Use of ICT in languages

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES AND DEVELOPMENT

(Services 1)

ICT has an increasing role to play. This because during 1995 to 2002 the US had an impressive overall growth... one third of this growth was attributable to ICT.

Experts have sought a means for ICTs to find a way to help developing countries. The problem that they found was:

An estimated one-third of the world has never made a phone call and only one tenth have used the internet!

Continual march of ICTs

In 1965, Gordon Moore (of Intel) predicted that computing power would double every 18 months... Dramatically bringing down the costs: We need just to wait to make ICT affordable.

ICT Challenges

Access --> Information ---> Knowledge <---> Opportunity

Access is a several bottleneck for increased ICT use... but we all know that telecommunication's costs are the largest challenge.

• Hardware, software and connectivity costs: affordability is a prime factor in the digital divide.
• Content: much of the content today is not in local languages, or directly useful for most people.
• Security: it is a concern even for uninformed or unaware end-users. It places an implicit cost on all transactions.
• Internet control, architecture and addressing: internet governance is closed linked to what we want the internet to do.
  Some changes may be required to make it more inclusive, reliable and responsive to users' needs.
• Regulation and Policy; government policies drive technology adoption, innovation and investments.
  Countries with fewer restrictions often find higher levels of ICT adoption.
• Wireless: wireless access technologies hold great promise for developing regions given low usage densities and limites legacy (wireline) deployment.
• Energy and Power: Availability of electricity is a critical pre-requisite for ICT; the alternative of standalone solutions are very expensive.

Economic models, markets and role of ICT

• Market driven models alone will not push ICT into developing regions.
• Leapfrogging into advanced technologies offers strong potential for cost-effective deployment.
• Developing regions are a large but untapped market... but their needs are not necessarily the same as in developed regions.

FACTORS AFFECTING TEACHERS' USE OF ICT

(Teaching 1)

Information and Communication Technologies: can change, simulate, gather, transmit.

Teacher: should become effective agent to be able to make use of technology in the classroom.

Training program: technology should be used as a tool to support the eduacational objectives.

Use's factors of ICT

Objectives:

As object of study: learning about ICT for daily life.

As aspect of a discipline: the development of ICT skills for professional purposes.

As medium for teaching and learning: focuses on the use.

Factors:

Manipulative: attitudes of teachers

Non manipulative: factors that can not be influenced directly by the school such as age and teaching experience.

Personal Characteristics of Teachers

• They are an important influence on how easily they take up an innovation.
• There are two groups of adopters: earlier adopters and later adopters.
  Earlier adopters: differ from later ones in tending to show greater emphaty, less dogmatism, ability to deal with abstractions, greater rationality, less fatalism and higher aspirations.
• Later adopters: more realistic, steadiers in their judgements, less willing to take unnecessary chances, having preference for being guided by experience and whitin a more realistic appreciation of possibilities than earlier adopters.

Parent and community support

• Instead of taking innovative ICT-based learning to the student, the students are taken to the innovative learning.
• When parents are encouraged to participate in and contribute to change management activities within a school's ICT master plan, change occurs more quickly.
• Morale is generally high in the schools with innovative ICT, while teachers, students and parents are excited about the level of innovation in the school and quite anxious to share the experiences with others.

Manipulative School and Teacher Factors

Availability of Vision and Plan about the Contribution of ICT to Education

• "A vision gives us a place to start, a goal to reach for, as well as a guidepost along the way" (Ertmer, 1999)
• Users of technology must have a fundamental belief in the value of innovation or the innovation is dommed to failure.
• It is crucial to involve those who hace a take in the outcomes, including teachers, parents, students and the community and allow them to positive attitudes.
• Once the vision has been successfully created and accepted, the next step is to articulate an ICT integration plan, spelling out how the teachers are expected to integrate technology in their lessons.

Accessibility

• Computer access has often been one of the most important obstacles to technology adoption and integration worldwide.
• The lack of funds to obtain the necessary hardware and software is one of the reasons teachers do not use technology in their classes. (Mumtaz, 2000)
• Teachers who had computers were more likely to use them in instruction than teachers who did not; more than 50% of teachers who had computers used them for research and activities related to lesson preparation.

