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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2023
The chapters in this section focus on the new possibilities offered to materials developers and teachers by such new technologies as blogs, chats, interactive whiteboards, Facebook, mobile phones, YouTube and wikis. I have seen these new technologies in impressive action in wellresourced institutions in Europe and in such places as Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. In many cases the use of such technologies was enhancing the learning experience of the students by offering increased exposure to language in use, increased engagement and increased interactivity between teacher and student, between student and student and between students and text. Perhaps the most productive feature of the use made of new technologies which I saw was the facility to provide a variety of relevant samples of English in face-to-face action and, in some cases, to involve the learners in such action themselves. However, in some cases the new technologies were just being used as expensive but fashionable ways of delivering old exercise types such as fill in the blank, listen and repeat and multiple choice. In such cases the new technologies can not only take away funds from potentially more useful resources, such as extensive readers, but they can also demotivate learners by promising much whilst delivering little and they can antagonise teachers who would prefer not to use new technologies.
I have also recently visited institutions where most of the new technologies are just not available because there are no available computers, or there is no access to the Internet or there just isn’t any electricity. In such places, however, most of the students do have mobile phones but are prevented from using them in class because of the understandable fear that they will distract the students. However, it seems obvious that, with a little training and stimulus, teachers and materials developers in these places could make very productive use of their own and their students’ mobile phones. Some possible mobile phone activities could be:
• Students in a class form pairs/groups in which there is at least one mobile phone. They carry out a task together in relation to a text, photo or video posted by the teacher and then phone another pair/ group (possibly in another class or even school) to compare their task completions.
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