Applications and Multimedia Resources for Enhancing Adult Learning in an ESL Environment

In this blog post, I will describe a couple of resources that would assist in the implementation of an ESL class environment. I primarly focus on intermediate and above level students, so using more complex resources would be acceptable at this point.

One multi-media resource I have personally used for taking classes myself in company trainings was WEBEX (www.webex.com). WebEx has many function of which one of the most popular is the meeting function, multi-media function and classroom function. The speaker and forum persons are able to take charge of the classroom while the students are able to put up hands as in a traditional classroom, it even allows students, teachers and forum members to all get on and see eachother, share documents and record. You can send messages in private, or in public and many other functions. This would be great for a breakout group/role play. The teacher could silently observe or not if he/she wanted to be more proactive. Maybe students are going over how to give directions and the teacher takes turns doing a rapid fire excersize using a map or grid and students work in groups or take turns.The teacher would be able to give real time feedback and use a multimedia resource to do this on in class or via distance learning.
“A profound shift is occuring across media and in situations. Digital development and production tools such as GarageBand, iMovie and YouTube are reshaping music and video. Blogs like Daily Kaos are reshaping public discourse. The list goes on. These media present opportunities for ordinary people to follow a passions, develop expertise in a particular domain, and reach a global audience…” (Squire, Gee & Jenkins, 2011). The use of these technologies, such as the one outlined above, WebEx, is shifting the way our education is being delivered in the classroom and translating into expertise in the field, whereby teachers are able to give it their all in the classroom.

A second application excellent for a teaching environment today would be the use of a class wiki, or individual wikis. “A wiki is a database of pages which visitors can edit live. The building blocks of wikis are the ‘comments’ from visitors (http://www.wiki.com/). I would like to use wikis in class as homework as one function. I could post gap fills and other excersizes and students would be able to go in and fill in or complete assignments, working together collaboratively. We could then discuss the results of their wiki in class if need be and it would also serve as a feedback assessment for students and the teacher would know where to focus attention on.

Another use of a wiki would be that students could use them as a supplement to their education. They could go through and start constructing rules and it could serve as a portfolio of what they learned over the period of the class. It could be used and implemented in a string of classes leading up to an official examination once a student goes from begginner to elementary to intermediate to advanced.

References

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

http://www.wiki.com/