Behaviourism/Structuralism
A long history, back to Henry Sweet, didn't pay too
much attention until Pavlov and his theory about slobbery dogs. Skinner he did
some scare boxes sometimes with birds and mouses, they are trained with
positive reinforcement, if he sees the blue ñight food comes out, if he clicks
the red bar he gets shocked or by negative reinforcement. It's about training
creatures to do things automatically. Charles Fries, audiolingualism came up
with the idea with audiolingualism, the idea is a immediately if you get
something right, you get no awards, if you say something wrong you get
correction. Behaviourism, if people do something wrong and they get not
corrected, their idea would get stucked in their head.
Plato IV: the touchscreen revolution in 1972. Plasma
monitor, online games, talkomatic. Techonology, this is where everything came
from.
Drill and practice exercises. You have brackets, you
check your answers and it tells you immediately which ones are wrongs, with
audilingual approacheces you need immediate feedback. It can work pretty well
but it can be boring. Thats' why he calls em Drill and Kill. Good habits are
strengthened and bad habits are discouraged. The computer has the power.
There is always change:
Cognitive approaches
Chomsky would say why can we understand grammtical
structure we've never heard? Black box, language accustion device and that
errors are a natural part of language.
Learners should consciously think about and discuss
how the new language operates based on the samples they are exposed to. Making
mistakes it's important because it helps learners to test hypotheses and leads
to rule information.
On computers, we go to personal computers, things come
more graphic oriented, environments to explore, integration of audio and video,
learners explore the world of the program, rather than having the program
control them.
Sociocognitive it started with Lev Vygotsky, he
claimed that all human learning, including language learning, is attained
through interaction with other people.
Zone of proximal development, learners will benefit
most from social interaction, must be collaboratively and preferably with the
aid of more knowledgeable teammates, it will be more beneficial.
Most recent: Hhymes, language is a social constructed
and communicative competence were one of his main point.
Computers: The computer is not a tutor anymore, it is
a tool, they are used to facilitate authentic communication and it shifts the
dynamic from learners.
As it was shown in the video, the speed at
which technology has developed plays a major role in the educational changes.
Nowadays, networking means instant contact with anyone around the world, just
with the click of the mouse you can learn exchange information and learn new
things. It amazed me the fact that in 1972 they already had the touchscreen
revolution, but what really shocked me was the drill and practice exercises. As
Dr Sandler said, they also refer to it as "Drill and kill" because sometimes
it can be boring for students, even though you get the immediate feedback it
reminds me a lot to the exercises we usually do in the paper sheets, so why do
they keep on using this type of exercises? And what about the motor skills when
they write in a paper? If they keep working with the computer, they are going
to lose the ability of it, plus the computer cannot teach the students how to
write a correct sentence.
Also, there has been many studies about the perks of
learning with ICT, but none of them actually takes an insight view of how it
influences on motivation in primary school, why? Isn't it a distraction?
Lastly, with the cognitive approaches its said
that learners explore the world of the program rather than having the program
control them. Is it a good thing? Because I think it is important to have a
balance between what they discover by themselves and the discovery with the
guidance of a teacher.
