・変わる教室Changing Classrooms・プロジェクトCollaborativeProjects
Joy and Agony of Integrating Technology into the Curriculum: Changes in the Classroom Environment
Yoko Koike, Haverford College
Presented at the Symposium, National Foreign Language Resource Center, University of Hawaii, July 1996
Until recently, audio and video tapes were the only technologies I used for my Japanese courses. This has changed since the multimedia language center opened at our college in the fall 1994. Now my students constantly engage in various technology-assisted activities.
Most of the technology-based activities in our classes during the initial year the Language Learning Center ( LLC ) opened were those which involved just the students in class. (Please refer to "An Initial Approach to Integrating Technology into the Curriculum for a Non-tech Teacher", April 1995.)However, since then, the students have engaged in activities using the Internet as well, which enabled them to be connected directly with people in the outside world with whom they interact through Web pages, newsgroups, e-mail, Web-chat and teleconferencing. I remember in one of the classes in which the students were engaging in such activities, I felt as though the classroom walls started tumbling down around me and the outside world was invading my once safe space, my classroom, and thereby challenging my role as a teacher. I was troubled with this sensation first and blamed it all on the new technologies. After a period of reflection, I realized that the process of tearing down classroom walls and invitingin the outside world had started long before the new technologies were available, that in reality, this was the objective I had set for myself and my classes. I wanted my classroom to be open to the outside world, giving students more choices and an opportunity to enjoy autonomy.I believed this would heighten their motivation. In retrospect, the new technologies only hastened the process and moved the class in that direction far beyond my expectations.
In this paper, first I would like to share how I took steps to integrate technology into the curriculum by looking at four different types of classrooms I have been in. While I do this, I would like to address the issues that have been brought out by the changes. In the second part, I would like to share three different collaborative distance learning projects my students
have been taking part in recently, which resulted in the fifth type of classroom.
Classroom #1
This is the kind of classroom I was in when I started teaching many years ago. In this classroom there were only students and myself. Often I stand in front of the classroom facing rows of students. Video tapes, audio tapes and my hand-outs were mostly based on a textbook, almost the sole source of information for the students. The classroom walls were standing tall and my role as a teacher seemed clearly defined.
Classroom #2
Over the years, my classroom went through changes. I will call this classroom #2. It has the same physical appearance as classroom #1. The students sit more likely in a semi-circle, and I don't necessarily stand in front of them. I bring guests occasionally toclass sothat my studentsmeet and talk with "real" Japanese people.
Along with these changes, other changes have taken place. Earlier, I used to teach grammar with hand-outs of examples and explanation in class before I gave them a chance to practice. Basically the format was: I explained and the students listened. In the new format (which is still in place), students engage in exchanges in pairs when they learn new forms. The students are being encouraged to expand these exchanges in anyway they want to. This is a reflection of my efforts to move from a teacher-centered to a student-centered model.
About three years ago, as an extension of this practice in class, I added a new homework assignment in which the students give a brief weekly report on their Japanese conversation outside the class. The students can talk with anyone about anything anywhere as long as it is Japanese. My students responded to this added assignment with great enthusiasm and called it a good way to bondwith classmates. They are using the language without their teachers' surveillance, talking about something they wanted to talk about, relevant to their own lives, and so their autonomy is enhanced.
I found a group of Japanese residents in the area, and now we have a language partnership program in which our students visit these Japanese families once a week in their homes to converse both in Japanese and in English. This has become an essential part of my students' learning experience. Students share in class what they had learned from the visits to their partners' homes or write in their weekly journal entries. For example, when we were discussing Japanese families, a student said that she was shocked to see how a Japanese mother let her small children keep interrupting the conversation of the grown-ups.
In the classroom #2 setting, I began to expose the students more often to authentic Japanese materials such as magazines and newspapers, etc. Though, in the classroom #2, no new technologies were added, in comparison to the classroom #1, it is more open to the outside world, and the amount and variety of the students' language use has been increased. The students take a more active role in the content of their own language-learning experience, and each one's experience is more individualized. As a teacher I have less "control" over their language use than the previous structure. The outside world started coming in and the walls started tumbling down.
Classroom #3
Then in the fall 94, incorporated with classroom #2, I started using a multimedia language center weekly as our classroom. I will call this the classroom #3. The Language Learning Center, the LLC, is equipped with high-quality audio tape recorders, campus-wide networked Power Mac computers and VCRs, all of which are connected with a console, the central control system.
