Tech-ing Teaching

I have taught English for more than three years in the Philippines, a country considered third-world in so many respects. I have seen how English can be integral in the ascent of my students academically, socially, and professionally. Not to mention (though I am mentioning it anyway, of course), that this new language provides them with another lens, an alternative way of looking at the world. It is a beautiful lens used by Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and Dickens before, and the grocer at the corner of the street, my Chinese and Vietnamese students, and my favorite Literature teacher in college now.

The experience of teaching English for a 26-year old teacher like me has been harrowing, exciting, and in very few cases frustrating. The chance given to me to impart my knowledge of the language has made me grateful and humbled at the same time. The journey has never been easy; it has been long and has in several times gone uphill, but it has often been fun.

It's a path I never regretted taking.

Teaching in Philippine public elementary school. Source:  http://www.olpcnews.com 

Although I know that I do not hold the future and that I may encounter detours along the way, all I know is that I have to be very good at what I am doing. As a teacher, I am at a constant lookout for better ways to teach the language. Aside from improving my methodologies all the time, I am firmly of the opinion that modern technologies can be put in a good use to make the classroom experience of my students as fruitful and as meaningful as possible.

I admit that it is difficult to integrate technology in teaching my classes; however, this does not mean that it is impossible. It can be done. And it has been done before, although in a much slower pace. I have started using blogging as well as researching through the internet in the writing classes I taught last cycle. Technology widens a student's environment for acquiring a new language. It offers him a wider audience as well as opens his doors to the different programs in the web that will strengthen what he learns inside the classroom.

Of course the Philippines has many stumbling blocks to hurdle integrating technology into the teaching of English or any disciplines for that matter. We have relatively slower internet speed, unreliable IT infrastructures, and we face the unique challenge posed by a widening technological divide. Internet access will take a while before it will be universally available in all classrooms in my country, but initials steps have been done.

I believe that as a teacher in the 21st century, I shall be depriving my students of a very important tool for learning if I do not make use of the available modern technologies.

The world has become much small ever since the internet was invented, but my students' world has been made much bigger world because of it.

John (052312)