Integrating technology with learning and teaching

Nicholas Peachey is a well-known blogger, teacher trainer, learning technology consultant and author. Winner of the British Council ELTons Award for Innovation in Teacher Resources in 2016, Nik has worked with companies such as British Council, International House, and Bell Educational Service as well as ELT publishers including Macmillan, CUP, OUP and a range of tech companies including Google.

According to Nik, technology is a huge enabler of learner autonomy as it gives students access to a large range of material, sources of information and useful applications. And if, as teachers, we focus on helping our students to understand how to use technology to become more autonomous learners, then we could really start to realize the full potential that technology offers us.

Peachey believes there are two types of training: technologically focused and pedagogically focused. However, while training English language teachers, one needs to combine both. Many teachers need help to feel confident with the technological side of things, but this has to be delivered within the context of creating learning for students. A lot of technology training fails because it is devoid of context. It focuses on how to use elements of the interface and so on without really putting the application to a sound pedagogical use. Also, the training is theoretical and hypothetical when it needs to be practical and hands-on.

Many think that technology makes learning easier and convenient. However, Nik says that technology might have made us resource-rich but in some ways, our job has become harder. Technology has changed the way people communicate and interact with and through language. That has broadened the scope of what we need to do and the range of skills we need to enable that process.

Also, he doesn’t agree that technology has created a decline in our critical thinking skills. He rather believes that it has highlighted a greater necessity for them. In the past, we had been too quick to assume that something written in a book had an authority and was correct or true. We’ve built an educational culture around this kind of indoctrination. But now that students have much greater access to a wider range of opinion, it has become much harder for educational establishments to maintain a specific bias in terms of what is or isn’t a fact.

In the coming future, technology will play an important role in education, according to Nik. He says that technology gives people access to a huge range of information and learning opportunities. It can also give people a voice to share what they know and learn from each other. It has a huge potential to transform education on a global scale, but we need to ensure that this is done in a way that will empower people and open their minds to new possibilities, rather than prescribe and control what and how they think.