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Book reviews / System 45 (2014) 254e264262
seems a more useful concept than Prensky's now outdated terms. The most contentious chapter is the final one in whichWilliams critiques commercial coursemanagement software, arguing that through their use of Blackboard or similar systems,academics are “complicit in reproducing institutional and cultural ideologies that are as hierarchical, rigid and prescriptive asthe software” (p. 174). The “walled-in enclave” (p. 179) of BlackBoard grants exclusivity to students but withholds the wideronline world. While the software enables ‘surveillance’ of students through unsophisticated learner analytics, the system canbe satisfied by such means as opening discussion forums so that the action is noted, but not actually reading the posts.
Excepting the glimpses of a dystopian world in which academics are judged through their Klout scores and students areimprisoned within course management software, the book offers us an online world in which creativity and open access areencouraged. A recurring theme in the book is the idea that the student body comprises a group of varied individuals whomake the best use of the resources available to them. The point is made that even ‘traditional age’ students' ICT skills may beless developed than often thought, meaning they may lack the skill to evaluate online resources. Coming through strongly inthe book, is the need to unpack and explain the ambiguity around the term ‘digital literacies’.
Disappointingly, there is no available e-book. While there are advantages to the straightforward paperback format (youcan read it in the bath for one), the topic would lend itself to interactive, multimodal content on a companion website. Themain drawback of the book format is that the monochrome images are really not very good. For example, Fransman's chapterincludes two visuals (p. 32 and p. 34) which each occupy the same page space yet one portrays a complex network diagram ofTwitter use which is so compact that the resulting image is an amorphous blob and the other comprises an overly large piechart giving simple yes/no results to the question ‘do you use the micro-blogging resource Twitter?’ and in which the pieportions are the wrong way round.
Notwithstanding the often dark or small images, this book is an extremely useful, readable account of a range of currentresearch into literacy in the digital university and provides practical support for aspiring researchers of all things digital. Forexample, Fransman's table on p. 40 gives “conceptual approaches for understanding digital scholarship”, while Satchwell,Barton and Hamilton provide a helpful list of students' preferred literacy practices (p. 45). Lee's list of considerations foruniversity teachers engaged in developing a digital university would be useful for any educator with similar concerns; theseare (in brief) to develop a responsive online pedagogy, be reflexive, become a member of students' online discourse com-munity, and be aware of students' everyday text-making practices. And that reflexive note seems a good place to stop.
References
FutureLearn. (2014). Retrieved from https://www.futurelearn.com/ Accessed 16.05.14.Klout. (2014). Retrieved from http://klout.com/corp/score Accessed 16.05.14.Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London & New York: Routledge.Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On The Horizon, 9(5), 1e6. Online. Available at <http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%
20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf>.White, D., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and residents: a new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 169. Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/
index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049.
Maria LeedhamFaculty of Education and Language Studies, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
E-mail address: [email protected]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.07.004
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” So starts the ‘Reading Skills’ chapter
Technology Enhanced Language Learning: Connecting Theory and Practice, Aisha Walker, Goodith White. OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford (2013). 208 pp.
with this bleak, thought-stirring Ray Bradbury quotation but the authors of this book certainly have no immediate cause forconcern because, barring the odd blemish here and there, Technology Enhanced Language Learning is an impressive contri-bution to the field with a readership that would seem assured.
Every chapter begins with an ‘Aims’ section consisting of a bulleted list of three questions that are nicely positioned tinderfor setting ablaze readers' curiosity about the subject matter and throwing into stark relief the limits of their knowledge.Chapters then consider learning theory regarding the topic at hand and it is here that the authors are at their most impressive.They know their prospective audience and have a well-attuned level of assumed knowledge. Concepts are unpacked withscrupulous care and their implications teased out. Skilful references to the bigger picture mean that the reader should neverbe in danger of feeling lost. Most chapters thenmove on to practical illustrations of teaching technology but the focus is not on
Book reviews / System 45 (2014) 254e264 263
their operation; instead, they are deeply and firmly sunk into the theory because as the authors rightly argue software shelflife is limited and so the reader is much better off being equipped with the ability to comprehend and analyse technology ofboth today and tomorrow on a principled basis.
Chapter 1 looks at the conceptual underpinnings of learning through technology and where better place to start than Kernand Warschauer's (2000) three phases of CALL: Structural CALL; Communicative CALL and Integrative CALL, each tied to adifferent teaching and learning paradigm. I do notmean to cavil but while it is noted that part of Bax's (2003) reworking of themodel involved freeing it from discrete time periods, the authors appear to be mistaken when they assert that Bax down-played the current relevance of Structural/Restricted CALL (p. 2). Bax (2003, p. 22) actually found “some Restricted CALLmanifestations still observable and still valuable in their place.” In the subsequent section, the reader needs to concentratewith scaffolding, zone of proximal development, constructivism and connectivism all making an appearance and beingsensibly explained by way of how they fit together. Finally, the authors make the case for TELL (Technology Enhanced Lan-guage Learning) as the new approach for a new erawhere student familiarity with assorted technological gadgetry, much of itmobile, can be taken for granted.
