Going Forward

With the current COVID-19 situation, a lot of teachers are practically forced to move to online/remote teaching whether they are novice to technology or tech savvy. Therefore,, a lot of organizations, companies and individuals are pushing webinars and workshops trainings to help educators get accustomed to their new teaching environment. While I do understand the effort and the support, going forward it is important to think about the following questions:

• What is technology integration?
• What is the difference between "Using Technology" and "Integrating Technology"?

As we know, it was never been about the tools but the pedagogy used to achieve the learning objectives. That's why it is imperative to think forward and to come up with ideas on how to help educators, not only to use the tools, but also to integrate them during their synchronous and asynchronous teaching in order to develop deeper learning. Feel free to share your thoughts.

Technology Integration

What is technology integration?

Technology Integration refers to the use of digital tools in the classroom to allow students to learn and apply technology and computer skills to content curriculum and classroom assignments to promote learning (Dockstader, 1999).

What is Successful Technology Integration?

Technology in the foreign language classroom

Language researchers have stressed for years the transformational effect of technology on language communication skills and the development of Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) when used appropriately (Lee, 2002; Lys, 2013; Marlow & Inman, 1992; Nagappan, 2001; Yang & Chen, 2007). However, it is of utmost importance that language teachers possess the appropriate level of technology skills needed to integrate the digital tools into their daily teaching in order to ensure that students not only acquire  the language skills but also 21st century skills that they need to compete in the global world.  Therefore, teachers need to be fluent in the digital language in order to communicate with their students and enable them to acquire technological, media, information and online social fluencies (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010; Jukes & Dosaj, 2005; Krish, 2008).

Douce, E. (2016). The effect of foreign language teachers' level of technology integration on students' development of higher-order thinking skills. St. John's University (New York), School of Education and Human Services.