At first, it felt strange going into this room as a class. Besides being surrounded with computers, a student assistant sits at a console. Since our classes do not occupy the whole room, the door to the hall is always open and the students who use the center for self-study purpose come in and out. There might also be other faculty members who are working on their projects with the help of the director of the LLC. Physically it is a very different space from all the classrooms I had experienced before. It is no longer a space safely secured only for my students and me.
Fortunately, I was involved in the planning of this room so I had had some idea of what a multimedia language facility would be like. One goal we had in planning our facility was to have an inviting room with maximum flexibility. We now have a beautiful room with windows. With the help of a consultant, we were able to provide a kind of floor plan that has a largeopen space in the middle, computers lined up on the wallsand one island ofcomputers in the center. The room can be used for self-study or for class simultaneously if the class is small. Sometimes it accommodates two separate classes. The open space has achieved the kind of flexibility we needed in our classes. The students don't have to sit at computers during the entire class just because they are in this room. In fact, our students frequently go back and forth between computer-assisted activities and face-to-face interaction.
Now I would like to refer to what goes on in classroom #3.
1.Wordprocessor
Unlike students of European languages, Japanese students first need to learn Japanese typing skills to cope with three different writing systems along with a general computer skill. I start out with a simple task such as copying a text they already have learned. In my experience it takes about three attempts for most of the students to feel comfortable with it. They need to feel comfortable with the word processing skill to truly benefit from other computer assisted activities; on-line grammar exercises and reading exercises, on-line real time discussion, e-mail, newsgroups, Web page creation, etc. For most of the new technologies, I now look at the first two sessions as warm-up time before students can benefit fully.
Most students like using the word processor and some students produce more work when they are given a choice of using the computer for their composition. Besides its novelty, the students like the fact that they don't have to worry about every stroke of Kanji, Chinese characters, and the fact that it comes out clean in the end. These are the same reasons why Japanese people use word processors. It is necessary to pay attention to which written assignments are more suited for this option so that the students still have sufficient opportunities to write by hand and to learn Kanji. Generally in my class, the students are required to write drafts for shorter compositions by hand while for the final clean copy or a longer paper, they have the option to write either way.
The word processor was the first new technology I had to deal with. While I was still learning how to manipulate it myself, I gave a written assignment with the option of using it. It was the beginning of introducing something to the class, when I myself didn't feel completely comfortable with it, and wasn't sure exactly what impact it would have on the students' learning experience. There is definitely a risk-taking aspect in introducing new technologies and I needed to trust my "instinct" for starting a new technology and asking my students for forgiveness when it did not deliver what I had thought it would.
Fortunately, my students have been understanding and demonstrated patience, especially when I communicated to them my intention and goals, both short- and long-term. Many students even expressed their appreciation.
2. On-line dictionary (MacJDic)
This is one piece of software that greatly surpassed my expectations in terms of its usefulness. Many of my students keep it open when they read anything on the computer. When they encounter words that they don't know in their key-pals' messages, the Web pages or messages in newsgroups, they simply copy the word, paste it on the dictionary and find its reading and meaning. This does not mean that it does not have any problems. The dictionary is a simple one and as many dictionaries, it does not answer all one's questions. It is still important to students to learn to use regular dictionaries.
However, this has provided a great opportunity for Japanese students. With on-line dictionary, the students don't have to go through looking up each Kanji by counting strokes or identifying the radical, and then looking up its compound. This has helped increase my students' reading both in quantity and in variety and helpedthem read more authentic material at an earlier stage of learning.
This also means that my role as a teacher to answer all the questions in class has lessened. Here again, my students enjoy their increased autonomy.
3. Audio tape making outside class and audio tape listening in class
I still make frequent use of tapes. My students are still required to listen to the tapes outside the class. In fact, I added a weekly audio tape-making assignment for various task-oriented activities. In class, students listen to their classmates' tapes, often in a game format.
Though this activity does not need the highest technology available, but only a console for pairing or grouping capabilities, the high quality of the audio tape recorders made this activity manageable and enjoyable to do regularly and incorporate it into thecurriculum. At the end of the year, my students have a tape with their weekly assignments. Since they know that their classmates would listen to their tapes and that their work would be recorded permanently on the tapes, the students work harder on the assignment. This is another form of speaking assignment which is now being added to the existing reading, writing and listening assignments and has helped further my goal of improving all four skills.
