 I am the academic director of future learning and we started with this idea of having a technology enhanced language school and that brings the question, what is technology enhanced learning and what is it not? Because people have ideas about that when you mention that that's what you're trying to do that needs a little bit of clarification and explanation. So this short talk is about that. A little bit of background, we are focusing on junior courses, international learners. We started in 2013 with this idea of bringing technology into the language teaching classroom and we started with 45 students and we had 4,000 students in the last year and some schools in four locations and now we started to do these short stay programs for the common school tours and to do projects, technology based projects as well, high school, integrations and we're thinking about how do we bring it into other programs as a new departure and we got funding from the local enterprise board and we were very proud to be accredited by EQUALS recently. And so these are what my students kind of look like, like that, and we get them from France and Spain and Poland and China and we do technology enhanced language projects with them and so let's start with this, what's learning technology for you? Now have here the essential piece of kit for many teachers. So who uses one of these? So you already are dependent on technology in your classes. You're using this, you're dependent on technology in your classes and you've had those moments when it breaks down, yeah, anybody have something to pull a copy of break down recently? Yeah, okay, you're like, oh my God, it's broken down. And so I always mention that because people are kind of like, I can't use technology because you can't depend on it, but if it breaks down and I'm trying to say, well you're already depending on some key piece of technology that sometimes break down and you live with it. And so to extend technology into other areas is not that big a leap from, you know, the forward copier has broken down, the Wi-Fi has broken down, you find a way around it, you have a class that works to keep you going until it gets repaired or whatever. It's the same problem that they're already dealing with. It's not a new problem. And people are like, oh, this is a whole new problem. No, it's the same problem. It's just it would just like a new varnish or a new, a new presentation. And so opening out this idea of what is learning technology, I want to throw in some other suggestions. Anybody recognize what that is? Feltboard. And I put that up there because when I was in primary school, the Irish classes were done with the feltboard where the teacher would tell a story using the little characters and teaching us the language. And so there's a bit of felt crow on it and they stick them on and move them around and so on. An obvious one. Of course you can't forget about that, a technology in its way, you know, people were able to do things with it that they weren't able to do before in terms of conveying information to the students or helping them understand things. And I put this one up here because, you know, it's not just a piece of art. It's about trying to help people understand a story, a complex story. It's a teaching tool. It's a visual teaching tool. There is that element as well. Of course now we have these or there's one there, yeah. Anybody use one of those? Yeah, notoriously for getting stuck on the carousel as the slides go round. Yeah. What about one of these? It's a hand crank printer. Yeah. It's also called a Gestetner machine. So it's a precursor of the copier. You have to cut the stencil, put it in, you can squeeze through and you turn the handle and the pages come out. And what were one of these? Yeah, one of these. And the thing I thought I was missing, of course, was for the language teaching classroom. Yeah. One of those with the counter. So you could make sure that you're reliant to the correct spot. And so all of that is by way of saying learning technology is any device which assists learning. It doesn't need to be electronic. But any device which assists learning is a learning technology. It changes what we do and how we do it. So I'm going to give you a moment just to talk to the person beside you about which of these learning technologies you have used or have been used on you and are there any others that you think that you think I've missed? Okay, so one minute. Can you please talk for a minute? No, no, no, I'm looking for you. Thank you very much. I think we might have used a lot of the projectors. You have those kind of transparency right on the top of down the loose. That's a nice handwriting. Okay, I'm going to stop that there. I'm going to run it in time. Did I miss any? Did anybody want to throw in another learning technology? A TV set. A TV set, yes, with the VHS report. What was that? The smart board. The smart board, yes. There it is right there in the flesh. So that's where we are. We're using this technology. But then it's a question of enhanced learning and what does that mean? Because the problem with technology is that it seems to be a good in itself that as soon as you have technology, the students are going to learn. But there's a problem there. Technology doesn't teach the students. And so it's just a tool and you have to think about what are you going to do with that tool to make it effective. So when I'm trying to explain that