SECOND ESSAY: INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

My Evolution In Electronic Literacy

When I was in Elementary school my favorite assignament was Informatics, I used to have this class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays two hours before finishing school. What I remember the most is my teacher Manuel giving instructions to the group of how turning on the computer and using word processors. In those classes I learnt how to use Excel and I was good using it!!.

Half an hour before the ending, teacher Manuel let us play a fantastic game called Magic Worlds, and that, was my favorite part of the class.
This game was about a character, girl or boy scout, that was fighting against monsters in order to obtain points and pass to the next level. The usefulness of the game was that everytime you faced an enemy, you had to answer a math problem or question about Spanish grammar, Biology, History, etc. It was a great complementary tool because solving questions helped us to review some topics.

It is supposed that when you are studying a B.A. you are responsible of your own learning and you have to complement or seek for the information required in the assignment, but being honest, instead of going to the library and read many books, we use the Internet as a divine answer to our prayers. It is quite easy: open a new web page, select the browser of your preference, write the topic you are searching, make a click in the "search" button and ... voilà! You have lots of web pages with data related to the subject you are looking for. Choose the link that rings your bell, scan the whole text, copy and paste it in a Word document and change some words to avoid being caught for plagiarism. This is a clear and known example of how students do homework, even if it is not the correct way.
Nowadays Internet is not used just for academic purposes. I have to addmit that I am addicted to enocasionesveoseries.com, a web page in which you can see for free lots of series, like Grey´s Anatomy (of which I am a fan); Messenger, for which I spend all afternoon chatting with my friends (even if I saw them in school); Limewire a program that download music of all kinds from Ricardo Montaner to Nightwish. Oh! in this precisly moment I can hear my father´s voice always telling me to use Internet for real aims, useful educational aims. He wants me to search for English online books and try to translate them or look up for news around the world concerning English Teaching; in other words, he thinks that I spend my time misusing Internet.
Apparently, looks like I browse on the web for wasting my time, but the truth is that I am also interested in improving what I like most: learning languages. On my computer I have many documents related to vocabulary and grammar of different languages. For example, the tables of declination in Latin, Italian lyrics, Arabic handwriting, etc. Watching series or movies helps me to practice my listening and let my ears get use to diverse English accents. Chatting is not that bad as my father thinks, I talk with my arab friends and because they cannot understand spanish, I have to practice my English skills.

There are many advantages and disadvantages of using electronic tools, and I can see it clearly in my daily classes. I feel more attracted when the teacher uses Power Point Presentations, recordings, movies, etc. than using just handouts. Technology is improving fast and what is best than using it in English Teaching?. We, as teachers, can use electronic tools to develope our students skills, to help them learning better and faster, to capture their attention and inject a like for English and the most important, to show them a usefulness of learning this language.

As I said before, technology is growing and young people with it. In a few years more everything is will be done through Internet, that is why we must know how to manipulate this tool, but to be better not to cheat. I recognize I have not taken advantage of this instrument but I hope I can employ it in the future as a tool in English Teaching.