Samantha's ESL-Personalized Learning Environment

This week's Google alerts brought me to one interesting article, entitled "Technology in the Classroom." According to its author Kathy Turner, the Amazon company donated Kindle Fire Tablets to a Classroom within a summer program in Illinois. The "Project for Success Program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville East St. Louis Center" is now able to provide over 60 of their students with access to technology in the form of tablets (Turner, 2017). In doing so, they intend to increase their student's knowledge and skills in the science, technology, engineering, and math also known as STEM. Implementing the use of coding apps for children, teachers will be able to not only expose their students to technology but they will be able to encourage their interest in creating forms of technological programs and such. While this article has no mention of the donated technology having any impact on any English language learners enrolled in the program (if any) it...

Due to changing the key terms in my Google Alerts, this week I did not receive a sufficient amount of articles related to the use of technology within the ESL classroom or with English language learners. The one article that did receive an alert on related to our course is entitled, "Istation Named SIIA Education Technology CODiE Award Finalist" found on EconoTimes.com (2017). This article discusses a program named Istation which promotes students reading, math, and Spanish skills within PreK-12th grades. The program has been recognized for its effectiveness by receiving the award in "Best ESL, ELL or World Language Acquisition Solution Category" (EconoTimes, 2017). Geared toward teaching and assessing Spanish speaking students, this program was developed upon state standards. Thus ensuring students are being equipped to meet the grade requirements despite their language barriers. Data collected from student assessments indicates students reading ability increased o...

This week, I received a variety of articles on technology in the classroom. However, none specific to the ESL classroom or to English language learners in general. Due to the wide array of topics of the articles I received from my google alerts, I decided to choose the one article which peaked my interest. The article entitled St. Mary's to Implement 'Blended Learning' written by Raymond Daye explained how a private school will be implementing technology in order to differentiate instruction of their students within the classroom environment. In doing so, they believe that their students will have a greater learning experience as they have the opportunity to learn at their own pace, while still having the support of their teachers in their classroom. As students are provided with either iPads or Chromebook, they will engage in learning as they use a tool named ready. iReady provides instruction to the students in both reading and math concepts. The students are also ...

After setting up my Google alerts for the terms ESL, ELL's, and Technology in the classroom, I did receive some alerts which were relevant and interesting to share. The articles, I found the most intriguing to read were "Is There Too Much Technology Being Used in the Classroom?" by Andrea Au, "Technology in schools: Too much of a good thing?" by Justin Parmenter, and "Reader's view: Don't let school technology slide" by Emily Milliman. Each of these articles caught my attention due to the nature of our course, as well as the idea that educators must continue to implement technology into their instruction as a way to enhance student learning.  As I read the first article "Is There Too Much Technology Being Used in the Classroom?" by Andrea Au, I was surprised to find that the author was opposed to implementing too much technology into today's classrooms. She believed that there should be a balance between the use of textbooks...