4. Grammar exercises
For achieving higher accuracy, students work on a on-line grammar work sheet for a weekly review session. This can be easily done on a sheet of paper, but there are some definite benefits to doing this on-line. While the students have a feeling of privacy facing a computer, which allows them to feel comfortable making mistakes, it is easy for an instructor to walk around and check their work individually. They can also correct as many times as they need; the result comes out clean. These exercises are being stored on a server, so students who missed the class can have access to it. This usually takes no more than 15 minutes of the class time.
5. Electronic discussion.
The students sometimes use Daedalus Interchange which enables real time discussion on the computer.
In a regular class, I notice the discussion tends to center around my questions or my opinions and not everyone participates voluntarily. In Daedalus Interchange, my students seem to forget my presence and tend to address their classmates' statements, and 100% of my students participate. I find it essential to communicate the intention of this format of discussion, for there are students who do not see the benefit of it and wonder why they cannot simply talk in a natural setting.
When the Japanese font was not available two years ago, I thought that it actually served the purpose of facilitating the students' thinking process, for the students could concentrate on composing their messages while typing them without having to worry about the complex Japanese writing system. However, my students did not think it was "natural" and complained about it. Thanks to Fontpatchin, a shareware that facilitates Japanese fonts, the students are able to type in their thoughts in Japanese fonts. It would be good to investigate whether Japanese fonts slow down the students' participation to the extent that it hinders them from thinking in a natural flow.
Though the technology was used extensively and regularly in the classroom #3, as I stated earlier, initially, except for a brief introduction of Web pages and Newsgroups, the activities were basically contained in the room and the classroom walls were still in place.
Classroom #4
However, as we started the second-year in this room, this has changed. Classroom #4 is the same room as the classroom #3, except that the activities that the students are engaged in include various kinds of distance learning activities using the Internet.
6. E-mail
Exchanging Japanese e-mail with students in Japan has been an exciting experience for my students. It brought them opportunities to read and write authentic and personal Japanese letters, the frequency of which far surpasses the previous pen-pal exchanges. I have found it is a good idea to do the first several sessions in class for students to become accustomed to it and for them to regard it as an essential part of the curriculum and not simply as an enjoyable extra activity. I found that a task oriented activity needs to be handled with flexibility due to the differences in frequency of exchanges among students, sometimes at the mercy of their key-pals.
7. Newsgroups
Having access to Japanese e-mail assisted other distance-learning activities. Besides the key-pals from a Japanese university, my students have been receiving messages from elsewhere. After being introduced to the Japanese newsgroups, my students spent some time reading messages and some chose to post questions to a group of their choice. For example, the 3rd-year students read in class that in Japan there is no custom of tipping. One student sent her question to a newsgroup of food asking what Japanese people would do if the service were really good. The question not only started a series of responses in the group, but she also received some messages to her own e-mail address. One of them was an angry note saying, "You Americans, don't start a stupid custom of yours in Japan." The student was amused and sent a note back, which I am glad was not in an angry tone. I was hurt by the remark but I had no way of knowing that someone would share that kind of reaction with my student. This has shown me that once you go over the Internet, there is no control to the kinds of language the students are exposed to. Another student asked why you are not supposed to pass food through chopsticks. She received a suggestion as to how she should have put the question more clearly in a Japanese sentence as well as an answer to her question. I learned that the students receive various kinds of information and suggestions this way which made me realize that I am no longer their only "teacher."
8. Browsing/reporting on WWW
After a couple of introductory sessions, my students started browsing the Web on their own in and out of class. When I gave a task of reporting on the news from Japan, the majority of the students opted to use a Web page rather than printed material. In fact, this is the first year that my second-year students not only managed this assignment well, but also expressed that they enjoyed it.
I have come to accept that every week there is a Web page that a student finds that is worth sharing with other students as a resource, further democratizing the relationship between me and the students. I am no longer their only resource for information.
9. Web creation
In the 96-97 academic year, all my students created their own Web pages with their essays. (http://www.haverford.edu/jnse/japanese.html) One of the essays that the second-year students created was entitled, "My Most Precious Gift." (http://www.haverford.edu/jnse/2fall96/class.html) Among basic Japanese grammatical items, "giving and receiving" verbs are generally difficult to master for learners of Japanese. As a way to help my students with them, I have been giving an essay assignment with this title. Aside from itspurpose of grammatical reinforcement, I have found that my students tend to be more expressive with this kind of "close to the heart" topic, which I truly enjoy reading. Last year, instead of just writing it for me, my students put their essays up on the Web. Then I asked teachers in Japan on several e-mail list-serves to show the pages to their students and to encourage them to write Japanese e-mail back to my students with their comments and questions and their own stories about their most precious gifts.
