Teaching New Media

Implementing podcasts into english learning seems more easy in comparison to other new media we experienced in the course of our session. In consideration to the fact that it is difficult to find an appropriate podcast, because many criteria, like age-appropriateness ,content-related fit, a limited number of vocabulary or an appropriate speech rate, have to be satisfied, it might be recommendable to look for other audio data. Hitherto, the creativity of the teacher comes into play, so that we generate audio data on our own, using technology that is available today. The difficulty of finding appropriate podcasts on the internet was demonstrated by the group who prepared the teaching session. They absorbed podcasts about english sayings, which is pretty unlikely to be implemented into the classroom as a topic for one session.

Mobile learning is an appropriate method in order to introduce a learner centred approach to your lessons. Despite that, the implementation of mobile learning into lessons contains many problems and require detailed instructions in order to ensure concrete learning outcome instead of mere meaningless work with smart phones, laptops etc. The most valuable advantage of mobile learning is the dissemination of knowledge, information which is always and everywhere accessible, so that the students can decide more freely about when and where they want to learn, which leads to higher motivation on the part of them. Although, I think that the learning possibilities concerning mobile learning are restricted, because complex explanations and thought processes cannot be transmitted through smart phones or other media, they depend on the presence of a teacher and face-to-face instructions. Consequently the usage of mobile learning is restricted but still constitutes a nice feature.

In contradiction to the the use of blog, social media or e-books, I experienced the implementation of web pages in lessons several times. This is probably due to the fact that the implementation of web pages into lessons is not too demanding. Most of my experiences with the use of web pages in classes are positive. Referring back to the use of school books, I experienced that e-books in Germany are just digital versions of the printed ones without many possibilities for students to investigate topics on their own, because educational publishers fear students being on the wrong track without guidance. Consequently, the questions that is on my mind are: How much guidance do students need and when do we restrict them too much in the course of learner-based investigation on the internet ? On the one hand, I was surprised about the multitude of web pages for teaching and learning English as a foreign language. On the other hand, I was disappointed by the amount of web pages that are inappropriate to be included into lessons due to their lack of structure or due to wrong information.

The elaboration on school books and their connection with new media provided me with an insight into the influence of economical interests on the part of educational publishers. The school books which we use in school highly depend on the innovations and ideas of educational publishers. In general, the didactic advantages of new approaches towards text books, which are for example included into e-books, are too numerous to ignore the growing influence of them. In my opinion the strongest arguments in favor of using e-books are the fusion of different functions in one medium and the interactive approach. Despite that, the lack of financial resources and the tendency towards monopolization reflect badly on the use of digital school books.