Use of technology in languages teaching

Running head: USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN LANGUAGES TEACHING
Use of Technology in Languages Teaching
Julián Cabrera Jiménez
Licenciado en Educación Básica con Énfasis en Humanidades, Lengua Extranjera-Inglés

Use of Technology in Languages Teaching
Modern society lives in an accelerated process of transformation and technology assimilation that involves all levels and sectors: economics,politics, professional, educational, etc. The variety of audio visual tools and devices for information are increasing in such a way that it is overwhelming when catching up with the latest technologies and researches only in your field of action.
Without any doubt, it is a necessity to conceive education and learning in a different way. Universities cannot keep educating professionals that are alwaysobedient kids that wait for the teacher in the classroom with their minds in blank ready to receive all the information that the teacher transmits. Nowadays information is exponential and what is published in one day is more than what one person can assimilate and comprehend in a lifetime. So, it becomes necessary to create the interest and desire of autonomous learning through the lifetime of thestudent. Only by generating that interest, women and men that are able to adapt to that change, which is the accelerated rhythm of technological innovations, will be formed.
To adapt to the necessities of modern society, superior education institutions must be flexible and develop ways of integration of information and communication technologies into the learning processes. (Salinas, 2004).This means that there must be changes in the role of the student and teacher, changes in curriculum and assessment, structural and physical changes of the learning environment. All this innovations require a lot of effort and resources which is limited in public universities in our country, but there must be a starting point for this inevitable change (Lessen & Sorensen, 2006).
Prior toconsider an adaptation in facilities, technical resources (devices) and curriculum design, it is possible to start changing the role of the teacher and student by varying the activities and the way some of the homework is designed and assessed. The university already has languages laboratories, laptops and video projectors that easily show concepts, activities, images, play sounds, and improve theunderstanding of the student. We are ok so far, but there are some other technologies that are under used and can easily motivate and create in the student a real interest for learning or practicing a language, for example, the Internet, social networks, mobile phones, video game consoles, free software, languages laboratories, etc.
Internet: the amount of information you can find on the web is soimmense you can’t imagine. Almost everything is on the web, so why not use it as a library? Websites like Wikipedia.org are huge encyclopedias, updated every day (Adell, 2005). Since the creation of the Internet 2.0 (upload information) people can write and publish whatever they want on the Internet, even videos and music on someone else’s website or communities for everyone to see. We can useinternet as a publishing house using a website like mylot.com to write small articles about anything you want to help people find information and at the same time receive feedback from native speakers.
Social networks: the cutting edge in communication with people around the world. There is virtually no limit to who you can communicate with in a social network or software. A website likesharedtalk.com lets you communicate via chat, voice or video call with whomever you want, it is a community of English learners and tutors, so you can practice with natives and learners from different countries totally free, you can even choose the level, age, sex, country, native language, etc, of the person before start practicing.
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