Technology and Foreign Language Education 2nd Post

Picking up where we left off on our last post, let's focus on how we can be fair to every student during the evaluation of a project for which technology use was a requirement. There are several things to consider before assigning a grade or giving any sort of constructive feedback to the student:

Let's imagine this project was assigned to an eighth grader; it is a Power Point presentation to include authentic audio, images, and written information in the foreign language.

Scenario I
The student was born to an American family who has at least basic knowledge of technology and who own a PC with MS Office package and access to high speed internet.

Scenario II
The student was born to an American family who has at least basic knowledge of technology and who own a PC with MS Office package but only a dial up connection to internet.

Scenario III
The student was born to an American family who has at least basic knowledge of technology and who own a PC with MS Office package but no internet connection.

Scenario IV
The student was born to an American family who has at least basic knowledge of technology, but do not own a PC.

I have based all 4 scenarios on children born to American families to point out the many differences that even those student with the most similar backgrounds could be affected by. There are many different levels of knowledge and skills, of comfort when it comes to using technologies. In faith to differentiated instruction, it would be fair to expect the teacher to find ways to level the playing field not only at the time of grading, but most importantly in his/her approach to teaching.

Let's imagine this classroom with 15 students, and that the scenarios continue to look worse as we count. Notice that in all four scenarios above the child is born to an American family with at least basic knowledge of technology. First of all, Americans are said to raise their children with a high level of independence; independence is a key ingredient in the process of learning technology. What if this child were born to an immigrant Hispanic family with, where there is not so much independence, with no exposure to technology? Can you imagine the level of confusion this project could generate for that child?

In favor of equal growth opportunity, and as a believer of differentiated instruction, I would agree that the teacher should find ways to give every student an opportunity to enrich the classroom, even if that student can not meet the technological requirements of the project. That the student should not be held back in the acquisition of knowledge, in this case of the language because of technological inability but should be given opportunity outside the classroom to practice and learn technology at his/her own pace.