson?
What support materials will you need to develop for this lesson?
What technical considerations will you need to take into account?

This sample guideline begins with questions such as, "Who are my students?" because it is important to never lose sight of the fact that the main concern is the students needs and the teachers’ curricular goals. After each question you can provide a checklist of possibilities and encourage teachers to pick and choose those ideas, which apply to their own situation.
There are many guidelines for evaluating computer software and websites available online that can be easily found at any of the major ESL websites. The textbook we use for our course, "Connected" has guidelines for using audio, video, computer software, the Internet and email. Of course, you may eventually want to modify someone else’s guidelines or create your own to match the focus of your curriculum.

Sample Lesson plans
Several sample lesson plans for each technology should be demonstrated. Karin and I use a combination of lesson plans we create, lessons our colleagues have taught, lessons written up in teacher journals, lessons from listserv archives and lessons which can be found on ESL websites. As we present the lesson plan we discuss the target audience of the lesson, what concerns were taken into account when support materials were developed, and what skills or content area the material is trying to teach. We go down the list of guidelines and highlight which questions were considered when preparing each lesson.

It’s useful to prepare a range of lesson plans from beginning to advanced level ESL learners for each technology. Often teachers are under the impression that students should be at least at an intermediate level in English before they can use authentic audio and video, the Internet or computer software. By viewing lessons for several levels, teachers begin to see how they can adapt audio, software and Internet sites to become practical teaching tools regardless of their students’ language proficiency.

Have teachers actually take part in at least one of the sample lessons for each session, filling in a worksheet, manipulating the software, or discussing a website, much as their students might. In this way the lessons come alive and teachers can visualize how they will actually use them with their own students. For example, with a video lesson, have them answer comprehension questions created for ESL students, then discuss what level language learner they believe would feel comfortable with this type of exercise due to language density, idiomatic or cultural content, grammatical complexity, and so on. Encourage them to think about how they could adapt the lesson for lower or higher level language learners by using guided tasks, varying segment lengths of the material, or by recycling the material with a variety of tasks. Similar questions for each type of technology, whether testing out a computer software program or viewing a sample Internet lesson can be taken from your guidelines and used in your sample lessons. Putting teachers in the students’ shoes helps them analyze how effective each type of technology might be in teaching certain skills or content areas for their own classrooms.

How can you make revisions and improve the course in the future?
While many institutes now have their own evaluation forms that they distribute to students at the end of each class, you may want to develop your own evaluation to help revise and improve this particular course.

On our evaluation form we asked questions about each technology. We wanted to know how much teachers felt they’d learned about each one, and whether they felt they could use this knowledge in the own classrooms. We asked questions about the handouts, how clear, how useful did they think they were. We asked teachers if they would rather drop audio and video and just learn about computer software and the Internet. We were surprised to read that all the teachers felt audio and video were a central part of the class and extremely useful. We asked questions about the textbook, the assigned articles and the amount of hands on time (too much, too little). Responses to class evaluations helped us make positive changes and developments for future classes.

We also combined evaluation responses with our own sense of what worked and what didn’t to help us decide where we needed to provide more explicit sample lesson plans for each session. We noted down teachers’ questions about technology or technological issues (such as copyright) which came up during course sessions, so that later on we could add a handout or a website to address areas of concern not already covered in our curriculum. Both the evaluations and our own notes on teachers comments provided us with useful insight in modifying and improving the course for future sessions.

Modern technology has provided us with new and useful educational tools. Teachers now need effective education and guidelines on how to successfully utilize these materials. They need training that can show them how to determine what fits their curriculum, and their students’ needs. However, all of these resources are as individual as a pair of shoes. There is no one great technological medium out there, better than any other educational material and perfect for all educators. Whatever types of educational technology are eventually used, they need to fit the teacher and the students using them. Effective teacher training will focus on the analysis and relevant use of technology in the ESL classroom. This will hopefully add to the ongoing effort to facilitate the learning of English for speakers of other languages.