Thursday, February 9, 2017

The Past, Present and Future of e-Resources in English Teaching




Photo credit: Neo-grapher via Foter.com / CC BY


The Past

What is your own experience of using e-Resources in learning English as a student? Did e-Resources help you improve? And - if so - how? Provide your answer in the comment section of this post. The minimum length of your comment should be 50 words.

The Present


The state of using e-Resources in education is undergoing rapid change. While change in the use of technology is nothing new, it is the pace of change that is increasing dramatically. The present state is characterized by diversity, uncertainty and trial-and-error efforts. At the same time, the community of educators with successful stories to share is increasing. 

"The future is already here -- it's just not evenly distributed.

The Economist, December 4, 2003"

-William Gibson










The Future

Many English teachers in Hong Kong were students and pre-service teachers in the 20th century. Today, walking into a classroom can be like travelling in time back to 1986. Yet many teachers have kept up with the rapid changes through professional development programs, collaboration with innovative colleagues and proactive self-development. One way to prepare for the changes in education is to envision them.

Discussion Question:
What will Hong Kong English education be like in the year 2046, less than thirty years from now? Discuss your vision with a group of four classmates, and write your answer in the form below. Begin your essay with the sentence, "Learning English in Hong Kong in the year 2046 won't be like when we were young, back in 2016." Answers should be at least 100 words in length.

29 comments:

  1. As a student who started studying in the 90's, I came across 'real' e-learning when I was studying in the UNI. 'Real' e-learning technology, to me, invovles the process of sharing and more importantly self-directed learning. It provides me the platform of sharing and finding information anytime and anywhere with no limitation of class time. That's what I cherish most.
    Then what is 'unreal' e-learning to me? Plain use of e-textbook as a substitution of hardcopy textbook. I have come across this before of course. But it isn't as effective as note taking.
    Such view is also shared by my students. They wouldn't take note on their e-books because their typing skills isn't as proficient.

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    1. can't agree more. I think typing should be introduced in P.1. It's life long skill to servive.

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  2. "Yet many teachers have kept up with the rapid changes through professional development programs, collaboration with innovative colleagues and proactive self-development. One way to prepare for the changes in education is to envision them."

    That's why I am here^^

    What is your own experience of using e-Resources in learning English as a student?
    When I was a primary and secondary student, the teachers used no or very little e-resources to teach. I used some CD-ROM for doing exercises and self-learning.
    When I was a undergraduate student, the teachers used quite a lot of e-resources in their teaching. To fulfill the course requirement, students were asked to do lots of e-readings. We used the online resources for topic research as well.
    Did e-Resources help you improve?

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  3. I feel sad but it's really true that sometimes when it's mentioned, "Today, walking into a classroom can be like travelling in time back to 1986." Due to the limited time, lectures were given out to the primary students. It's time to change!

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  4. From my experience of a student, my teacher sometimes use the PowerPoint to teacher but they often put all the words in the PowerPoint and read all the words out without any explanation. I felt bored. However, when the teacher provided us some useful websites of exercise, I could do it by myself and I found I was interested in these exercise because I could have feedback immediately.

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    Replies
    1. Immediate feedback is important in learning. And E-learning got this advantage that traditional teaching can't do, or I should say not quick enough.

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  5. Learning English in Hong Kong in the year 2046 won't be like when we were young, back in 2016

    I think teachers need to change, that's why my school let me to study here. We are planning to do more e-learning at school. We need to bring more new teaching ideas, softwares or apps etc. to school. Let them know more about e-learning or e-resources nowadays.

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  6. E-Resources is a great mean in helping me in learning English. I can use many electronic devices, such as ipads, smart phone, to learn anywehre I like. There are huge of reading, news... I can reach from the internet. I can get the information I need too. Moreover, there are many apps that I can have self learning. So e-resources do help me in learning a lot.

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  7. It is very convenient to use e-Reousces to learn English because I can learn anytime and anywhere. The diversity of e-Resources is so great that helps improve my English greatly. I can learn English more easily and with fun. In the past, I could only seek help from my teachers when I had any problems. Nowadays, I can use any digital devises, apps or softwares to find out the answers or study on my own pace or needs.

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  8. E-Resources is a great mean in helping me in learning English. I can use many electronic devices, such as ipads, smart phone, to learn anywehre I like. There are huge of reading, news... I can reach from the internet. I can get the information I need too. Moreover, there are many apps that I can have self learning. So e-resources do help me in learning a lot.

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  9. As a student, I could find lots of information from the Internet.
    If I don't know the words/ grammar, I can find the meaning / explanation easily from the Internet.
    If I want to know about some areas of knowledge, I can get information from the Internet.
    There are many English learning platforms provided on the Internet. We can find interesting activities of learning English. We can learn things easily using e-Resources.

    by Winnie Kok

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  10. In my own experience of using e-Resources in learning English as a student, e-resources did help in my learning. The e-Resources made the learning more effective and claer. But actually, when I was a primary student, my teachers seldom used e-resources in class. I think if we have e-resouces at that time, learning may improve a lot.

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  11. The Past by Tracy

    Pupils acquire knowlege from teacher's face to face method. They submit their written homework by hand. They may not talk and discuss with the group members in class. The role of teachers are feeding pupils.


    The Future of English Education in Hong Kong

    I think our pupils will use the electronic devices in classroom and outside the classroom frequently. They will read, learn, submit the homework, do group work through their computers. They may design their own programs to complete the task.
    The government will spend a large amount of money on developing e-resources and e-learning. School authority will plan how to develop e-learning and e-resources well with the financial support.
    How do we teach and learn effectively through e-learning ? That's one of the important questions for us.

