Week 5

Article:

Conferences Focuses on Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age

The Vietnam-USA Society English Center’s annual TESOL conference will be held on July 21. One of the main topics of the conference will be the latest trends in language teaching in the digital age. Two thousand English language teaching experts are expected to be in attendance and will have the opportunity to hear presentations by experts from schools such as the City University of New York, Oxford University, Cambridge University, etc. about the latest teaching trends.

One of the interesting points the article makes is how English learners are much different in the digital age than in the past. Not only are they a generation of e-learners, which will require redesigning ELL curriculum and textbooks to meet their needs, they are also more connected. This “connectivism” may change the learning theory for the digital age to accommodate this trend. This will require exploring topics such as developing communication skills in the 21st-century classroom.

It is great to hear that education is moving in a direction that is recognizing the value of technology in education and steering away from traditional approaches to learning. Students now are much different than in the past and instead of continuing to put a square peg in a round hole, we need to see what works best for this next generation and adapt the curriculum to suit their needs. The idea of students staying connected and communicating in the 21^st century classroom will allow students to learn English much faster than in the past. Examples of this include social networking, Skype, Google Hangouts, Google docs, e-books, TED talks, blogs, etc. There are so many opportunities for teachers to design lessons that accommodate the modern learner. It is great to see this paradigm shift in education and I hope to see statistics of students learning English faster in the digital age than in the past.