Technology NeedsLeadership Kevin Ryan

I was stunned. My friend, a very good friend, teaches at two universities in the Tokyo area. He had just finished telling me a story I could not believe. But because he is such a credible person, I had to believe him. Let's call him Otto.

Otto's two universities are almost diametrically opposed. One is all women, the other mostly men. One is liberal arts, the other hard science. One has a few computers, the other at least one per student. One is private, the other public. Otto teaches English majors at one, non-majors at the other. It also seems that attitudes toward computers in language learning are also very different, and in a surprising way. Let's call the women's university Letters, and the men's Science.

Otto, while working for theLetters enjoyed his position and thought he had a little input into howtechnology was used there. That is, until he got onto a committee foraudiovisual expenditures, where his eyes were opened as to how these decisionswere made. He got to see why there were only 25 computers for the 900 studentsin the English department. Much of the fault seemed to lay in the biddingsystem that was required for funding by Mombusho.

At Science, he was just apart-timer, but the resources were much more lavish. There was an entirelydifferent problem with technology implementation there: access. Most of thecomputers sat most of the time in empty locked rooms. Hundreds of millions ofyen spent on computers the students would access a couple of hours a week. Nobudget was allotted for lab staff, you see.

It was at Science that Otto was kicked out of his computer lab because a full-timer wanted to use it for the projection screen and public address system. This only happened once a month, but the first time came without warning. Moved to a regular classroom, Otto proceeded to vent his frustration by outlining how much the lab cost and how easy it was to waste this valuable resource. He had the students work together to calculate how much money was spent on each student in the CALL lab. They were all surprised to find that it worked out to about ¥200,000 per student per year if you counted all the costs of technology, room, and software (note, these are bestguess ballpark figures, but they don't include any personnel costs).

Undaunted, Otto outlined the reasons as to why Science was spending so much money on their language education. Computers allowed students to study at their own pace, on a wide range of materials that were interesting to them. They could hear lots of different speakers and even check their own pronunciation at any time. They had the Internet at their disposal. What's more it was fun, and the students were learning language and computer skills at the same time. Then he asked the class of 50 students, just to stimulate conversation, "Which would you rather have, one perfect native language teacher or 50 computers with the best software on them?"

The conclusions were astounding.So astounding that he had the students use the last 30 minutes of class towrite a paragraph (they had just finished a section on paragraph writing)explaining their choice along with 4 reasons for it. They could go as soon asthey were finished (he checked to make sure all had followed the instructionscarefully).

Forty-eight students in one classis not a scientific sample. Nonetheless, these are students that are familiarwith computers, and use them in many classes. The fact that students were nottechnophobes yet wanted a real live teacher said something to Otto. The tenstudents who gave the reason that human interaction was better than computerinteraction surprised him too.

He was somewhat mollified when he asked the students that if they could get ¥200,000 in cash, would they spend it on English Conversation classes? Nobody raised their hands. Nonetheless, the perception that one of the best language labs in the country is attended by people misinformed about its potential'the magical qualities of a native speaker. Yet fail to recognize that they are undiluted in large classes. The argument that computers don't speak has been answered in a way with new software that has speech recognition built in. Nonetheless, students are reticent to talk into a microphone because their peers may overhear.

Further investigations reveal that students not only wanted conversation with a native speaker, some of them felt it was the native speaker's duty to force conversation on them. This is a sad state for English in Japan. The students are reflecting what they have been inculcated with over the years, which puts native speaker teachers of CALL in an unusual situation. Otto hopes that you and your students come to some clear agreement on the role of computers in the classroom before you proceed with business as usual.

Technology leadership was a field of study that I always thought was pretty much unnecessary. The program at George Washington University in Technology leadership through distance learning is becoming more and more interesting because I hear more stories like Otto's than I had ever imagined possible. We cannot take acceptance of technology for granted, even in our classroom among technophile students. Computers can be used in so many ways, everyone must be aware how they best fit into a language curriculum.

Kevin Ryan would appreciate comments or more accounts like Otto's. Please send them to ryan@kevinryan.com.