Experience
Now, we turn to the experience. The following class takes place at an English
language institute in Thailand. The class consists of 16 students between the ages of
16 and 30, who are high-intermediate learners of English. They meet for one and one-
half hours two times a week. The classes are held in the evening because the students
are also attending school or working at jobs. The institute has classrooms equipped
with the following technology: a computer and a liquid crystal display (LCD)
projector, an overhead projector, and a TV and VCR/DVD unit. There are two
computer labs in the institute, each having 20 computers, offering high-speed Internet
access and printers. In addition, the entire building is a wireless zone for Internet use.
The class meets in one of the computer labs. The lab is set up with computer tables
topped by computers around the edges of the room, facing the wall. This allows the
teacher to have students turn their chairs to face inwards to form a circle for
discussion and then easily turn back to work on the computers.
Prior to this lesson the students have been required to participate regularly in three
online tasks. First, they have been asked to maintain an online blog, in which they
regularly record their experiences in learning English. Some students have used this
as a record of new vocabulary or to comment on a particular English language website
they have found useful. Other students have chosen to use their blog for personal
reflection. These students write about what is happening in the class or what they are
learning. They also discuss experiences they are having in finding ways to use the
language or reactions that others (such as tourists and visitors) have to their use of
English. Each student has also been told to comment on at least three other
classmates’ blogs every week.
As a second ongoing task, the students have created a profile on a social
networking site. Their teacher has chosen to use Facebook, where many of the
students had a profile already. The students have to log on to Facebook a minimum of
three times per week in order to read what their classmates have posted and to update
their ‘status.’ They have also been encouraged to respond to the status updates of their
classmates. In addition, as is the nature of social networking sites, the students each
have their own set of ‘friends,’ who are not members of the class and with whom they
also exchange information and updates.
For the final ongoing task, the students are asked to do some research for the wiki
that they have created with classmates. Earlier in the course, they chose a topic that
they wanted the world to know about. They chose traditional Thai dance forms. On an
ongoing basis they edit a wiki document on this topic, adding information and links to
external websites and commenting on each other’s contributions.
Some of the students have also chosen to correspond with ‘e-pen pals,’ and some
even chat electronically in real time with their pen pals. The teacher has helped match