Abstract:

Although many young learners of the contemporary generation (also called Digital Natives) have experiences in, and generally prefer to learn, using Emerging Technologies (Prensky, 2001a), a few teachers of Luganda and other indigenous languages of Uganda and beyond have experiences in using Emerging Technologies (ETs) in their teaching. In effect, a number of Digital Natives are now slowly detaching themselves from the study of indigenous languages (Kabugo, 2015). One of the major impediments to teachers’ use of ETs in teaching the digital natives occurs at the level of Abstract Conceptualisation). ETs are not yet well conceptualized and are thus, often misunderstood by some teachers (Siemens & Tittenberger, 2009; Veletsianos, 2010). This paper results from a larger PhD study, which aimed at cultivating Makerere University teacher-trainees’ experiences of utilising ETs in the teaching of Luganda language to the Digital Natives. The study followed a Design Based Research (DBR) approach and was largely qualitative in nature. Sixty-eight (68) third-year teacher-trainees were enrolled into a semester-long (15 weeks) intervention. In the intervention, trainees were guided to explore and use more than fifty different ETs for their Luganda language teaching practice. Kolb (1984)’s Experiential Learning Cycle (ELC) was deployed as theoretical tool to guide trainees’ exploration and use of ETs throughout the intervention. In the thirteenth (13th) week, an online task on was designed on both Edmodo and Diigo to seek trainees’ personal experience of ETs at the level of Abstract Conceptualisation. Trainees’ online responses were collected and analysed using Discourse Analysis. Eight distinct Abstract Conceptualisations of ETs in the teaching of Luganda language emerged.

Keywords:

Teaching Luganda Language, Digital Natives, Emerging Technologies, Abstract Conceptualization, Experiential Learning Cycle.