Bob Patrick recently reported that his first trip to the computer lab with his classes made him aware of how computers affect his language instruction:
Going to the lab changed everything. Even though I had something interesting for them to read, I was not directly interacting with all of them as we have been all week because I had to call each student up to my computer and log them into various accounts. Necessary stuff, but it changed everything. I became a moderator instead of someone with whom they were interacting in order to commune. Yes. Commune. When we are in CI work, in the core of it, getting lost in the story, the questions, the event, the laughter, we are communing with each other. Today, there was no communion. There was “next”. And there were students who needed to be “monitored”, and mostly I hated it.
John Piazza commented:
“Going to the lab changed everything”
This is the dirty little secret about technology-based “activities.” They don’t help us connect with our students. Not even Mr. Spock could mind meld with a computer, and if Ben and Bob are right, that we are not merely trying to deliver content, but to achieve the mind meld/communion of genuine and therefore empathic human interaction, then having students interact with a machine instead of a person will necessarily detract from that human experience. Technology (here defined as computer based language activities–obviously many of us use our classroom computers and projectors to help deliver CI) will not help us connect with the minds, hearts and souls in our classrooms. I know from experience that the content that Bob was having his students read is pretty compelling, but it was not created by that particular class, and therefore it is a lot less compelling (95% less compelling) than we’d like to think. For years I’ve been hung up on the idea of creating Tarheel readers or a novel in easy Latin that my students could comprehend at their level. But I’m only now realizing that these things are not a substitute for, or nearly as effective as, creating stories with our students (or just talking about them in the TL). I’m sure I will have “tech” days like Bob described, when I need to do administrative stuff, or have a sub, or simply need a break. And there is nothing wrong with giving ourselves a break, or just making time to get things done. But I’m going to be a lot more honest with myself about the effectiveness of these activities.