we're using technology in our language learning classrooms, then this is the idea that I've adopted about technology. So I'm opening out the definitions as much as possible. The learning is any use of information and communication technology, any use. Even if it's your audio recordings or anything, that is using the digital learning, using the electronic learning. We're already doing it. It's not the future. It's now. And my definition of enhanced is we use that technology when big bold capital letters, it can help improve the learning outcomes. And by that I mean through engagement of the students, making them more interested, a better way to convey the information, helping them practice more, motivating them and then individualizing in a way that the teacher talking to the whole room just can't. Whoever is using it. So it doesn't need to be in the hands of the learners straight away. It could be in the hands of the teachers like me here to you. It could be in the hands of the managers or the administrators, tracking students progress and seeing how they're doing and all of that. And of course in the hands of the learners is also important as well, but it's not the only enhancement. And so I'm opening that out to show how much we're already here in this, in the middle of this unquestioningly enhancing, doing technology enhanced learning. And so I want to make that conscious. People ask when I say technology enhanced language learning, they ask, well is it a technology course? And the answer is no. Students might learn how to use a language learning application more effectively, but that's not the primary goal. It's still a language course. And then they go, well is it online? And I don't think it has to be online to be technology enhanced. It can supplement face-to-face teaching. It can enhance our face-to-face teaching. And the students are doing this already as they sit in their classes in front of us. They're using their dictionary apps as part of their face-to-face learning. We already live in that world. And so I'm insisting on the need to teach communication face-to-face. I don't see that technology takes that away, but it is increasingly going to be part of it. I'm sorry, I put the future tense in there. It is increasingly part of it in the now, in the present. And so what do you need? You need an inspirational quote to conclude your presentation. And this is the one that explains why. Why we have to use technology in classroom. Because, of course, there are a lot of reasons that it brings problems with it. You have the attention span problem and how do you keep people focused and all of those difficulties and what information is true and what do you believe and all of that. And so you have to deal with those things if you're going to bring technology into the classroom. But it's not a valid choice to say we don't deal with them because it's the pen and paper of our time. It's the lens through which we or our students experience the world. And so teaching them to manage those problems that come with it is part of our job as educators. It's essential for them to function in the world. Because we could keep them in the classroom bubble wrapped up and bubble wrapped and say, you know, there won't be any distractions or there won't be any false information. It can all be safe and reliable and soothing and calming. And then put them out into the real world and they can't cope with that. It's like the classic thing where the teacher or the student says to me, teacher, I understand you. I don't understand anyone else. And so it's a bit like that that we can make it too safe. This one is to do with don't forget the teachers. And our government is bringing in a secondary school technology policy that's all about hardware. That's all about infrastructure. And it's not put the money into training the teachers and then you don't necessarily need a smart board to make the technology work in the classroom and to spend all the money on the infrastructure. But if you do spend all the money on the infrastructure and none on the teachers, then it's wasted, completely wasted, right? So if the teachers are not able, then it will fail. Technology will not do the teaching. The teachers will. It's just a tool. Cannot substitute for well-trained teachers, says this guy from the consortium of school networking in the United States. It's like a textbook won't teach students. I suppose we have to be honest and say there are a minority of self-teaching students that don't need teachers. But there are very small minority of people who can actually teach themselves. But for the majority of students, the book is not going to teach them without help from the teacher. The software is not going to teach them without help from the teacher. People need the structure. They need the direction. They need the encouragement, the motivation, the feedback, all of that stuff that can only come from the teacher. But if you're going to bring it in, you can't have it as a special event. You can't have, well, once a month there's going to be a technology day when we have a technology team in our technology classroom. That won't do it. It has to be integrated. It has to be the students get used to it. They learn how to do it. They learn how to use it effectively. It becomes another tool that they have learned, like a dictionary. You can't just have a dictionary day and use it once in a while. It has to be a regular part of...