The Future of Technology-Assisted Language Learning:

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The Future of Technology-Assisted Language
Learning

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

Michael Bush Brigham Young University
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Gutenbergs High Tech Stuff

• Charles VII
• Emissary
• Very interesting technology
• But it is not going anywhere!
• There is no distribution channel
• People cant read!
• Being at the right time with the right technology
  (i.e. have receptive users!)

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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!!

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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.

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Slide from Ray Kurzweil
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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)

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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!

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What is our temperature?

• One might call the cognitive economy of the
  typical classroom a cool rather than a hot
  cognitive economyone 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

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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.
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Role of the Teacher

• Stimulate
• Motivate
• Diagnose
• Personalize
• Contextualize

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Teachers?

• Technology will not replace teachers.
• Teachers who use technology will replace teachers
  who dont!

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The Key is Integration

• If technology can do something, then
• Dont waste the teachers time on those
  activities!
• Save the teachers time to do
• What teachers do best!
• Which are those things that are the most fun for
  teachers to do!

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Integration

• Homework
• Those things that students can do on their own
• Classroom
• Those things that students do best together

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The Solution?

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

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What is the real future?