Brave New Digital Classroom: Technology and Foreign Language Learning - Softcover

Blake, Robert J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1589019768 ISBN 13: 9781589019768

Publisher: Georgetown University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Brave New Digital Classroom examines the most effective ways to utilize technology in language learning. The author deftly interweaves the latest results of pedagogical research with descriptions of the most successful computer-assisted language learning (CALL) projects to show how to implement technology in the foreign language curriculum to assist the second language acquisition process.

This fully updated second edition includes new chapters on the latest electronic resources, including gaming and social media, and discusses the realities and potential of distance learning for second language acquisition. The author examines the web, CALL applications, and computer-mediated communication (CMC), and suggests how the new technologically assisted curriculum will work for the foreign-language curriculum. Rather than advocating new technologies as a replacement for activities that can be done equally well with traditional processes, the author envisions a radical change as teachers rethink their strategies and develop their competence in the effective use of technology in language teaching and learning.

Directed at all language teachers, from the elementary school to postsecondary levels, the book is ideal for graduate-level courses on second language pedagogy. It also serves as an invaluable reference for experienced researchers, CALL developers, department chairs, and administrators.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert J. Blake is director of the UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching, professor of Spanish and classics, and chair, Designated Emphasis in Second Language Acquisition, at the University of California, Davis.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

" Brave New Digital Classroom [is] a practical, useful and seemingly modest introduction to the use of computer technology in the foreign language classroom.... It states clearly and urgently what the stakes are: either teachers embrace the new language learning technologies and integrate them in a new pedagogy or they will not only deprive themselves of the enormous benefits afforded by CALL, CMC, distance learning, social networking and language games, but they will be increasingly out of touch with their own students, who are by now wired, networked, and computer savvy. However, in every chapter we are reminded that the technology is not a panacea in itself. It urgently needs the teacher to harness it properly if it is to help learners achieve the ultimate goal of foreign language learning: becoming bilingual." -- From the Foreword by Claire Kramsch

About this edition

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1589019768
• ISBN 13: 9781589019768
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 222