Technology: Let’s Refine the Word ‘Learning’

4^th Reflection Journal for Technology and Language Learning

With today technology’s development I think we should refine definition of word ‘learning’. If in past many people (including me) assumed that learning is a process to gain knowledge in the classroom and students need to enroll in a legal institute. In my opinion that definition should be refined because it is not contextual anymore. In fact learning today is more likely a process to get information, cultivate it and applies it in real world without time or place restrains.  It could happen because technology help and it kind of amazed me.

            With technology help, face to face interaction in learning process shouldn’t be intense anymore. You even can learn overseas without literally go to overseas, even through that sound impossible with technology it possible. Because we can use internet to access lecture materials form some big university all over the world which provide Open University program and learn that materials independently. It will cost less and it really suitable for busy student because they can manage themselves better. 

            In special case like in language learning there is CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) to help language learner and like it doesn’t sophisticated enough after I attend 4^th course of TLL, I get to know about MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning) which utilize the usage of mobile phone, PDA and Ipods for language learning. That is really cool because with MALL, language learner could learn language anytime and anywhere because the needed device is portable.

Photo taken from

http://blog.lyle.web.id/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mixstyle-2.jpg

            I heard that in South Korea the usage of mobile for learning is really popular. It is because with MALL students can access their class in anywhere even in the middle of traffic! In South Korean, MALL is connected with internet, is not a big surprise considering South Korean is country with the fastest internet connection in the world. So lecturers record their lecture and upload it in internet then students can download it and learn from it.

            But of course aside from it strength, MALL also has weakness. Because slightly different with CALL which can access high quality of video or audio-video, with MALL it is quite hard to access ‘heavy’ page or content because it is not suitable with the devices. Other than that device for MALL is limited, it is not provided in all regions. So for today CALL is better than MALL due to MALL’s weakness.

Not only get to know about CALL and MALL from TLL’S course I also learn about how to design CALL program.  There are some things we should consider in designing CALL program. The most important thing are understanding that pedagogy should comes first rather than technology and awareness that pedagogical interactivity is a priority and it is followed by computer interactivity.  More than that I also learn about do’s and dont’s in content, visual, navigation and multimedia design for designing a good CALL program.

Personally I cannot wait for MALL and CALL to be popular in language learning process in Indonesia.