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For teachers willing to take the plunge, ICT presents endless opportunities to engage students, says Pete Sharma.
"I fear maths," admits Pete Sharma, author of a number of books on English language teaching, a prolific conference speaker, university lecturer and director of a company which trains teachers in using technology.
"I know it's not rational, and I'm probably not bad at it, but if you just say the word to me I get scared." This, he continues, is how many teachers feel about ICT (information communication technology). Though they are comfortable with CD players, televisions, and increasingly, interactive whiteboards, some teachers are too afraid of technology to learn how to use it to its maximum potential.
"A great number of teachers are definitely not integrating technology as much as they should," Sharma says. A lot of the fear, he adds, comes from simply not knowing.
"There are some things that teachers may not have heard of before. If I'm training and say something like ‘wiki', many people will ask what a wiki is." When teachers are asked if they've heard of Wikipedia, the penny drops, and they often realise they know more than they thought.
Fear of losing control in the classroom also plays a part in how much teachers integrate ICT into their lessons. Though few teachers worry about a CD player not working, many will avoid using multimedia and IWBs in case something goes wrong during the lesson.
"I don't think teachers will actually say ‘the reason I'm not using much technology is because I'm fighting to gain control in my classroom,'" Sharma says, "but as a trainer that's what I observe. If something goes wrong you need a back up plan, and some teachers think ‘I'm sure it will all go wrong and I won't know what to do and I'll look stupid in front of the students.'"
Lack of time is another major factor inhibiting greater use of ICT. "Some teachers might have all the will in the world," Sharma explains, "but they are teaching most of the time, so there are not enough hours to get to know things as well as they should." When lesson planning, correcting and counseling are added to the mix, allocating extra time to develop ICT skills is close to impossible.
Yet even with all these prohibitive factors, it is still possible for teachers to make effective use of ICT in the classroom."But one thing I would never do," Sharma points out, "is force it on teachers. It's better if it comes from the teachers themselves." Effective and regular training, he continues, is crucial in motivating teachers to take up ICT.
"One thing that employers and schools often underestimate is the importance of training," he says. Schools will often buy new technology, and expect their teachers to start using it in everyday teaching. "It's like buying a car without the driving lessons," explains Sharma. When training is given, it often falls into the trap of becoming a lecture.
"Some of it is just too much knowledge; teachers go in and they listen and get handouts and then they leave and that's that, now they're supposed to know how to use the technology."
Because ICT involves skills, so should training be skills-based, Sharma continues. "For presentations, simply telling things to people is OK, but all technology training needs to have a hands-on element; there needs to be a point where you do it yourself." Quality technology training, he continues, needs to combine the right amount of both input and practice to be fully effective.
A web log, or ‘blog' is essentially an online diary, kept by people who wish to share their thoughts and experiences with the wider community. In an educational context, using blogs can be a great way to improve students' writing skills, says Sharma.
"The main thing about a blog is that everyone can see it. If students are writing their thoughts, or about their interests, it somehow has an effect on their English, because they're doing it for a worldwide audience." Students will pay greater attention to spelling, punctuation and grammar if they know their writing will not just be seen by their teacher, argues Sharma.
Whereas blogs and wikis can be used to improve writing skills, podcasts have become the new domain for practising listening and speaking. These are audio files, which can be downloaded from the internet and saved to an mp3 player, such as an iPod.
The hundreds of thousands of podcasts available free of charge on the internet can all be adapted for use in the classroom context, says Sharma. "Ten years ago a teacher would walk into a classroom holding cassette tapes, but now there are listenings all over place."
For more proactive teachers and students, podcasts can also be made relatively easily. "It takes an afternoon's workshop for teachers to find out how easy it is to do," he says.
Free software such as Audacity allows users to record and edit audio files, enabling them to become self-styled radio producers. Documentaries, dialogues, or lectures can be created and shared. In the same way that a blog will heighten students' awareness of spelling, grammar and punctuation, so will podcasts make students more mindful of pronunciation and intonation.
"If you like that stuff, it's easy to do it," adds Sharma, "but you've got to be quite keen to do that. It's not for every teacher."