I was excited to find that an assignment like this, where the original
goal was mainly to reinforce a grammatical item is now not
only a writing exercise, but also a reading exercise with rich cultural
content because of the human interaction that was made available fairly
easily due to the Internet accessibility. However, this was not what I felt when my fourth-year students first created their Web pages with their research paper in the previous year. (http://www.haverford.edu/jnse/95.html) The students were really excited to see their work and their pictures on the Web. I, on the other hand, was feeling some discomfort. I could not tell anyone beside my family about the pages for a whole month. I finally realized it is similar to the feeling of discomfort when there are observers in class. You are exposed to the world letting other colleagues and anyone else see your class and your students' work. I was afraid that it might appear as though I were bragging about our classes, and also was afraid of criticism.
10. CUSeeMe
CUSeeMe is a shareware that enables a simple form of teleconference with a video camera.
The teleconferences have been another great source of excitement for my students. The students get very excited at being able to see themselves and the other group on the computer screen while they talk to each other. At one conference, a couple of Japanese students showed their school uniforms and asked in Japanese, "How do you like our uniforms?" Our students, all Americans, did not know what to say for a moment, for they did not like the idea of any uniforms. So after saying, uhm,uhm, one said, "How do You like them?" To our students' surprise, they answered, " We like them very much!" Our studentsthen asked, "How do you like Our clothes?" "Cool!"(this was the only English word the Japanese students used during the entire teleconference session.) This topic, for example, that led to a closer look at Japanese students' view did not come from either teacher. It simply came as the students conversed.
During teleconferences, I noticed that our students self corrected much more often than they do in a regular classroom. I would like to attribute this to the fact that the students were aware that it is a "real" communication and were paying extra attention to accuracy and that they knew that their teacher was not in a position to correct every word they said.
I have not gone back to the classroom #1. However, all other classrooms, #2,#3 and #4 previously described, now function side by side. The students don't seem to separate distance learning and other kinds of learning. A typical day in the center would go like this. After the studentschat in a circle, theywalk around the room to listen to their classmates' tapes for a listening game before they get together in a small group to talk about what they have heard. When that is done, they swing their chairs around to sit at the computer and work on a weekly review exercise while I walk around to assist them. Whenever the student finishes, they open up their Eudora-J folder to see if there is any new mail, and if there is, they read and respond to it with the help of an on-line dictionary or their own dictionary. Then when they have time, they move on to open Web pages or the newsgroup of their choice, to explore, to read or to respond. At the end of the class they form a circle again to share, with their classmates, what they have learned.
As my students engage in collaborative projects that the Internet connection enabled them to do, the fifth type of classrooms has been emerging in addition.
Next, I would like to discuss the three kinds of projects that my students have participated.
Projects:
In this section, I would like to report three different collaborative distance learning projects using the Internet that my students have been taking part in recently.
Project #1: Research Project (the fourth-year students, fall 1996)
In recent years, I have been giving our fourth-year students a semester-long research project assignment. The goal is for the students to apply the language skills they have acquired to researching a Japan-related topic of their interest. The students use all four skills, reading, writing, speaking and listening skills, while deepening their understanding of some aspect of the culture. Students' skills and interests vary at this level, and such intensive application of their knowledge to research results in a satisfying learning experience, in terms of enhancing their linguistic skills, developing research skills, and learning more about Japan.
In the fall 1996, I added a technology component to the project. Throughout the semester, Haverford students communicated with the students from Seiryo Commercial High School in Nagoya, Japan through multiple Internet-based activities in an integrated fashion: e-mail exchanges, CUSeeMe teleconferencing and interactive Web creation. By adding this technology component, I hoped to provide my students with additional authentic and relevant resources. By presenting their papers on
the Web, my students would put greater efforts into their projects, for they would know their works would be read by many. Above all, I wanted to provide my students with greater opportunities for real, personal and
meaningful communication when carrying out their research.
