ICT Tools in Language

 

Latest technologies are often having the transformative power to change education for the better or in allowing better educational opportunities in order to support the development of higher-level thinking skills needed by the 21st century.  Theories and ideas to digital technology or ICT tools in language/literacy education are really very significant to all especially educators like us. There are plenty of reasons could exist for a new theory to be developed. Perhaps, some older theories may not answer questions about learners or they leave out the explanations for cognition within the brain. Therefore, theories such as Sociocultural approach, New Literacies Studies, and Multimodality are crucial as the technology develops each and every day. The requirements of the 21st century are dramatically different than those of previous times.  In fact, core subject knowledge is no longer enough, students need higher-level learning skills.

The world in which we live is increasingly sophisticated, multifaceted and nuanced.  People need high-level learning skills to respond, learn and adjust to ever-changing circumstances.  As the world grows increasingly complex success and prosperity will be linked to people’s ability to think, act, adapt and communicate creatively. Hence, these existing theories will help the educators to learn about the technology in language and literacy studies and apply them in their teaching.           

In this blog, I would like to share about multimodality which I find it really interesting. Multimodality is an inter-disciplinary approach that understands communication and representation beyond the language. It has been developed over the past decade to systematically deal with much-debated questions about changes in society, for instance in relation to new media and technologies. Multimodal approaches have provided concepts, methods and a framework for the collection and analysis of visual, aural, embodied, and spatial aspects of interaction and environments, and the relationships between these. In short, it focuses on analyzing and describing the full repertoire of meaning-making resources that people use (visual, spoken, gestural, written, three-dimensional, and others, depending on the domain of representation) in different contexts, and on developing means that show how these are organized to make meaning. I believe that, the teachers can make use of this approach in order to make the learning more interesting and fun. It also will facilitate the students to expand their knowledge and use various types of skills in acquiring language. This theory merely focuses on developing technology in education.

In conclusion, I would say that these theories are really helpful for both teachers and students. They may use these theories as guidance in exploring technology.