Teaching New Media

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.