Haverford students "met" the Nagoya students on-line through
introductory sessions using CUSeeMe, which were followed by e-mail exchanges. At the mid-point of the semester, the students created
their Web pages in Japanese with their mid-term reports, which they made interactive by providing questions for readers to respond to by e- mail. When the students in Japan read these pages, our students conducted
interviews on-line asking the Japanese students more questions. After gathering more information on their topics, through e-mail messages from broader readers and more interviews off-line, the students placed their final reports on the Web.
(http://www.haverford.edu/jnse/4fall96/syllabus.html)
For this project, I worked closely with Mr. Makoto Kageto, a teacher at Seiryo Commercial High School. We worked on two topics: (1) at the Haverford students' research projects described above and (2), a study
of stereotyping by both groups of students.
Thanks to the high school students and others who responded
to our students' questions on topics which ranged from "Homeless in Tokyo" to "Differences in Japanese food in the U.S. vs Japan", the project basically went remarkably well. The students were excited to "meet" the students in Japan on-line and to receive many e-mail messages. They were satisfied with on-line interviews by which they could accomplish something concrete. One group of university students in Japaneven put up Web pages responding to Haverford students' essays so that their responses would be read by many.
The course work consisted of two separate components, individual research projects and collective (class) reading of a novel. Occasionally, I found it difficult to balance the time allotment between these two. The switch from one task to the other felt artificial and not smooth. The students also shared the same concern about the course having two priorities, and not knowing for sure which component they should be working on at times. Evaluating the individual work, and providing the structure so that what was being learned individually would be shared with the rest of the class were also challenging issues for me.
Though I gave the students additional assignments such as filling out
self-evaluation forms, and reading their classmates' reports and responding to their questions, I do not think I found complete solutions for these issues during the project.
Project #2, Ideal Town Project (the third-year students, spring 1997)
The goal of the project was for the students at Haverford College,
Seiryo Commercial High School and the University of Hawaii to work collaboratively in Japanese to design some establishments in "an ideal town" in cyberspace. In addition to the means of communication used in project #1 (e-mail exchanges, CUSeeMe teleconferencing and interactive Webcreation), the students also used eWeb, a learning environment hosted by the University of Hawaii that includes a forum, bulletin board, and chat rooms. The chat rooms were used for a real time discussion, as the main environment for making team decisions. The students decided to design a restaurant, a bookstore and a hotsprings in the town.
The instructors at the three institutions, Prof. David Ashworth at
the University of Hawaii, Mr. Makoto Kageto at Seiryo Commercial High School and myself, collaborated extensively via Web chat and e-mail to plan the project. We decided to create several teams of students, with each team consisting of at least one student from each of the three locations. Alias mailing lists were set up for these virtual teams. By making teams inter-institutional, the students were given opportunities to work closely together with those at a distance to achieve a common task using the language.
In order for the students at different locations to become acquainted with each other, introductory Web pages with students' pictures were put up at the beginning of the project at each institution.
University of Hawaii (http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/Ashworth/), Seiryo Commercial High School in Nagoya (http://www.nagoya-seiryo chs.nishi.nagoya.jp./) and Haverford College (http://www.haverford.edu/jnse/Townproject.html)
In order to introduce themselves, our students posted their essays on the theme "What/Who Influenced Me Most in My Life." The students read the introductory pages of the students at other locations, "met" them in a teleconference before starting to exchange e-mail and to discuss their ideas about the establishments in chat rooms.
The town map was drawn by a Haverford student and posted on the Web for everyone involved in the project to see, to help them decide on the locations for the establishments in the town. (http://www.haverford.edu/jnse/dreamtown0.html) (http://www.haverford.edu/jnse/dreamtown2.html)
Once they finished the design, the students used the eWeb forum to show various features of their establishments. For example, the restaurant showed their price list, the view from the window, and the floor plans, etc. At the end of the project, the students visited one another's establishments in their chat rooms to learn the detailsofthe goods and services provided by each establishment, which they later reported on.
The students expressed that the project was a challenging, yet enjoyable and satisfying learning experience. Once the students formed teams, I felt as though they had taken over the project and out of my hands. The students went out of the way to accommodate realtime communication with their team members in different time zones. As for the use of language the students made proposals, provided suggestions, agreed, disagreed, asked clarifying questions and engaged in negotiation, all in Japanese.
The project lasted one month towards the end of the semester and, during the month, the course shifted its focus from textbook work to project work, allowing the students to concentrate on their project. Students' feedback indicated that the students would have preferred having greater opportunity for socializing before starting to work on the task as a team. Teamwork entailed some "tricky" situations where they had to negotiate disagreements using the target language. The students also expressed that they needed more time for class discussion for speaking practice. One student shared his concern that he might forget Kanji, because all writing was done on word processors rather than manually.
