In my previous post I spoke about how a cartoon can change your teaching life. However in this post I am going to mown a bit and look at how things unfortunately never change -If you do not want to read a moaner, don’t read this post.
As I was saying in my previous post I have been attending a conference in Auckland about Task Based Language Teaching. Although the food was great something got stuck in my throat.
As I arrived at the venue I had to register, so far very normal. While I was registering, the lady behind the counter gave me a bag which I thought was full of chocolates. Unfortunately it wasn’t !!
I was very disappointed to see that in the bag with a bottle of water I was given a block notes and a pen. And my disappointment did not stop there. I was very sad during a good session to be given paper handouts.
Why was I disappointed ?
First because if we take notes or if we are given paper handouts we cannot share them with the rest of the world. Why should knowledge be restricted by distances? I am sure that a language teacher in Europe would have loved looking at the presenter’s research. By sharing paper with an audience you do not promote collaboration.
It is now 2011, it is time that teachers collaborate and share. How can we expect our students to do so if we cannot even show them that we are doing it?
Another thing was quite disappointing. On the program the word elearning did not appear once. I saw the word internet but I did not see the words elearning or ePortfolios.
I went to this conference to become an effective teacher and for my students to learn better, I did not go to become a better teacher in 1985, I want my students to learn better in 2011 in order to succeed in the world in 2020.
From those points of views, it was a bit sad to be stuck in the 20th century -which has seen Vanilla Ice and Milli Vanilli, let’s not forget it- instead of being shown how we can use a great language method in the 21st century.
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