The Use of ICT in ESO

In this post, we are going to revise one of the most important things that we have to keep in mind as future teachers of Secondary Education: the integration of ICT skills in the English class.

According to the curriculum of ESO, the linguistic activity is mainly done through technological media and therefore the digital competence is an important part of the communicative competence. Moreover, the use of these technological devices is essential because they make easier the process of self-learning, self-evaluation and it increases the awareness of the oral and written interaction in virtual contexts.  

ICT is an important tool to develop in our students as it helps them to begin being self-sufficient for learning a foreign language, it is adapted to the levels and communicative skills, and it has a fundamental role, being a transversal element.

Consequently, we can see that there is a conscious awareness that we need to integrate the use of ICT in the English classroom. Therefore, we are going to revise briefly the integration of this competence in the different levels of ESO:

In all of the different courses of Secondary Education (from 1^st to 4^th of ESO) the development of the digital competence is always present in the block dedicated to the transversal elements. In all courses, it is mainly focused on the research, selection, and organization of the information on digital media, the use of blogs, forums, web pages, dictionary, and database. They will need to be able to evaluate the positive aspects of the ICT for researching information and they will need to be able to use the most common tools of the TIC and the audio-visual ones to collaborate and to communicate with the rest of the group with the purpose of planning the work, contributing to construct own ideas and understanding other’s people ideas, etc. They will learn how to use emails, wikis, blogs, and forums. They will also become aware of the cyberbullying and its prevention. Finally, they will create digital content as images, presentations, or texts.

As we can see, it is important to develop the digital competence of our students as they will be future citizens that will need to work with new technologies. We can see that this competence is not only developed in the ICT class but, other subjects need to contribute to the development of this skill as the subject of English language does. 

• Sources: DECREE 87/2015, of June 5 th , of the Consell, by which establishes the curriculum and develops the general ordination of the Compulsory Secondary Education and of the Baccalaureate in the Valencian Comunitat.