New Technologies for New Generation

In my opinion  New Technologies course is one of the most informative courses that I have  taken so far.  As a previous English language teacher in one of Armenian small towns, Etchmiadzin school, I used to teach  based on the curriculum offered by our school methodologists.  That was  fine for me at that time. But now when I look back after getting familiar with so many technological innovations and tools I am  deeply disappointed.  Now it is really unacceptable for me to teach English language without integrating technology. As technology  and its applications in the language classroom has been a "hot topic" in the language teaching world for a number of years (Levy & Stockwell,2006). If I compare my perception of the technological innovations at the beginning of this course and at the end for sure it has changed a lot. Based on readings and class discussions in my previous post I was sharing ideas and experience connected with several technologies such as:

•   Digital children, which surprised me a lot as I was not expected to see such technologically developed kids.
•   Wikis where we created story collaboratively, for sure I will use that during my teaching experience.
•  Podcasts were not so unknown as we used that last year, but it was very interesting to cover that topic once again.
•  Storytelling and video making  was one of the best experiences. Even now I  watched the video created by our group.
• Then we talked about Google Apps and Cloud technology which is completely unknown for me.
• We also talked about video games which in many cases can be harmful for kids, so parents and we as future teachers should be very attentive choosing proper games. Even educational games should be chosen  very carefully.
• The hardest topic was about VLEs /ELMs and PLEs  as it was difficult or me to differentiate those two environments at the beginning. 
• Distance education was also interesting comparing with face to face. So we discussed some other technologies which I have discussed in my previous posts. I strongly believe that I will use all those technologies during my classes. By all means these technologies support teachers and empowers them to be better educators  and walk along with the 21 st century students.It is really impossible to teach  English language without integrating technology .Many Armenian universities do so and I am deeply  disappointed about that. I hope that one that many Armenian teachers  will use technology during classes and do not be frustrated as many times lack of technological knowledge is a problem. 

Link for the 1^st image: http://www.google.com/imgres?start=185&hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=5WkDXYAzW2M8ZM:&imgrefurl=http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/the_new_professional.html&docid=eiLNsE7Z4GgYIM&imgurl=http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/assets_c/2012/05/OldProfessionalNewProfessional2-thumb-580x287-1713.jpg&w=580&h=287&ei=dYa_UL2vHKTLmgXyqIGQBw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=178&vpy=311&dur=606&hovh=150&hovw=303&tx=217&ty=77&sig=109605187291664981752&page=8&tbnh=145&tbnw=292&ndsp=26&ved=1t:429,r:99,s:100,i:301

Link for the 2^nd image; A&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=727&sig=109605187291664981752&page=1&tbnh=143&tbnw=143&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:0,i:132&tx=61&ty=71