Preparing for the future

In the last chapter of the book, writen by Dudeney & Hockly, I am going to comment briefly about some aspects related to the future of technology.

In first place, technology devices are changing constantly and this fact causes great impact in people´s lifes, so the technology causes a considerable impact in education and this issue can origin new tendencies. Moroever, Dudeney & Hockly ( 2007, pg. 149) say "Lastly the pace of change will vary for different groups of teachers. Some groups will move very quickly to adopt new technologies while others will remain largely unaffected by technological changes. there will be no one big movement or trend, but rather a range of trends, some fast moving, others slow."

In second place, how can teachers keep updated and try to catch up the pace of new technologies? I believe that getting accurate, precis,e and current information from the mass media and technologies stores can help. Furthermore, in the textbook there is a useful tool called Really Simply Syndication (RSS) which is a time-saver because it reads content from blogs and websites. The RSS can be installed in the computer and it checks new postings and articles from the blogs and websites, then it downloads the headlines of these tools into the RSS reader, in a list format.

In third place, the market is growing in two main areas like distributed learning and training.

I agree with the authors that the teachers are going to have more e learning training for using the electronic tools. For example, at UNED in the Extention Department some English teachers are trained by using e learning and the videoconference room. They also have a blended course which let them improve their English profiency.

"The Web 2.0 is the transition between the World Wide Web to complete software programs. One of these collection of websites and services is social bookmarking where people keep their bookmarks or favorite information on a website instead of on their own computer. " (Dudeney & hockly, 2007, pg. 150) Precaution while analyzing the contents of the links and selecting the ones that show accuracy are two recommendations for obtaining quality websites information.

The new trend is that for language courses, students are going to use e learning and have more frequently blended courses with some complementary tools like the online groups, key pals, peer to peer voice via Skype or audio chats which give them the opportunity to interact more actively, have better synchronous, and practice the four skills at the same time.

I have been using two types of e learning programs MOODLE and WEBCT in my English program and these are good platforms. MOODLE is even easier than WebCT and it hardly had internet connectivity problems. For me, the blended courses are very interesting because you can interact with some technology tools in spite of the communication is not always synchronous. It is a good idea to incorporate more technology materials with these platforms and motivate students to have training, use technology and interact with it without any fear.

Finally, teachers have to be open mind toward incorporating technology devices in their teaching process, learn how to use technology sources and tools, being critics about the materials given, and choose the ones which are the best in quality, accuracy, content, fit the learner´s aims, needs and interests as well as with the learning purposes. These elements have to be consider in order to join technology with the teaching-learning process and obtain successful results.