Internet Tech in the Real Classroom

From this course, besides a better understanding of what is available to teachers when it comes to Internet technology, I hope to gain lots of practical strategies that I can incorporate into my own teaching to improve my students' language learning experience, and I also hope to learn ways to effectively use technology so it makes my life as an instructor less complicated (or at least not more complicated), though I realize there is often an initial learning curve.

I think Internet tech has the ability to make language courses much more interactive and might give every single student the opportunity to participate more that he/she might in a traditional classroom. However, to be honest, every time I try to incorporate technology into my class it ends up being an enormous amount of work for me---much more than I expect. The preparation, anticipating possible tech failures and planning for them, training myself, training students, dealing with connection/compatibility/input issues...

I know that in a lot of our courses we study ways to make classrooms better, but sometimes I feel like we're assuming this ideal kind of classroom situation, which is only helpful to a certain point. I hope in this class we can stay innovative and forward-thinking while keeping one eye on the reality of most teachers who definitely want to do what's best for their students but who really can't handle much more work than they already have. I'm really excited to see what's out there!! :)