YouTube tutorials to learn about baking or fashion, or follow their celebrities on Instragram or TikTok. Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum (2013: 7–8) remind us that traditional language competences such as reading and listening are still an absolute necessity to engage with the language experienced in digital worlds, but that digital media can proliferate inventive ways of exploring and developing language in learning processes when teachers deliberately integrate digital resources. Additionally, think about digital options for language practice and enhancement, e.g. when using annotations in e-readers, retrieving word fields from wiki entries, or using apps for vocabulary and grammar revision.
Communication: Reflect on how digital tools have affected the way people – and this includes today’s learners of English – communicate, interact and connect with each other in these digitally networked times. To offer only a few ideas, this can include building an online identity and connecting with others in social networks, creating private messaging spaces for talking to friends and family, posting comments on YouTube and Twitter, or sharing updates in one’s newsfeed. In short, learners have many new options to make meaning – and this does not only involve using language for writing and speaking, but experimenting with other communication modes such as images, video, and sound.
Culture: Undoubtedly, digital media facilitate access to Anglophone cultures, and hence, support processes of intercultural and global learning. For the classroom, consider how otherwise geographically distant cultures can be experienced more immediately in a world shrunk by digital media. In such a ‘global village’, learners can use digital channels such as Twitter, Instagram or news sites to remain in touch with current and dynamic sociocultural developments, e.g. food and sport trends, youth and anti-racism movements, activism against homophobia and sexism, or political debates and controversies. Also, with many digital media becoming more interactive and participatory, learners can increasingly establish relationships with peers across cultures to negotiate and exchange worldviews. At the same time, however, learners and teachers should also adopt a more cautious view: Not all cultural information found online is necessarily trustworthy and might therefore need critical questioning and evaluating, and intercultural exchanges can also harden prejudice and stereotypes without pedagogical guidance (cf. Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum 2013: 22, 35).
Texts: Texts have always been a mainstay of English language education, so think about how the growth of digital media and the internet proliferates the text types available for teaching and learning. The many video genres on YouTube, for example, allow learners to voice genuine responses or creative self-expressions (especially if teachers also embrace the productive side of such texts besides working with them receptively). Also, the world of literature has exciting new dimensions to offer when it goes digital. Original interactive fiction can draw learners into innovative aesthetic experiences, virtual realities enable thorough immersion into storyworlds, or learners can view stage adaptations of plays by streaming the productions coming from the New York Broadway or the London Globe Theatre. On a more pragmatic level, digital texts can also supplement the more traditional coursebook that might gradually become outdated during its life cycle.
subject matter and technologyWhat we believe is important to note here is that these perspectives and innovations do not center in themselves on technological issues (e.g. how to operate a mobile device), but that they do affect the very content of the subject of English as a philological discipline. This mirrors one of the introductory statements collected above, namely that students’ education today is not only about learning how to use technology, but about using technology to learn. Therefore, digital perspectives on English language education are not limited to the question of using the latest technology. It affects language education at a deeper level concerning the way we wish to learn and communicate with each other, find pathways into expressing ourselves and our voices through language and other means, and engage in the cultural and digital worlds that surround us. You will find that all of the impulses placed above – concerning language, communication, culture, and texts – will be intensified and exemplified throughout this book for you to discover and explore.
Undoubtedly, the diversification of digital practices that become possible in teaching and learning English also lead to more complex repertoires of choice that teachers need to navigate. Teachers are increasingly challenged to integrate digital resources into the flow of their lesson, prepare digital learning options for independent study phases, choose suitable tools and apps, and make apt matches when layering their learning objectives into digital scenarios. To alleviate this potential feeling of being overburdened or overpowered, we suggest three ideas to navigate this challenge.
digital awarenessFirst, try to identify contact points and similarities between your current teaching modes and their digital counterparts. This way, you can become aware of and appreciate the valuable work you are doing every day in your classrooms (even if it is completely offline and non-digital), and gradually develop a greater consciousness of digital opportunities that can mirror or enhance your regular approaches and routines. With this in mind, teachers can move from creating cursory and provisional digital learning experiences in an experimental fashion to deeper and more consistent digital learning designs.
For example, oral in-class reflection or activation activities that normally happen in the classroom plenary (and which might not give all learners the chance to contribute) can be alternated with polling tools such as Mentimeter where learners type contributions into a tablet or smartphone, which can then be displayed on a screen in real-time visualizations. This gives everyone the chance to contribute, and learners and the teacher can further engage with the responses they see on display.
digital continuumSecond, digital teaching and learning is not an either-or question between ‘no digitalization’ and ‘full digitalization’. We suggest that teachers think of digital education as a continuum where the amount or density of digital resources used is a matter of degree, while there cannot be a normative rule that determines exactly the right dosage. While teachers are moving along such a continuum, it is a helpful mental framework to think of digital education as digital-assisted education, or media-assisted, mobile-assisted or computer-assisted learning, to use alternative terms. In this context, Schmidt and Strasser point out that “the emphasis should not be solely on the tool itself” when integrating digital technology and multimedia in contemporary classrooms, “but rather on how these tools can be methodologically exploited in order to achieve a learning goal” (2018: 218). If the focus is on how digital resources can best assist teachers and learners to achieve their objectives, the digital continuum can be brought to life, e.g. by alternating practice and instruction through digital tools, setting research tasks for asynchronous working phases at home, or moving to full-fledged online synchronous teaching in more drastic situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The following box serves as a first reminder on how digital media can assist fulfilling typical educational functions.
Practice: Using digital tools to rehearse grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation.
Information: Using digital sources to research, collect and evaluate new information and knowledge, or discover topical issues.
Communication: Using digital tools to communicate and interact with people (e.g. other learners, teachers, or people from other countries).
Presentation: Using digital tools so that learners can display results and products of their work, or teachers can introduce and explain new content.
Collaboration: Using digital environments that faciliate learners working together on a shared outcome.
Reflection:
