Feedback from reading materials

In today’s learning world it seems that students need to be engaged in what they are doing in order to create the learning experiences. It seems that technology in the learning world seems to fit into this kind of learning environment. In other words, a teacher might have to be able to understand and be able to use the technology tools in order to create the learning and long lasting memory. This seems to be a big burden for teacher especially a language teacher like me because there are so many technology and society tools that should be able (in theory) to create learning experience and motivate students more than the paper and pencil as in the old days.

It is true that “Technology Integration holds the promise of assisting us and our students in making use of student data every day, of authoring assessment material that responds to the data from our classrooms on a daily basis and then using that information to design what we are doing on the next day.”

From the articles I have read it seems that students are growing from being a receptor to becoming a designer. They would love to “Gaining recognition in these niche and amateur groups means validation of creative work in the here and now without having to wait for rewards in a far-flung and uncertain future in creative production.”

All the reading material seems to indicate that there is an attempt to create new patterns or skills in learning, especially in language learning, through digital equipment. Students need to be able to not only read the provided material but also know how to obtain the reliable source of information. Student still have to be able to synthesize and recognize connections and patterns of the cyber information.

What I should do to make this learning experience useful for my teaching is that I should be able to connect the cognitive reading and writing skill with the available technology information students can find around them. The most important thing is that it would be a two way communication more than a one way communication. Students will have more freedom to choose and provide feedback in order to create their way of learning language in many situation as well as in the real world situation. I would hopefully be able to develop tools—such as online reading tutors and programs that embed strategy prompts, models, think-alouds, and feedback into the text or browser— that would enhance the kind of strategic thinking that is vital for online reading comprehension.

However, the danger of this is that it would be a time consuming process for both teacher and student in this kind of learning experience. This is because both teacher and students have to research a lot more and have to spend time on their discussions coming to the point where what teacher would really want students to learn. Another important is that it is a high cost investment. Whether this will be worth the amount of money that school invest versus the real learning and create long term understanding.

For me the questions lie with the fact that “No one has real evidence about the formation of the reading circuit in the young, online, literacy-immersed brain. We do have evidence about the young reading brain exposed to print literacy. Until sufficient proof enlarges the discussion, we believe that nothing replaces the unique contributions of print literacy for the development of the full panoply of the slower, constructive, cognitive processes that invite children to create their own whole worlds in what Proust called the "reading sanctuary." (ref: March 2009 Volume 66 Number 6 Literacy 2.0 Pages 32-37 The Importance of Deep Reading
What will it take for the next generation to read thoughtfully—both in print and online?
Maryanne Wolf and Mirit Barzillai )


What this means that we are entering into unchartered areas as far as learning of language are concerned. It is true that there have been television programs teaching languages but there were no ways to check the learning going on at that moment as there might be in this new digital age. It may be that a system might has to be devise in which the students would respond in some programmed style method or to some internet source that could provide instant response and correction to any reading and writing.


In conclusion, I think teachers need to have this learning experience in using all these various on-line materials before they themselves implement in the classroom.