How can blogs, wikis and delicious be used in the Saudi EFL context?

Using technology can be powerful , useful , and effective tool to the learners and the teachers. To ensure the students will not get bored we have to change the strategy of learning process by the time and keep up with the development. Using social websites like: Wiki, Blog, and Delicious make learning and teaching  more interesting and can be a powerful and effective technology tool for students and teachers.

 

A blog is a personal online journal. Blogs activities are very beneficial when it comes to shy students. It encourages them to participate and express themselves in a blog. Also it improves student's writing skills, by asking them to reflect on a particular article, or post comments in their collegues' blogs. 

A wiki is a space on the Web where you can share work and ideas, pictures and links, videos and anything else you can think of. Wiki spaces is special because it gives you a visual editor and a bunch of other tools to make sharing all kinds of content as easy for students as it is for their teachers. Teachers can upload many materials, resources, handouts and assignments, it  also allows students to share their findings, materials and everything they know. It encourages group activities.

Delicious is a social bookmarking tool that we can use it to store and share the bookmarks with each other. Each student will have her account in delicious and she has to bookmark any websites or links which is useful for our class and the others get benefit from these bookmarks.

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky.

Digital Immigrant teachers those people who were not born in a time when technology was not readily available to use at all times and have had to learn over time how to use it. The Digital Native students have been exposed to the use of technology from early in life and need this to thrive in our school setting.

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access. They function best when networked.  They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards.  They prefer games to "serious" work. But Digital Immigrants typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that the Natives have acquired and perfected though years of interaction and practice. These skills are almost totally foreign to the Immigrants, who themselves learned - and so choose to teach - slowly, step-by-step, one thing at a time, individually, and above all, seriously.

The "digital immigrant accent" can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it. The example include printing out your email (or having your secretary print it out for you - an even "thicker" accent); needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL). 

The biggest problem facing education today is that the Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.  

I prefer the second choice, the digital immigrants learn the new way because today's learners are difference. They are no longer like the teachers when they were students. Kids born into any new culture learn the new language easily, and forcefully resist using the old. Smart adult immigrants accept that they don't know about their new world and take advantage of their kids to help them learn and integrate. Not-so-smart (or not-so-flexible) immigrants spend most of their time grousing about how good things were in the “old country.”

If  Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives - i.e. all their students - they will have to change. They have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students.