Chapter 2 takes an in-depth look at the nature of communication and how language may be changing as new forms ofcommunication take place in the Web 2.0 environment. The ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’ debate is explored andsome role reversal suggested with adult teachers being prepared to learn from their tech savvy young students. This I trustwill be necessary if the language of text messages ever becomes part of the curriculum as recommended in Chapter 3,‘Listening and Speaking Skills’. The breakdown of listening skills and strategies as well as the accompanying analysis here isfascinating stuff and there are also plenty of novel practical applications, though I have to say that one or two of the moreprominent ones left me underwhelmed. Take Lean on me, for instance, where students watch a YouTube clip that allows themboth to listen to the song and read the lyrics at the same time. Quite apart from the poor choice of song e enunciation of finalconsonants is very unclear e there are cognitive overload objections that can be made to this type of task with students likelyto end up having to make a choice of either to read or to listen.
It was around this point while testing out suggested online sites and tools that it registered that being directed to see theaccompanying website in order to get access to them is actually quite aggravating. A login with username and password isrequired and although sign-up is free, I find myself wondering whether this is not, in fact, some marketing ploy �a la su-permarket loyalty card. Yes, a justification might be that links can be updated to reflect changes on the web but no suchchanges appear to have been made as a number of links are already broken (e.g. OALD, Etherpad, Slide.com). Links would alsobe better configured if they opened in new webpage tabs rather than the existing because I found myself quite often losingtrack of the homepage and having to go through the tiresome process of logging in from scratch again. Quite a lot of botherwould have been avoided if printed shortened URLs had been provided inside the book.
Chapters 4 and 5 tackle reading and writing skills respectively. The precise nature of these skills when learning a secondlanguage and the question of how they can be fostered through technology is expertly handled. The Scrible browser plug-inwhich facilitates text highlighting and the use of sticky notes on web pages is ripe with potential for exploitation but I wassurprised there was nomention of the popular Diigo software that seems to offer something practically identical e the readerwould have benefited from a comparative evaluation. As for writing technology, there is a surfeit of practical suggestions withmuch of page 64 consisting of lists almost in note-form. It is a shame that no further attention is given to web quests but Iparticularly liked theNews Tweetment task. All of the suggestions here for the use of Twitter look as if theywill work and someof them are rather appealingly way out: tweeting as Romeo or Juliet! Whatever next?
Chapter 6 ‘Multimodal Literacies: Learning Through Visuals’ proclaims the power of visuals to communicate meaning andso it is a bit of an irony that there is only one image to be found in the entire chaptere some of the tasks would have definitelybenefited from this sort of support e.g. Video Dictionary. Nevertheless, the discussion of new literacies is very instructive and Iwas impressed by the depths the authors go to when they suggest that good educational materials actively encourage thebuilding of connections between visual and verbal processing. The social-constructivist foundations aremade explicit and theauthors later clearly explain the constructionist basis of the point they make about deep learning taking place when learners“externalise their linguistic knowledge” (p. 89).
The following two chapters address the needs of two groups of people: students and young learners. It was pleasing to seethat Wikipedia is not dismissed with the same highhanded disdain as in so much EAP material, although unfortunately, therating system that is mentioned on page 99 was discontinued in March 2014. A slip that I cannot let pass is describing De-licious as a reference-management systemwhen it is in fact a social bookmarking service (p. 101). The YL chapter would havegained frommore attention to how technology can help with behaviour management, one noticeably unnoticeable candidatebeing Class Dojo.
Chapter 9 ‘Assessment’ and Chapter 10 ‘Teachers Using Technology’ brim with engaging analysis and highly useabletechnological applications. However, the claim on page 135 that computers cannot evaluate speaking skills yet would seemquestionable given the new Pearson test (PTE). The ‘institution-led’ nature of VLE discussion boards is held out as a possibleexplanation for their frequent lack of traction and this rings so very true. The subsequent consideration of polling and votingsoftware as well as e-portfolios provides clear explanations of their use and successfully unearths their value.
The final chapter, ‘Summary and Future Gazing’ acknowledges how fraught with difficulty the prediction of future de-velopments can be and then bets on games, mobile devices and the cloud as gaining in prominence. This is followed by aglossary where the technical terminology, which is generally highlighted in bold throughout the book, can be found conciselydefined. For those perplexed by connectionism, connectivism, constructionism and constructivism this is a useful resource
Book reviews / System 45 (2014) 254e264264
but I thought it was excessive, to put it mildly, to include “laptop” with the accompanying tip that “It may be used on the lapbut this is not advisable.” Andwhere is “MOOC”?Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are all the rage just nowand yet theydo not even get a mention.
Poised with such perfect balance on the twin pillars of theory and practice, this is an ideal course book for a Master's levelmodule on the use of technology in language learning. It is also recommended for the teachers of any language school, nomatter what the age of the students. However, will TELL catch on and supersede CALL, in the way the authors claim? Does itreally capture the zeitgeist of language learning through technology? I have my doubts because we appear to be on the dawnof a more radically different era. The other day I saw a youngmanwith “Flip the Classroom” emblazoned across his T-shirt andit crossed my mind that the approach that will stick may place centre stage a new teaching paradigmwhere students receivelanguage input for free or for negligible payment from super-communicators virtually as homework and then later practisewhat they have learnt in the real or virtual classroom.
References
Bax, S. (2003). CALL past, present, and future. System, 31(1), 13e28.Kern, R., & Warschauer, M. (2000). Theory and practice of network-based language teaching. In M. Warschauer, & R. Kern (Eds.), Network-based language
teaching: Concepts and practice (pp. 1e19). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Peter SaundersLanguage Centre, University of Oxford, 12 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HT, United Kingdom
E-mail address: [email protected]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.07.006
