How a reluctance on the part of educators is preventing the benefits of technology from being felt in traditional subjects like literature.
Many educators claim that the teaching of languages exists in a realm entirely of its own: it would be impossible to bring in technological advances as the study itself does not require it. This is a fallacy that technophobe educators put forward to somehow validate their own aversion to educational changes. Technology certainly can be a useful part of the future study of language and literature – as a matter of fact, developments of this kind are long overdue.
The economic wastefulness of language study is painfully apparent, and nowhere more so than in the amount of paper it consumes. The written word is a ferocious consumer of the white stuff, and for students they go through an awful lot of it. What’s worse is that the simple fixes that could be used to reduce some of the impact our paper usage has simply can’t be applied to schools. Students could not, for example, be expected to take notes on paper previously used for other work, as the potential confusion would make the endeavour fruitless. And teachers could not be expected to competently and accurately mark scripts that had the scratchings and scrawls of other students all over them.
Whilst test papers still have value, the daily use of paper by teachers in lessons is something that needn’t occur. One blogger in a study that, granted, wouldn’t satisfy the requirements of any meaningful scientific investigation, reckoned that US schools used approximately 34 billion sheets in a single academic year[1]. UK schools meanwhile are looking at an average of 1 million sheets of paper are used per school, per year[2]. What is more shocking is that schools don’t envisage that their use of paper will fall, but rather that it will continue to rise.
Then there is the literature itself. Now I am by no means an advocate of getting rid of books. I love books. Books are awesome. However, the beauty of looking at the books on your bookshelf is that they are titles you have chosen and that you can return to later. Forcing students into the purchase of books from publisher’s year after year (because clean copies are essential don’t you know) is unnecessary, placing an economic burden on families already paying for everything from ties to Macbooks because schools have told them they must.
At which point the argument being made that there are no benefits to be garnered within established, somewhat ‘vintage’ subjects like literature, begins to sound a little rehearsed. As with all the other subjects, languages can benefit from technology, but only those introducing it are inventive.
Our team has experience with students where we have embraced technology in all aspects of our English learning approach. We use AIO touchscreen desktops that allows for a degree of specificity in our teaching, zooming in and out of text to effectively isolate things on screen. This means that students hold the enlarged, sectioned off text in-mind better than just seeing as part of uniformed script on the page.
Alongside this we have the latest electronic paper replacement devices, meaning hand-written work can be completed electronically during lessons. The change over is also seamless, as students are still able to highlight, erase and underline, but do so using the same stylus removing the need for pencil cases that clutter up the desk space. The interface between the pad and desktop means that there can be continual tracking by the teaching (aka me!), and all work can be shared at the end of the lesson with the students via email, and with parents if they would like.
The final device in our trident of technological learning tools is the e-reader itself. With a fleet of kindle devices loaded with reading material suitable for all levels of study we offer, we are able to assign reading material and develop structured reading plans alongside students months in advance.
So for all the literature teachers out there, drink us in. We are going to show all the schools in Hong Kong how it’s done; how literary study can be brought up-to-date, benefitting from the developments.
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Simon John
Cicero Group Limited
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[1] https://davidwees.com/content/paper-use-schools/
[2] https://edexec.co.uk/how-the-education-sector-can-reduce-its-reliance-on-paper/
