The Future of Technology-Assisted Language Learning:

What role can (should?) technology play in language learning?

Michael BushBrigham Young University

Gutenberg’s High Tech Stuff

• Charles VII

• Emissary– Very interesting technology…

• But it is not going anywhere!

– There is no distribution channel– People can’t read!

• Being at the right time with the right Being at the right time with the right technology (i.e. have “receptive” users!)…technology (i.e. have “receptive” users!)…

Predicting the Future?

• Saffo said that when we predict the future of technology applications, we will undoubtedly be wrong twice…– We will overestimate the near term!– We will underestimate the long term!!

The Future?

• I am now beyond the 20 to 30 year point for remarkable things to happen overnight…

• Things will continue to evolve:– From Web pages with HTML and PDF

documents, to video, to PowerPoints, to PowerPoints with audio, to simulations.

– In the slightly more distant term to interactive applications that communicate better than static documents.

Slide from Ray Kurzweil

Making the Future Happen

• The best way to predict the future is to invent it!– Alan Kay, early meeting in 1971 at the Xerox

Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)

Learning for the Future

• Rather than asking simply whether technology-based learning is as good as the teacher in the classroom,

• Ask what can technology do to facilitate the work of the teacher!

What do we need to understand?

• That teachers are a very low bandwidth channel of communication.– In other words students can listen faster than

teachers can talk.

• That there are things that teachers will be able to do better than the technology for the foreseeable future.

What else is important?

• Information is exploding exponentially!• Our ability to learn is at best increasing

linearly…• If we measure learning as we do our

students (with typical tests that a ratio of things known to things there are to know), then we are getting more ignorant with every day that passes!

What else is important?

• Information is exploding exponentially!• Our ability to learn is at best increasing

linearly…• If we measure learning as we do for our

students with typical tests, i.e. as a ratio of things known to things not known, then we are getting more ignorant with every day that passes!

• This means that we have to work smarter!This means that we have to work smarter!

So what do we do with the technology?

• Productivity tool• Means of

communication• Information access

devices• Simulation tools

In other words, we use all the tools at our disposal!

What is our temperature?

One might call the cognitive economy of the typical classroom a cool rather than a hot cognitive economy—one that does not motivate the energy needed for complex cognition of students but that runs at an altogether lower level of cognitive demand.[Perkins (1992), p 159, quoted in The Learning Paradigm College, Tagg, p. 94]

Paradigm Shift?

A college is an institution that exists to provide instruction. Subtly but profoundly we are shifting to a new paradigm: A college is an institution that exists to produce learning. This shift changes everything. It is both needed and wanted.

Robert B. Barr and John Tagg, From Teaching To Learning -- A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education, Change, v27 pp. 12-25, November-December, 1995.

Role of the Teacher

• Stimulate

• Motivate

• Diagnose

• Personalize

• Contextualize

Teachers?

• Technology will not replace teachers.

• Teachers who use technology will replace teachers who don’t!

The Key is Integration

• If technology can do something, then– Don’t waste the teacher’s time on those

activities!

• Save the teacher’s time to do– What teachers do best!– Which are those things that are the most fun

for teachers to do!

Integration

• Homework– Those things that students can do on their

own…

• Classroom– Those things that students do best together…

The Solution?

Technology is not the solution to the problem, but there is no solution that is workable without the use of technology!

What is the real future?