Teaching technology to prepare ELLs for the 21st century

It is very important that we are teaching our students the skills the technological skills they will need in the 21^st century. The technological skills that teachers expose their students to will have an impact on their future careers. There are many challenges that educators face when teaching new technology to ELLs. According to Robertson in Preparing ELLs to be 21^st –Century Learners, she recommends hands-on labs, simple, step-by-step instructions, lots of large graphics, information presented in small chunks and real world exercises. I think that real world exercises are really important, especially for English language learners. They need to learn technological skills that can transfer to different situations. Some basic skills that can be transferred are typing, researching on-line and e-mail. Using search engines on-line is an important skill for English language learners to have.

Robertson also suggests doing a lesson in class to find out what students know and review the basics. This may be difficult in a classroom with students who are not English language learners. This may be a good opportunity to have native speakers teach English language learners basic computer skills. The English language teacher could also pull out ELLs to do a separate lesson on basic skills before it is time to use technology.

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