During my last practicum, I had a chance to observe a class given by my cooperating teacher in a computer lab. To my greatest surprise, it was not that big of a nightmare! The students knew what they were doing, no one was off task. They did have a lot of questions on how to find sources in English, but they were cool with the rest. This experience reassured me about bringing my future students to a computer lab.
I guess the most important things while in a lab are to be prepared (to get familiar with the program, anticipate the worst, have a plan B, etc), to stay calm and to ask students' help when needed (just because sometimes our students are more comfortable with computers than we are AND to make our students feel important). These are my initial rules.
One sure thing is that absence of lab experience should not be an obstacle for teachers to bring their students to a lab. We take risks, make lots of mistakes and learn.
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It's true! I believe that all of us learn by making mistakes.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard for lots of teachers to take students to the computers lab because some of us do not feel at ease with computers. But as you said, we can always ask students for help. Moreover, computers are a part of students' life and we should teach them how to use them in a pedagogical way.
My expirience with computers in the L2 classroom has been overwhelming and extremely frustrated at the seemingly endless organizational, bureaucratic, instructional and legal expectations of teaching using computers. It takes a lot of experience and knowledge in this field to know which strategies are effective in the classroom. From your experience what kind of classroom management strategies would you suggest to use in the computer lab, and why?
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