Teach me, tech me, tag me - my love and hate relationship with technology - UPDATED

Virtual insanity - LMS and VLE

This section was updated to include the context for my interest in Google for Education products and Google edtech evangelism in Europe

More than 10 years ago I was working as an EFL teacher in a secondary school in Bulgaria. Prior to that in my private language school context I had always been interested in incorporating tech in my classes - you could say I was a very innovative educator. Thus, I incorporated Google Classroom (a LMS in its initial stages at that point) in my classes and was responsible for its deployment across the school for teachers wanting to try it out too. It was a state-of-the-art technology at the time, our school being the second one in the country using it only a couple of months after its market launch. Needless to say, little did I know about ethics, student data etc. and I later regretted doing that, feeling I might have done harm more than help. To give you a bit of context - it all started from a Google for Educators conference organised in Sofa which I attended. That was a time when Google was trying to expand its market share in the field of secondary education in Europe. The conference was followed up by frequent prompts via email for educators to attend bootcamps - one day trainings preparing you for Google exams to become Level 1 ,2 or 3 Google Educator - an accolade which was tauted as something really innovative and a badge of honor. You could take the exams by studying individually accessing dedicated Google resources. Most of them (and the exam questions) revolved around scenarios where you had to show good knowlegde of how a Google tool would be used in your classes. The scenarios were made in such a way as to suit the functionalities of the tool and not the teacher or learners. I did not like this.  It felt as if someone was trying to interfere with my way of teaching and doing things. Being someone who does not like to be restricted and especially told what to do, I found myself revolting against this.

(Just as an aside, the Google evagelism I witnessed at that time strikingly resembles what has been going on in terms of AI aggressively beiong marketed and pushed into education. I also witneess educators eagerly buying into it.)

Initially, Google classroom was rather limited and rigid as a system. It was improved on the basis of feedback from early adopters like myself. Nevertheless, it still provided limited options and in that sense was directive and not conducive to much creativity on the part of the teacher. It was a tool of conrol rather than a tool for useful learning.

At this point something in me snapped. I felt technology was something insidiously harmful and destructive, and I did not want to partake in its perpetuation in my classroom and pedagogy. I became what someone would term a New Luddite not out of fear and ignorance but because of my experience and personal feel of technology.

The LMS we use today are no different and they are in many cases proving to be an obstacle rather than a useful tool in the classroom for me. I often find myself looking for ways to overcome problems unrelated to the lesson aims. True, this fosters a different type of creativity, but at the same time it brings frustration and stress for tutor and learners alike.

LMS and VLEs where classroom worksheets are stored present various challenges during class - long-on times (esp with late-comers who have to be additionally directed), accessibility issues due to various type of devices student use) and not least - Wi-Fi and internet connection issues can seriously disrupt work if there is no plan B. A whiteboard and marker aways saves the day! As it is a piece dedicated to emotions mainly, I will not dwell on the surveillance aspect of these technologies which are doing thier job secretly often without the users' awareness of it.

Playing hide-and-seek - zooming during Covid

The Covid era brought unprecedented changes to the way teaching and learning happened. It forced many educators to become digitally literate overnight and start using technology to do their job. Zoom classrooms became the natural way to meet your students and teach. It presented obstacles surmouting the usual technical glitches. It changed the dynamic between teacher and students especially in my context - teaching L2 learners from a different cultural background. Literature about the matter abounded in studies on how students experienced the new changes but very few of them discussed teacher's emotions in this new context. 

In line with the idea of being considerate and empathetic to our students, a lot of educators felt it would be good practice to not insist on students having their cameras on. I find this uncomfortable as a human being. These are students in my class and if it were in a face to face environment, I very much doubt it they would come with a paper bag on their head so that I would not see them because they are ashamed or shy to show themselves to me. Why so online? This is a matter of basic human respect. Despite being an online space, it is still our mutual learning space where tutor and students have built a relationship of trust and hiding yourself from the other is a breach of that trust.