Project #3, Zine Project (the fourth-year students, fall 1997)
The fourth-year students are currently involved in the collaborative
development of an on-line magazine (webzine) in Japanese. (http://www.haverford.edu/jnse/4fall97/class.html) They are working with students at Seiryo Commercial High School and the University of Hawaii. The project has the potential for involving more students from other institutions.
As part of the socialization process for building the teams, and as a means of fostering as much interpersonal interaction as possible, our students have posted their introductory Web pages, which they made interactive by inviting comments from readers. (http://www.haverford.edu/jnse/4fall97/students.html) For example, instead of the usual self-introduction, one student decided to write about the history of scars he had received in the past, and invited readers to respond by telling about their scars. Another student wrote about one of her unforgettable dreams and invited readers to share theirs. A list-serve has been set up so that all project participants from the three institutions can read each others' correspondence. The response from the other schools has been good, as they share their experiences. To increase the interaction and develop greater familiarity among the project members, my students practice introducing one classmate to the others in the class by first reading the introductions and essays posted by a student on the web interviewing her/him, and then introducing that student orally in class. Similar introductions will be practiced with the collaborating students elsewhere after they communicate with them by e-mail. This way, the students will get to know the participating students at other locations more personally.
The theme of the course is "the magazine." In this first month, the
students have studied various Japanese magazines both printed and on-line,
read articles from them, and written summaries with comments, which they reported in class for discussion. The students are presently choosing categories of articles to write, such as creative writing, social issues, etc. The teams will be organized around the categories cross-institutionally. Members will be responsible for giving feedback to each other before any article from the
team is approved for publication.
To ensure consistency and continuity at the linguistic level , each student is required to choose a certain number of vocabulary words and expressions from her/his own works for testing by the whole class. In this way, the whole class will benefit from a student's individual work. The students will regularly interview their classmates who belong to different teams and report on their progress in class so that everyone has a sense of the teams' direction. The students will keep journals on their progress and that of their classmates.
Though their webzine will be placed on the Web in the end for everyone to read in the end, in my view the process of learning rather than simply the end product, is of the greatest importance , as it would be with any other project. As a language instructor, I am most concerned with the kinds of learning that take place in the project. Fortunately I havearesearcher/observer who attends every class and keeps notes of what is happening in the learning process. I am pleased that the majority of the class time so far has been spent on discussion inspired by the students' oral reports based on their reading and writing. Although technology greatly assists the learning process, and at times is indispensable, I will constantly bear in mind that technology exists to serve learning, not to dominate or replace it.
Classroom #5
Thanks to new technologies and to the colleagues who share the view that students could greatly benefit from the collaborative projects such as the ones described above, our students' learning experience has been enriched by many opportunities to interact with people outside the class using the language.
When I look at the Internet technologies, I am most interested in the aspect that would bring students/people together over distance and would give them opportunities to get to know each other and work together on common goals using the language. As the students work on these collaborative projects with students at a distance, I work closely with their teachers. Many of the ideas for the collaborative projects I have discussed here have emerged from my discussions with the participating teachers in the project. I know that these projects could not be successfully carried out without close communication with these colleagues. While my students and I are physically occupying one classroom at our college, classrooms at other locations are also "present" in our course. I would like to call this, the classroom#5, a "virtual" classroom that exists side by side with our physical classroom.
Conclusion
Through the activities I implemented, by making use of some of the technologies, I have seen a general increase in the amount and variety of my students' language use. For example, e-mail exchanges resulted in a fargreater amount of reading and writing activities than the previous pen-pals projects did. The projects that took advantage of the Internet also expandedmy students' cultural exposures. Initially I approached the technology withthe aim of enhancing my existing curriculum. While it has not altered my overall goals, it has brought significant changes in the nature of mycourses.
It was not long ago that I was fairly certain that most of my students' exposure to the Japanese language and culture came from my classes. This is not the case any more. I now realize how all resources outside my classroom walls are now readily available and how the language learning experience has multiple faces with multiple "teachers." It is getting clearer that our job as primary teachers will be, as mentioned often lately, changing from "sage on stage" to "guide by the side." I may have "lost" some control over my students' language experience, but I've "gained" in the sense that the students and I are now in the collaborative relationship in achieving our common goal.