Emerging Technologies Tetrad

Smartphone:

The Smartphone does more than just allows you to communicate with other people. According to the Back 150 timeline website, (Imagining the Internet: Back 150 Timeline) the phone's purpose was to "bring people closer together, decreasing loneliness and building new communities;” The smart phone takes this a step beyond, by allowing communication to also take place through emails, using wireless internet connections. Cassavoy (2010) states, "a smartphone is a device that lets you make telephone calls, but also adds in features that you might find on a personal digital assistant or a computer--such as the ability to send and receive e-mail and edit Office documents, for example."

This technology replaces the cell phone and ultimately the telephone itself. The smartphone rekindles a cluster past technologies. The telegraph and the telegram, were important ways to communicate with people from great distances. I would think that the French would feel that pigeons sending messages would be an important past communication that should be included in this cluster too! The lost art of letter writing would be another technology that the smartphone replaces with its email application. Finally, the keyboard on the smartphone is a small replica of the typewriter.

In the future, the smartphone could continue with all the smartphone applications plus word processing and multimedia project applications, like PowerPoint, video projects, and word processing. This technology will be so sophisticated that one would not even have to type, but simply speak and the future pda will create the projects and do all the typing!

Cassavoy, L. (n.d.). What makes a Smartphone smart? Retrieved June 28, 2010, from About.com: http://cellphones.about.com/od/smartphonebasics/a/what_is_smart.htm

Cassovoy, L. (2010). Before You Buy: Which Operating System Works for Your Smartphone? Retrieved June 28, 2010, from About.com: http://cellphones.about.com/od/smartphonebasics/bb/palm_or_windows.htm
Cha, B. (2010, June 24). Cnet reviews: Best Smartphones. Retrieved June 29, 2010, from http://reviews.cnet.com/best-smartphones/

Imagining the Internet: Back 150 Timeline. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2010, from Elon University/Pew Internet: http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/predictions/back150years.pdf

Telegram. (n.d.). Retrieved June 29, 2010, from Ask Image Search: http://www.ecommcode.com/hoover/hooveronline/hoover_dam/politics/thumb/046tn.gif

Telegraph. (n.d.). Retrieved June 29, 2010, from American Inventors and Inventions: http://www.150.si.edu/150trav/remember/r819.htm

Typewritter. (n.d.). Retrieved June 29, 2010, from Ask.com Image Search: http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b13/tonightwedance1/typewritter.jpg

An Emerged Technology

 

Although audio CDs have been around for quite some time, it wasn't always used in the World Language classroom. The cassette tape was used for building listening comprehension skills. In my building, CDs replaced the cassette tape in 2003 because it was time to adopt new textbooks. Not only are the CDs a more modern use of technology, but the sound quality is much clearer. The students were able to practice their listening comprehension, and improve their own pronunciation as well. The website Omniglot, best explains how foreign language learning takes place in various courses, "together with cassettes or CDs with recordings of most of the dialogues and some of the exercises. Most of these courses are suitable for beginners. Intermediate-level courses are also available for the more popular languages, such as French, German, Russian, Spanish and Italian." (What's the best way to study?, 1998-2010) As a result, students are able to communication with native speakers.

With the cassette tape, you lost a lot of instruction time while searching for the correct section to play for your students in class. The CD's allow you to go straight to the track and play what is needed right away! The students appreciate the use of the CDs, and whenever I ran into a problem with locating a track or fast forwarding, I could always rely on my students to come to the rescue!

The problems with the CD's are that there are several of them that come with the textbook; they come in a huge binder. One must be well organized and keep up with them, if you're not, then forget it! Also, teachers would be required to share them, which would become another problem. What if you both needed a particular CD at the same time? The other problem is when a CD is scratched; it takes forever to get it replaced, if you can't fix it yourself.

The listening CD would be better if it were smaller and able to hold more content to reduce the amount of CDs that accompany the text. If the CD's could be created without the possibility of scratching that would be really ingenious! I think that these may be ways to improve an already good technology! In the meanwhile, the World Language Department is now moving towards MP3 players.

References:

Holt McDougal -French. (2010). Retrieved June 16, 2010, from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: http://holtmcdougal.hmhco.com/hm/series.htm?level2Code=MSIB10015&level3Code=4_FR

Holt McDougal World Language Catalog 2010. (2010). Retrieved June 17, 2010, from Houton Mifflin Harcourt: http://vihmh.impelsys.com/hmhcatalog/index.php?catalog=2/5/0

What's the best way to study? (1998-2010). Retrieved June 17, 2010, from Omniglot: Writing Systems & Language Learning of the World: http://www.omniglot.com/language/how.htm