5 Steps to Digitising Your Classroom

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Bringing tech into your language lessons doesn’t have to be difficult. You don’t need to know an enormous number of technologies to introduce them into your classes. With knowledge of just a few key tools, you can have a significant impact on your teaching and your students' learning experience. In this short article, I will cover the five fundamentals that will digitise (and revolutionize) your language lessons.

1. Start with what you’ve got

This is certainly not the only place to go, but whatever book you use, start by learning to use the accompanying digital platform. These platforms have a wealth of additional content directly linked to the content in your course book, often with additional videos, audio, exercises, and revision content.This means you don’t have to prepare anything; normally, all you need to do is create a class and share the class code with the students, the students can then log in, and you can start sharing activities for them to do either in class and for homework.

The brilliant thing is that these platforms track the students’ activities and, importantly, their scores. If you set homework for the students to do, you will know who has completed it and what score they received, which can help you decide what to revise and what the students already understand. From the students’ point of view, these tools are so helpful because they usually provide immediate feedback when they complete activities and quizzes. Furthermore, it can make homework more varied, as students can watch videos, listen to audio, and, if they really want to, do extra activities.

So, my first tip is to learn to use the platform that accompanies your coursebook. It may require a bit of work at the start, but it will have a massive payback, as most teachers use a coursebook for around three to five years, making your knowledge useful for a long time.

Here's an example of what the platform might look like:

2. Ensure Students Know How to Use the Technology

Not long ago, I was learning Polish, and our coursebook had an accompanying platform. The teacher took out one complete lesson to introduce us to the platform and show us around the content, where we were shown how to log in and join our class on the platform, which meant that from that moment on, our homework and even some classroom activities were set on the platform. Our teacher even provided us with an easy-to-follow handout (provided by the publisher) that outlined the basic steps to log in, just in case we forgot.

So, my second tip, which applies to any technology you use, is to ensure that the students know how to use it. Try to use the technology during the lesson itself so that you know the students are completely clear about what to do and how to do it. My experience is that teachers become more creative the more they learn a technology, so try to avoid the temptation of learning loads of technologies. Instead, focus on just a few, but look for different ways of using them. Tools like Wordwall.net or Padlet.com are examples of tools that can really facilitate creativity.

3. Consistent and Persistent

Students are often not used to making use of learning technology outside of class. It is very likely that at the start, they won’t all complete the homework or engage with the activities you might set for them. The key is to stick with it and be persistent.

I remember the first time I asked my students to record themselves doing simple speaking activities for homework and only one student completed it. However, I played the recording back in class so the rest of the students could hear it, and I continued to set new activities. Slowly but surely, more and more students began to complete the digital exercises I set as they realized it was an integral part of the lesson.

You have to be consistent and persistent with your use of technology, making sure that you are always linking the two components of the lesson together. Digital technologies allow you to connect the lesson and the homework in ways that would have been more difficult to do in the past.

For example, in class, you might prepare a short speech, and then for homework, the students record their speeches. Back in class, you might review some of the best examples and play them back to the students or choose a good recording to analyse and highlight the strong aspects of the work. The key thing here is to link everything. If you continually set activities for the students to do for homework but then don’t review and refer to them in the classroom, students will quickly lose interest in doing them. The tech has to become an integral part of the learning.

4. Start Small and Connect

Whatever technology you want to introduce, start small. Students are much more likely to complete a digital activity if they understand how to do it and believe it won’t take too much time. They are also more likely to do it if it is connected to something you have already started in the lesson. As students build their confidence and get more accustomed to doing digital activities, you can begin to do more.

One significant change for me when I started to introduce technology into my lessons was that I planned my lessons differently. I would think about the two components of the class—i.e., the classroom time and the homework—as one lesson. This philosophy aligns with the ‘Flipped Classroom’ model, where students complete activities at home in preparation for the lesson.

5. Learning Has Changed—Autonomy is the Goal

When I first started teaching in 1986 on the island of Crete, students had access to nothing but their course book and their workbook. Some students might have had satellite TV, but that was rare. Now, in 2024, it is unbelievable what is available. I currently study Polish, and the way I am studying is completely different from how I studied previous languages like Spanish and French. I have access to audio, video, quizzes, reading material, pronunciation tools, and even the option of practicing my Polish with a chatbot.

We need to help our students navigate this world. Languages are not learned in the classroom; ultimately, they are learned because of all the extra work that we do outside of the classroom. I have two hours of Polish a week, but it is the time I spend outside the classroom that really makes a difference. We don’t have to know everything, but solid knowledge of some key tools like Quizlet, Wordwall, YouTube, Naturalreaders.com, and Turboscribe could help our students flourish in their language learning pursuits. The start of the journey is just a few steps into the technology world, but the ultimate goal is to build your students’ autonomy. Some teachers feel that these technologies will threaten their jobs; my feeling is that these technologies open up a world of learning possibilities that we have been lacking for many years.