Billie

For my assemblage, I wanted to demonstrate what I had learned this term.  Earlier in my teaching career, I was pretty tech savvy, but after teaching high school for almost 15 years and starting a family, I had fallen into the middle of the pack.  I knew that language teaching and learning technology was evolving, but I had no idea how quickly it was changing.  I thought that language learning and teaching technology was one-sided, as in a recorded voice told the learner how to pronounce a word or phrase and then the learner repeated it without any feedback.  It was eye-opening to realize that there are virtual reality programs that simulate real-life experience for language learners and offer real-time feedback.  I am now wondering which technologies I could utilize that would benefit my ELL students, even with the budget constraints affecting public education in Alberta.  I am also quite disappointed in the professional development offered by my district as they still offer sessions on Google classroom and while Google classroom is a great tool, it is not going to actively engage the students in language learning. 
I also wanted to discuss the limited options currently offered by language learning programs, which seems short-sighted to me.  A lot of research shows that one must know the language to fully immerse him/herself in that culture, which means that as languages die, cultures will also eventually die.  By catering to the dominant languages, these programs are not respecting the role heritage languages play in the development of children and families. 
 
https://voicethread.com/share/16378424/
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