My Past Predictions, Vol. 1

I wrote this back in October of 2012… I find it interesting how it came true 🙂

“My area of specialization is Professional Development, but I have been moving my focus to learn more about educational technology for ESOL and ESL classes, most often called CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning).

I have been learning while reading for the past few weeks that one of the issues that most researchers point to as a problem is overcoming teacher’s unwillingness, discomfort, insecurities, and mistrust when it comes to using CALL and other educational technologies in the classroom.  I would like to find a way to focus my research on ways to help teachers to become comfortable with and utilize technology in their classroom.  There were a variety of studies I read about, some focusing at the university level and new teacher candidates and others focusing on professionals already in the classroom.  I’d like to find some more studies about developing classes or training groups on a certain technology and then following teachers in their use of it over a period of time.  Those seemed to be the studies that I could possibly emulate in my professional practice, and those were the studies that seemed to have the most impact on teacher’s attitudes and changed their understanding of educational technology in their classrooms.  I’d like to find ways to travel to ESL and ESOL conferences and see what technology is being presented to teachers there and how receptive they are of it.”