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  12. Most of the students will have their own electronic books for learning English and they will spend more time for self-directed learning. They use electronic resources to learn vocabulary, grammatical items and sentence patterns at home. In class, they will spend more time for peer discussion and collaboration. The teacher will spend more time to consolidate students' learning and assess their academic performance with electronic devices in the lessons. The use of these devices will also help the teacher to keep track of the students' perforamance and do follow-up activities for them when necessary.

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  13. My first learning experience with e-resources was in secondary school (in 1999-2006) when my teacher used Powerpoint to teach Science. It gave me a better picture of how the theories work.

    In tertiary education (2006-2010), in some of the technology-related modules, I had lessons in the computer room. I think students can really learn better if they can have real practice. But sometimes I was not really listening to the teacher as I was so focused on some other things on my computer screen. Am I a naughty student? =)

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  14. In my primary school life or secondary life, I seldom to use e-resources to learn English. However I learnt a lot of knowledge on the web. For students, using computer or e-resources was very interesting things at that time. We would search the information and learn many other language becasue we wanted to solve the problems, maybe how to win the computer games, maybe discuss what the best way to get the highest mark. All these "learning activites" are self-directed. No one forced us to learn (Mum and Dad would blame at us :{ ) So I think students should find out their own interests on learning, so they will find their own way to learn.

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  15. In learning English, it is good to have visual and audio input to help understanding. It also saves time to jot notes. Just like now, I can use the computer to jot notes and I can highlight or use different colours to do remarks. I can surf the net to help me get information and vocabulary. It also makes the lesson more interesting. I need to participate more and actively in the lesson. It can also help retend the things that I have learnt.

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  16. Basically, I didn't use any e-resources when I was a Primary kids. I just try to use the electronic dctationary and Microsoft PowerPoints when I was proceeded to the secondary stage. Yet, I started to Microsoft Office more and the computer to help with my presentation and assignments when I was an undergraduate.
    I think e-resources assists learning in a sense that it increases efficiency and helps students to learn by thinking more thoroughly and producing something.

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  17. I think e-resources help students learning in an interesting way. They are more motivated to learn. They help to assess students' progress with immediate response. Students can learn more independent and happily through using e-resources. (By Lyric)

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  18. For my recent learning, the e-learning resource that I use the most is moodle. I receive and download the lecture resources on moodle. My classmates and I also need to participate in group discussion on moodle, then we have to provide feedback on each other. In addition, we submit our assignments on this e-platform too. Using e-resources can make the learning process more interesting. It can help learners visualise the ideas. Sometimes, using e-resources to illustrate ideas and concepts are better than saying a thousand words.

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  19. As a student, I rarely had any e-resources in learning English. Computer lessons did not seem to have any relationship with English. However, we learnt some simple vocabularies and command in English in order to use those software. Later in my childhood, there were projectors and powerpoint in English lessons. They helped us catch up with the lessons more easily and we could identify the key features of the lessons more clearly.

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  20. From my own experience of using e-Resources in learning English as a student, I really seldom use any e-resource. My teachers mostly chalk and talk in class. My studied experiences were in using textbooks. I submitted workbooks and worksheets as my learning assignments.

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  21. I did not use any e-resources when I was a student. When I was started to be a student-teacher, I used some e-resources to aid my learning, such as using online translation or dictationary and so on. Now I use apps to read English newspaper and online videos.

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  22. I think the e-resourse help a lot in learning language. They are easy to use and help a lot in teaching. However, you need to spend time to prepare the material. The e-resourse help me more easy to present the teaching content to the students. With the colourful pictures, graphic and audio material, let students more easy to learn and have fun in learning. And they will feel free to present their works and opinion in the lesson.

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  23. It all happened in 90s. I first got my email account when I was in year 1. Professor used the overhead projectors and put their sunglasses on. We handed in the hardcopy of our essays and there wasn't anything like TURNITIN.
    Now, it makes my student life easier. I can login everywhere to get the course information. Besides, with the help of the vast amount resources on the Internet, I can view the topic in many different angles.

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  24. What is your own experience of using e-Resources in learning English as a student? Did e-Resources help you improve? And - if so - how? Provide your answer in the comment section of this post.

    When I was a primary and secondary students, Elearning was not that common. What we usually used is CD for listening, ETV for learning and motivating. When I was studying in Ied, lecturers used ppt as a teaching tool very often. As a student I had to hand in assignment online , do self learning on Net and search information using Internet.

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  25. My experience it that students are more interested in learning in using e-resource. I use the I- book and use the interactive games to arouse pupils to learn and participate. Sometimes I provide pupils some relevant and youtube videos to watch at home as pre-learning and self-learning. I think e-Resource can improve my teaching. I think there are lots of e-Resource helpful to the pupils' learning.

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  26. E-Resources helps me a lot to prepare and plan my English lessons for my students, for example, the ebooks, CDs, e-exercises. More rapid to make listening test paper. As a student, e- resources makes it is more easy for me to search information about the topic I learnt, to communicate with my tutors and other learners. I hope I can get more e-resources and learning software in this course.

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  27. When I was a student, computers were not common. There were any e-resources. At that time, we found information from books or newspapers. When I was an undergraduate, computers were more popular, I did my assignment with computers. There was internet at that time but we could just search information on the Internet not like nowadays we can do shopping on the Internet.

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