One thing I encounter with greater and greater frequency is the ever-growing technology gap between teachers and students. Our learners tend to be digital natives, that is, they feel quite at home already in the digital and online world of communication. Teachers, on the other hand, are often (at best) digital immigrants.

I am working on something larger, perhaps a piece of writing with this aim, but I want to share with you some of my ideas on how teachers can themselves become digital natives. here is a list I compiled:

1. Buy your own web space
2. Start and keep more than one blog
a. include photos and videos
3. Create profiles on facebook and Twitter
4. Start your own wiki
5. Create a home page for RSS feeds which interest you
a. www.makeuseof.com
b. www.lifehacker.com
6. Download and install Skype
7. Experiment with CMS
8. Subscribe to podcasts and start your own
9. use Prezi instead of PowerPoint
10. Require students to contact you electronically
11. Familiarize yourself with various file formats and conversion tools
12. Make videos and post them to YouTube
a. start small with screenr.com

This is the first time I’ve written an entry in my teaching diary in a very long time. To be exact, the last time I wrote an entry in my teacher’s diary was in September of 2009, just over a year ago. I recall that when I did this, I found the reflective process to be much easier. However, last year I decided I was simply too busy to keep it up. I’m writing this today using speech recognition software with the hopes that it will encourage me to begin keeping my diary again.

For several weeks now I’ve been using the Internet as an integral part of my instruction, particularly at Herzen. Because I’m with my students only once a week, and then for only 90 minutes, I decided early on that having an online component to my course would greatly improve the quality of instruction. This is certainly been the case. Because I own my own web space, I find it very easy to download and install the free course content management system called moodle. It is an open source application that can be added to a website and then accessed by different users. It is specifically designed for a learning environment either hybrid or completely online and I have found it to be extremely useful but in assigning homework to students keeping grades and encouraging students to participate more.

This is how I’d do it. On my site, there are several courses, three of which are my Herzen classes. My students are enrolled in their course on my site and have their own login information. The click on the site, enter their password and in gain access to all the content in their course. On the website, the course is divided into weeks, one for each class meeting. There, they can see this week’s assignment and last week’s assignment. After two weeks, an assignment disappears. This means that students have exactly two weeks to complete an assignment, one to complete it on time and a second to turn it in late. Because of this, I get many fewer requests for late homework, because my policy is very clear, not only in what I tell them, but also in how the assignments appear on the web site. But

For each week, I include a set of instructions and the steps which students have to complete. The work may include reading a web site or a document, downloading an assignment sheet, writing a blob post on the site, submitting an essay or participating in a forum. All assignments or submitted online and all assignments are completed on line. Not only does this make it easier for the student to submit assignments, also makes it easier for me to grade them.

I have found that many students adapt very easily to this kind of learning environment. Because so many of the youth in Russia are already very connected their cell phones and computers with very easy access to the Internet, the fact that they have never participated in an online course before does not hinder them. In fact, I have found that they’d take to it right away and quite enjoy spending time on the site. As site administrator I can watch their activity and many students visit the site on a daily basis. This reminds me of something I read which stated that many language learners already have skills for communicating digitally, primarily in writing. Why not try to encourage them to transfer the skills and direct and toward their English learning? This is logical and has certainly played out in my experience.

I conducted a brief interview with three of the students recently and recorded it to video. I used this video at a recent conference to show other teachers how my students feel about using a web site to enhance and complement their learning. In the video, the three students agree in that having such a web site does mean more work for them, because it is like we meet once a week in class but every day on line, however they don’t notice the extra work and treat it as fun. I liked hearing this very much. And I got a very positive reaction from the teachers at the conference.

One thing that surprised me was how interested the students are in keeping track of their grades. At first, I had decided not to include grades on the web site simply because I was new to the system and did not want to overload myself. I’m glad I changed my mind. I have found that this is the most popular section of the web site and is visited most frequently by students. Here, they can see their participation grade and their attendance a long way of their homework grades and the greats they receive for their major assignments. Not only this, moodle automatically averages all the greats so that students can see what their final grade would be if the course were to end today. Discreetly adds to the overall transparency of the course and keeps students involved in keeping track of their grades and planning future assignments.

Probably the most unexpected part abusing moodle, however, is the amount of work it takes to maintain the site. A colleague of mine told me last summer that online teaching can often double the amount of work for the teacher. I see what she meant. Last year, when I saw and communicated with my students primarily at the university, but I found it much easier to ignore my responsibilities in that class at least when I had other things to do. Now, however, it is as if I am always available and students can get in touch with me at any point and can submit assignments or complete tasks at any point. And the call is all of this is online it is very easy for me to spend extra time checking their progress and responding to their work. So it is a double edged sword in that students enjoy it more and work harder, but it also means much more work for me. So far, it has been worth it because I actually enjoy the work. I can see how it can become too much though, and I may have to put the limits on the amount of time and energy I devote to the web site.