Available Support & Computer Attributes

• Teachers did not want to use computers because they were not sure where to turn for help when something went wrong while using computers.
• Regarding to the role of technical support staff, they recommended that schools should work to convince technology staff that reliability is very important, especially concerning technology in classroom technologies; new classroom technology setups should be tested by faculty before they are installed; indentify attitudes and behaviors that ate seen as poor or inadequare support and work within technology staff to reduce these.
• Appointing an ICT coordinator or head of the ICT departmenting each school helps to assure administrative and pedagogical support for the teachers.
• Lack of on-site support is one of the reasons that teachers do not use technology in their classes.
• Rogers (1995) stated that characteristics of an innovation as perceived by individual in a social system affect on the rate of adoption.
• Also, he identified five innovation attributes that may contribute to the adoption or acceptance of an innovation: relative advantage, compatibility complexity, observability and trialibility.
• If teachers perceive ICT as a beneficial tool, compatible with their current activities, easy to use and have observable outcomes, they will demostrate positive attitudes toward ICT.

School Culture

• The basic assumptions, norms and values and cultural artifacts that are shared by school members.
• One of the major challenges facing developing countries is to make technology an essential part of the culture of people.
• A new technology in a society depends on how well the proposed innovation fits the existing culture.
• If the technology is not receiver well by teachers, they must be a mismatch of values between the culture of schools and the technology.

ICT ON TRANSLATION

(Translation 1)

There is a problem related to this topic: It exists a global shortage of qualified linguists and if the situation is not addressed, international organizations will be unable to perform their vital tasks.

In european institutions, in the next ten years between 40% and 50% of the current Directorate General for Interpreting staff are due to retire.

Also, 49% of employers are disappointed in graduates' language skills!

This lack of language skills represents an average loss per 325,000 euros per business.

Training provisions

Bridge the gap between the theoretical learning in the form of the instruction of the classroom and the real-life application of the knowledge in the work environment.

What is the role of ICT?

A critical analysis of the way ICT are used in translation and interpreting courses at Heriot-Watt University.

The computer can provide an alternative to real-life setting, and this technology can be used without sacrificing the authentic context which is a critical element of the model.

An example:

Perez and Wilson, Scottish Executive (2006) worked with the Scotish Police Training College, they designed videos with experts from the Police Services. These interpreter-mediated police video interviews are used as part of the Public Service Interpreting course.

Authentic ---> Easy transferable ---> Accesible

Virtual Learning Environmental Platform:

• Audio-visual resources online
• It facilitates a continuum in the learning process
• Awareness of professional resources: links to terminology data-bases
• Purpose-made media-library accessible at all times and from anywhere

Empowering students and fostering team-work and professional skills

A wiki is a website which allows collaborative modification of its content and structure directly from the web browser.

1. Groups are created on the VLE.
2. They are assigned a page on the wiki, where they exchange and annotate their joint translation. 
3. Having a virtual common work-page enables each type of learner to intervene at the stage which corresponds to their learning process.

This exercise promotes exchanges and cooperation; the work-space is not limited in time or space, so each learner has more flexibility to work in his own way.

Enabling a reflexive and critical learning experience

For the learning process to be complete, it is important that the observation and practice of the tasks be followed by an analytical process and an evaluation.

ICT can contribute to this process too: as explained, the wiki tool of a VLE facilitates an analytical reading of the translations through the editing/proof-reading taks.

Access to professional booths is limited during the training and after, but graduates need to keep those skills up. So as part of the course, students are taught to use ICT as a continuous professional development tool.

Pedagogical Tools (ICT)

• Production of authentic materials.
• Valuable situated learning materials.
• Offer flexibility.
• Foster collaborative work.
• Allow the assimilation of a critial attitude which empowers then and enables them to become independent professionals.
• Support learners in a constructive way throughout the acquisition of techniques and skills.