There was mention in some discussions about the wall of black squares the teacher is confronted with. It was surreal and disturbingly unnatural to me. I felt very much self-conscious and extremely silly having to stare at that wall and wait for some signs of life from the other side where I was mostly met with dead silence. Creepy.

As part of a study I did on students' willingness to speak in an open class situation, an interviewee shared that anonymity was giving students more safety to speak (again we are talking about students from other cultures where speaking and discussion was not something normal in their learning context). On the other hand, it gives them a screen to hide their lack of engagement or lack of presence in their physical room during the zoom meeting.

(My battle with technology is going on in this very moment as I am very stubbornly and perseveringly trying to deal with the autocorrect and other glitches of the tablet with a physical keyboard I am using to write this piece).

Enter GenAI 

I will not be discussing the use of AI in education and my views on that. This shall be looked at in a separate piece. Instead, I will look at a particular instance when technology is frustrating to me as a person and educator. Translation software. It is a revolution in terms of how language is viewed and (ab)used for the noble endeavours of modern man.

I will specifically discuss the use of such software in my context - international students with lower language proficiency level working towards the required score in order to study in a UK university. The use of translation is a crutch helping them cope with a barrier that local students do not have. From a caring perspective (is it though?), some educators insist it is levelling of the field and would give them an equal chance to participate and study effectively in an English speaking environment. It might be the case at first glance, but there are additional implications that need discussing. First, using translation software to gain a competitive advantage over peers who have made an effort to learn the language is unfair and can be viewed as cheating. All the more, as it stands, current UK HE institutions still have language requirement levels. It is another matter if a student can really do a degree at an English speaking university using translation all the way through. Although not entirely impossible, I think it misses the point of doing a degree at an English speaking university. For me, anyway. I did not use such software to access education and live in an English-speaking country so I might not be an expert in the matter I agree. 

My second point concerns a more disturbing phenomenon and an important distinction should be made here between using the software to translate written text on the screen (A) and using it to tranlsate live speaking by a lectrer or a tutor in class (B).

In the case of A, the student is using it as a prop to make up for their lower proficiency level. The implications for that in terms of effective learning, understanding nuance and stance and completing a more complex assingment are clear to any educator so I am not going to dwell on that too. In this case the student is doing a disservice to themselves in my view.

What I have been recently concerned about is sitution B, where some students are using devices to capture my teaching, speech or feedback. They are using recording software which has serious implications in terms of intellectual property, theft of know-how,  pedagogy and last but not least surveillance on a very personal level. Recording my teaching and feedback might be used for a variety of purposes, incluing offering it to someone as guidance to complete students' assignemtns for them to a better standard than they are capable of. This is the highest degree of invasion on my personal space as a human being and I will fight against it to the best of my resources and as far as intitutional policy would allow (this is a fairly new phenomenon and like all things AI, insitutions are lagging behind in terms of strategies to deal with issues). This is a case of technology interfering with human beings direct communication and trust. It does indeed expose human thirst for success in its ugliest form. This is also an instance of technology overwhelming and abusing weaker and lazier human beings giving them an easy access to environments and systems they have not made an effort to deserve. Here is your social justice. Will you feel the same way about an L2 student who has clearly made an effort to fulfill the language requirements and access education in an English speaking coutnry of their choice, and one that has absolutely no intetnion of doing it and relies on technology to cheat you and the system? This is not "levelling the field" for me; it is effacing of values, integrity and ethics. Unfortunately, currently the system does not make a clear distinction, or rather, does not have the resoures and policies in place to prove cheating in most cases, and eduators are forced to treat both types of learner equally.

Final words

I am fully aware "technology is here to stay". We, as humans can and should determine to what extent we let it disrupt our lives and work. From the point of view of language educators, I think the end of language teaching is near. Not because of lack of effort on the part of dispersed groups of educators who are seeing the above tendencies and phenomena, but due to insitutional and Big Tech agendas under way. We can't control those but we can certainly make an honest choice in our own classrooms and teaching. While we are still teaching.

Mirena Nalbantova