Off the
Beaten Track:
Unconventional Tasks for the 21st Century Classroom
By Mariano
Quinterno
This workshop was in charge of Mariano
Quinterno. The main purpose of his workshop was to reflect about the activities that
we use in the classroom and to see if they are really suitable for students of
the 21st century. Mariano began by saying: “There is no 21st century classroom, but 21st century
classrooms”. That means that
although the educational system has not changed so much throughout time,
students´ interest and needs have really changed in the last decades.
Descriptions
of the 21st century classroom are overgeneralizations which do not take into
account the huge number of educational contexts around the world. We as
language teachers have to keep in mind that classrooms are not neutral
territories.
It does
not matter what teaching method or approach we decide to use, it will not be
effective if we design our lessons for an atemporal and decontextualized
learner. He also said that each classroom and what happens inside has an impact
beyond that particular context.
Mariano mentioned the importance of using unconventional tasks since Why use unconventional tasks. It is
really positive for our students because according to recent research in the
field of neuroscience, novelty aids memory and contributes to meaningful
learning. When educators use similar strategies too often, the classroom
becomes a predictable environment and, as a result, learners´ motivation
decreases easily. Besides, a region in the midbrain, which is responsible for
regulating our motivation and reward-processing, responds better to novelty
than to what is familiar.
Every time we decide to think of unconventional task, we need to keep in
mind that these features have to be present in those tasks:
v They must have both linguistic and
educational value.
v They must be divergent (i.e. they
must encourage a range of possible responses).
v They must be context-specific.
v They must include an element of
novelty.
v They must encourage problem posing
rather than problem solving.
Finally,
he showed us very practical examples of different unconventional tasks.
I liked this workshop and I found it very
interesting. I also liked the way in which the speaker presented the topic. He
made me think that it is high time to start changing the conventional tasks,
which normally appear on the course books we follow, because they are not
suitable to students of the 21st century. It seems that we do not
take into account the reality they experience. We should stop teaching about the Big Ben or
the Tower of London because they are not meaningful to our students.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario