Language Technology Reflection 1

Last week, as our group was discussing the use of technology in the classroom, I realized that we all had very different ideas of what we actually understand as technological equipment. One of us associated technology with resources that are somehow electrically powered, somebody else had only digital media in mind, for example computers or the internet. The latter has certainly been the most significant form of teaching technology in the last ten years, as more and more schools tend to go digital, making sure they are equipped with state of the art computers and other digital devices necessary for the seemingly unstoppable IT changeover.

However, technology has always also been considered state of the art only in relation to its historical context. In this regard, even classic classroom equipment like blackboards and chalk – nowadays regarded as obsolete by many a student and teacher – represented a technological revolution for everybody at the time when they were invented. It made it possible for teachers in particular to put their teachings on record, thus using the blackboard as a medium to prolong their volatile voice. All kinds of technology used in the classroom can help us to amplify our voices audio-visually, or in most cases just visually, in order to stimulate our mental skills and facilitate both learning and teaching.