E-mails, chats and other ICT tools

In teaching issues, few tools have been explored by teachers by different reasons. Some feel incapable of using technological devices such as the computer, some feel struggled because of the time and some others simply do not want to make a real effort to research and apply them in the classroom.

However, once a teacher has tried to get immersed into the technological world and the benefits for students and themselves, they re think about the way they are teaching and the great possibilities students could find in order to grow academically and emotionally. What matters the most is the attitude, once again, of the teacher and the open mind s/he has in order to foster technology in the class.

E-mails, chats, blogs, podcasts and wikis are useful tools not only to motivate our students but to awaken the curiosity, inquiry, critical thinking and collaboration in their minds, so that they become self dependant, critics and problem solvers. It is important to take a quick look at each of them.

First, in order for teachers to foster e-mails in the class is important to know how exactly they work and be sure students know and apply the technical skills of using them and the importance of rules of netiquette such as respect for others’ opinions, use of capital letters and avoid flaming among others. Besides that, teachers should organize e-mails either in a synchronous or in an asynchronous way and give instructions the better possible to avoid confusion.

(Video)Chats are not only motivating but useful in the extent that they can provide a lot of opportunities to write or talk in a synchronous way. In the various ways they are: text chat, audio or voice chat, public chat or private chat; they promote communication skills. Chat classification must be taken into account for teachers because chats can work for different purposes; for instance: free topic; collaborative, task-oriented; informative or academic, and practice chats. One of the most popular is skype.

Blogs, wikis and Podcasts are examples of social software in which people interact, communicate and collaborate online(Dudeney, 2008). Blogs can work as journals; wikis is a collaborative web space and Podcasts are audio files to watch, share or download. Blogs can help teachers to plan writing skills and the format of different papers and students to improve technical and writing skills; wikis can help students to interact with other and find solutions together. Finally, Podcasts help students to improve and develop listening skills, even they mean real medium or not.

To sum up, as teachers, we have a long way to go over in technologycal matters. There is no doubt that the tools are on hand. However, we need a big change from the top of our system to the tecniques used by teachers; even more, to the teachers' minds.

I would like to share this short video about an important tool just to try it!!

I'd also like to share this url becasuse of the importance of the information it contains about IBL.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1125774/