As professionals in the field of education we have huge responsiblities as we work with human beings who usually trust us. With regard to this wonderful and "scaring" world of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), nobody can deny that it brings lots of changes and challenges to all of us. Therefore, we need to be open-minded enough to understand what being in this world implies. Once we understand that we cannot get away and just neglect it, we must start seeing the potential uses of ICTs to take advantage of them. However, we should also be aware of the threatens they might have in order to make right decisions in relation to their use.
This world of ICTs changes our role as teachers and our students' as well. It is important to remember that the advent of socio-cultural and socio-critical approaches had a purpose. They showed the relevance of changing these roles. It became paramount to move from just being transmissors and recipients of knowledge to be facilitators and active and autonomous learners. So, if we compare the abstract subject of the mass culture with the "active" subject of the media culture, we have to recognize that there is an advantage in the latest.
The flexibility, interactivity, innovation, diversity and the way relations are established through ICTs can be seen as qualities; then the potential uses cannot be disregarded. However, as professionals we should be able to take a critical stance in relation to this because ICTs can become a way to be manipulated as well. As a result, we might go back and become the abstract and passive subjects of the mass culture but in a different way. In conclusion, the responsible and conscious use of these technologies is what we have to pursue.
Astrid
(As usual, our minds are connected...jeje) We are supposed to guide this generation of learners towards a critical understanding of all the information they can access. It is not enough to teach pupils HOW to communicate in a foreign language but helping them to be aware of WHAT they communicate. Do learners actually express their views of the world in what they say or write? Do they actually react to what they listen or read? Or do they just do what we language teachers want them to do? From this point of view, the language teachers’ role in the media culture is to guide learners towards the construction of their own perspectives in a world where ICT seem to control everybody’s thinking. This can be done when the language teacher sees the language he or she teaches as a means and not as an end.
ResponderEliminar