During my workplacement, I have attended five different English
teachers’ classes. This experience has provided me the opportunity of obtaining
a wider view of how teaching English may be in a specific school, as I have
seen how all teachers work. However, on the contrary, this experience has
limited the opportunity of deepen the relationship with any of the teachers and
therefore, limited too in the depth of the information obtained from them. From
what I have heard from other colleagues from university, those who have been
accompanying the same person (their tutor) during all their internship, they
have created stronger bonds and have had the opportunity of sharing time
outside the classroom in different contexts as well as, in any free hour to
prepare classes and support them in any other duties outside the class.
Nonetheless, my experience, as mentioned before, has been reduced to the
classroom where there was little space for conversations other than what was
occurring during that session and how to manage it.
First thing that brought my attention in the school, is that all
classes are provided with multimedia projectors, and some of them even with
digital white boards. Thus, whether teachers use this tools or not, it is up to
them (or up to the time they may have to prepare their classes with these
devices), as the school has already made an investment to provide classes with
the devices required which are fully available for their teaching. Moreover,
while my internship, some of the classes have had new speakers installed, which
has improved the quality of the sound these classes had.
Nevertheless, taking into consideration the availability of devices
in the classes, generally speaking, it could be said that none of the teachers have
made a great use of any new technology tools while I was in my internship.
On the one hand, to start with, I have not had the opportunity of
seen any teacher to use the digital board. On the other hand, all of them,
apart from one, have used new technologies to work on simple functions as, for
instance, to screen a picture related to the unit they were working and that particular
moment. Three have used it in order to show their own family or a family
pictures taken form internet, with the aim of using vocabulary they had learnt
to describe people or to produce comparative sentences. This activity was
carried out in different courses, as to initiate what they had to do next,
describing their own families. This
pictures were taking directly from their files or from or from internet and
screen out directly.
One of the teachers mentioned above, used iFunface to write
adjectives students were saying, related to each family member, while he
recorded their voices. At the end of the activity, he played the recording,
which children loved.
Thus, these examples were mainly used to practice vocabulary as well
as to introduce what they had to do next; another teacher use a picture too,
with the same aim but using a picture related to food, which was the unit they
were starting to work on.
Moreover, in couple of occasions, teachers have used their iPads to
capture instant pictures to work with later.
In year 5, teachers were using ACE text book (Oxford) which provided
all material digitally too and which teachers were using to screen whatever
page they were working on and click on any listening or song the book had.
Teachers believed, what I agree with, that students paid more attention when
the book was screened, as working in their own book at the same time. Along the
same line, some of the teachers used this tool or PDF to show any activity they
were working on or correcting; some, even they wrote on the exercise screened
as to make clear what students supposed to had written.
During Halloween, all teachers have used the projector to screen a
move, either directly from Youtube or from a DVD.
Occasionally, new technologies have been use to play music to create
an specific atmosphere, selecting the music directly from Youtube.
New technologies are also used as to organise teachers´ internal
work: Excel to make not of different marks or to note if the homework has been
done, Word to record the session progress, EDUCA (Government´s programme to
register children notes) and what they call PLATAFORMA, which is the programme
used in Vedruna Schools, to record students marks, as well as to communicate
with families and other staff members (to call for meetings, share
information…).
Apart from using new technologies within the class to for internal
organisation purposes, some also use it to collect material for their classes,
although they admit that they have good resources in the school, so there is no
such a need as to look for it outside. According to what they have shared with
me, teachers gather extra material form websites such as www.islcollective,
www.luis.org, Onestopenglish.org…
To sum up, I would say that even though teachers have good devices
available which they facilitate the use of new technology, they reduce the use
to simple resources that they know. Moreover, I would say that when using them
the methodology does not change. I believe it would be necessary greater resources for children´s individual
use of PC.
