TRAINING TEACHERS TO USE COMPUTER BASED TECHNOLOGY IN A MULTI LITERACY CONTEXT

Computer Based Technology has changed the teaching/learning process in many ways. The democratization of the World Wide Web has brought about the development of new skills, which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing among users in web-based communities. The sheer volume of platforms for sharing has captured the attention of teachers and educators, who have had several pioneering experiences with students. New social and communication skills are required for students to build effective discourse in this multi literacy context, where participants show their creativity by inventing new ways to transmit verbal and non-verbal information.

In this context, we would like to present our experience in teacher training. Our working group (iKide) has trained roughly 1,000 university teachers, 90 language teachers and 85 vocational education teachers during the last five years. After analyzing the results, we have come to the conclusion that training teachers must be considered a priority; however, it should be more than a course about merely where to click. Effective change can be brought about, but it will neither happen overnight nor on a significant scale unless there is commitment and cooperation from more than just a few interested individuals.

Thus, the problem is that this new perspective on teaching requires that the following basic conditions be met: an institutionally defined Computer Based Technology policy serving as the framework for the development of new curricula; creatively designed teacher training sessions, with a wide variety of training activities; new research on linguistic corpora, pragmatics, communication strategies and didactics related to Computer Based Technology; and a greater willingness of teachers to use computers themselves.