| CODE | LHN5011 | ||||||||
| TITLE | ELT 4 Use of Digital Technologies in ELT | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Languages and Humanities Education | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | There is pervasive use of digital technologies in our daily lives and reading on screen has become a widespread practice. Digital technologies can be used for language and literacy teaching in the secondary classroom. The Internet has created spaces for second-language learning that are fundamentally different from spaces available fifteen years ago. These new, Internet-enabled spaces allow for bilingual participation in complex shared social activities. Young people all over the world watch, listen, read and learn from content produced in languages different than their own almost every day. Beginning readers in the early 21st century have unprecedented access to digital books and reading materials that provide them, and the adults supporting them, with many opportunities as well as many challenges. In the present chapter, we consider children’s early literacy experiences in a digital world. We review research on the influence of digital texts on early reading and explore how digital technologies are being integrated into educational literacy practices, both in the preschool and school age years. The success of this integration necessitates attention to multiple parts of the educational ecosystem, from individual learners to educators, and through to local and national educational policy. Growing numbers of children use a variety of media devices and applications at home (Jones & Park, 2015), and at an increasingly younger age. Parents report that their children are using digital technologies even at the age of one (Mifsud & Petrova, 2017). Mobile devices have become especially popular among children aged 0 to 8, with a large number of families with young children having smartphones and tablets in the home, although this has not automatically led to an increase in digital media use (Common Sense Inc., 2017), and does not tell anything about the range of factors influencing how the technologies are appropriated in the family setting (Plowman, Stevenson, Stephen, & McPake, 2012). Research suggests that a majority of today’s students play videogames on a regular basis – five or more times per week. Research also suggests that more attention is needed to understand and theorize the connections among multiple out-of-school literacy practices and academic spaces. There are multiple ways that videogames shape and inform people’s lifeworlds, and this unit aims to provide an understanding of gaming ecologies as a means to conceptualize and theorize gaming, learning, and virtual environments. Some of the topics of the study-unit are the use of digital and new technologies, mobile Pedagogy for ELT, using Podcasts in ELT, virtual Reality (VR) and artificial Intelligence (AI) for language teachers and learners, teaching Autistic Children with Robots, etc and relevant research. Study-Unit Aims: This study-unit seeks to familiarise students with a number of current and relevant issues in the use of digital technologies in ELT in Maltese secondary schools. The students will have extended opportunities to reflect on and discuss such issues, making direct links with their own classroom experiences. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Consider and critically review a number of relevant issues in the use of digital technologies in English Language Teaching in Maltese secondary schools. - Read and discuss the relevance of related research and its implications for ELT. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Apply their understanding of a number of issues related to the use of digital technologies in ELT in Maltese secondary schools to a number of teaching and learning situations in different school contexts. - Reflect on their professional practice in schools and seek methods, approaches and strategies in the the use of digital technologies in the ELT classroom. - Assume responsibility for their own CPD (Continuing Professional Development). Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main readings: Mifsud, C.L., Granić, A. & Ćukušić, M., (2009). Design, implementation and validation of a pedagogical framework for e-Learning. Computers and Education, 53(4), 1052-1081 Elsevier, US. https://doi.org/10.1016/Atkinson Supplementary Readings: Mifsud, C.L., Georgieva, R. & Kucirkova, N. (2021). Parent-child joint reading of digital books in bilingual families in Malta, International Journal of Educational Research,Volume 109, 101844, ISSN 0883-0355, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2021.101844 Mifsud C.L. (2021) The Professional Development of Teachers Using Tablets in Bilingual Primary Classrooms. In: Marcus-Quinn A., Hourigan T. (eds) Handbook for OnlineLearning Contexts: Digital, Mobile and Open. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67349-9_17Atkinson T. (ed.) (2001) Reflections on ICT. London: CILT Mifsud, C. L., Bus, A., Hoel, T., Aliagas, C., Jernes, M., Korat, O., & Van Coillie, J. (2019) Availability and quality of storybook apps across five less widely used languages. In O. Erstad, R. Flewitt, B. Kümmerling-Meibauer, & I.S.P. Pereira (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of digital literacies in early childhood, Routledge, UK. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203730638 Mifsud, C. L., Wang, X. C., & Christ, T. (2019). “iPad has everything!”: How young children with diverse linguistic backgrounds in Malta and the US process multimodal digital text. Early Child Development and Care, 102, 2563- 2580. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2019.1593157 Mifsud, C. L. & Petrova, Z. (2018) Literacy education in the digital age. In M. Barzillai, J. Thomson, S. Schroeder & P. van den Broek (Eds.). Learning to read in a digital world (pp. 165-184). John Benjamins, Netherlands https://doi.org/10.1075/swll.17.07mif Mifsud, C. L. & Petrova, R. (2017) Young children (0-8) and digital technologies. Report for the EU Joint research Committee of the European Union https://www.um.edu.mt/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/314400/YoungChildrenandDigitalTechnology-TheNationalReportforMalta.pdf Mifsud, C. L. & Grech, L. (2017). Literacy teaching with tablets in bilingual primary classrooms: The Malta TabLit Study. In N. Kucirkova & G. Falloon (Eds) Apps, technology and younger learners: International evidence for teaching. London: Routledge, UK. Mifsud, C. L., Vella, R., & Camilleri, L. (2016). Attitudes towards and effects of the use of video games in classroom learning with specific reference to literacy attainment. Research in Education, 90(1), 32–52. https://doi.org/ |
||||||||
| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
|
||||||||
| LECTURER/S | Charles L. Mifsud |
||||||||
|
The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
|||||||||