Critical thinking, a matter of the student

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According to what I have read in the articles “Is technology producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis?” and “critical thinking and technology” I can say that technology is a great help for students to develop a critical thinking but only if we focus in students who learn independently because if students practice an autonomous learning, they will learn responsible; however, if students are not committed with their learning, they will not find technology as a very important tool to develop a critical thinking throughout the learning process. I would like to infer that a visual learning has a very significant purpose on students because by watching and interacting with visual learning such as videos, presentations, images, etc. we as teacher may get the students attention. As we know, one characteristic of human beings is that they are curious since they were born. Thus, curiosity could be a very influential factor at the time of getting students attention and I think that by engaging students into the classroom by visual learning, students can develop a critical thinking. Moreover, I would like to mention that technology is a very important tool in the learning process but we as teacher have to know how to encourage our students to use technology in a responsibly way in order to get not only a critical thinking but to learn and practice. To conclude, I can say that developing a critical thinking is up to the student it is not up to technology because I think that someone may have all the access to technology in the world; however, if that person does not use it correctly, technology would not make any difference.

Internet Integration in the learning process

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By reading the article “CALL me… Maybe: A Framework for integrating the internet into the ELT”, I Realized that the internet is being seen in a lot of different ways such as a way to share and find information but it also has been said that the internet makes people stupid because it makes us less creative. I think that the internet changes people but I strongly believe that it depends on people if they want to use the internet as a mean to get knowledge or if they want to use it to loss their time. So, my personal opinion for this week’s article is that the internet has an important role on education because it is a tool that teachers can use to share information by podcasting, blogging, etc. Moreover, nowadays students can practice the four English macro skills that are listening, speaking, reading and writing; and its sub skills as well; for example: some students practicing their grammar in an online website, I visited the quickanddirtytips.com and I saw that this is a website that helps students to check their grammar,  punctuation and usage by giving some tips and developing some exercises as well, it can be used in all the English levels because it provides a lot of ways to practice English grammar no matter what level students are, here you have the link http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl; I would recommend this website because it has a lot of tools that students can use to improve their grammar.. Also, I would like to infer that now we have a lot of new technology such as mobile devices with 3G and 4G internet integrated, new gadgets, and as well as computers, all these allow almost everybody to have access to the internet therefore to educational tools that we as teachers can apply in our class.

The importance of podcasting in the second language learners

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According to what I read in the articles Integrating CALL into the classroom: the Role of Podcasting in an ESL Listening Strategies Course and Blending technologies in ESL courses: A reflexive enquiry, I can say that with the access that we have to technology nowadays, we can use it as a very useful tool to learn a second language. I would like to focus in podcasting which I think is a very useful tool for teachers because we can use podcasting as a supplement to textbook materials, what I am trying to say is that by podcasting students have an easy access to files that includes PDF files, audios, books and even radio which means an easy access to educational contents. I strongly believe that with technology, education will overcome the traditional way of teaching because it will be substituting a classroom for blogs, websites, videoconferences, and of course podcasting.

Students’ responsibility and the contribution of ICTs in the learning process

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According to the article “Effectiveness of the Integration of ICT Tools and Activities to Foster Awareness as the First Stage to reach Learning Autonomy” I can say that the student’s responsibility is an important aspect that students face at the time of learning. Moreover, we know that the teachers are only a guide for students but at the end it will be up to students to learn or not. Also there are a lot of ways to educate students and we as teacher can use the ICTs to do it, what I am trying to say is that ICT tools help us to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of education, and to perform educational activities by using technology as well. I think that the ICT has the power to provide a universal access to education. Even though we have the ICTs as an option to teach, students need to be as responsible as possible at the time of learning. To wind up, I think that the purpose of this article is not only showing the use of the ICTs, but to encourage teachers to promote a self-study attitude in the students.