Johanna Schicker’s Weblog

When I think back to my childhood and adolescence, Internet and computer in general did not play such an important role as it does for teenager nowadays. I had several pen friend to whose I wrote about my life, boys I am “in love with” or other general topics like school, music, hobbies and so on and I really liked to receive a letter with their answers and news about them. Today, the students are spending hours in front of their computer in order to talk or write to friends via chats or e-Mail. Seriously, the internet is the much more faster way for communication and I also use ICQ and e-Mail to stay in contact with my friends, but on the other hand, I try as often as possible to write letters or postcards (e.g. for birthdays or christmas) which is more intimate than sending a SMS or e-Mail.

As I already state in my post about the importance of computer skills two weeks ago, we have to find a healthy balance between the virtual world and the life beside that world. Sure, there are various possibilities to include those modern communication tools into our lessons, but we should not neglect other ways of communication and other social skills eventhough they might be old-fashioned. Maybe, we can encourage our students to start a pen friendship with other students from an English school by not only using e-Mail but also sending handwritten letters.

Communication via chats and other so called synchronous communication tools always lack emotional impressions like gestures and eye – contact eventhough you might use smileys in order to impress your feelings. But there is always a danger of a certain misunderstanding between the participants of a chat. It is not easy to explain exactly what you mean without using your hands and facial expression. In addition, you sometimes don’t know the person who you are talking to and cannot trust in what she or he is telling you.

Furthermore, the students should be aware of the so called network etiquette “netiquette” which describes the do’s and don’ts of online communication like e.g. appropriate behaviour and respecting other people’s privacy and time.

All in all, I absolutely won’t malign the helpful use of internet!!! But I am a little bit afraid that this communication tool might possess our daily life too much. I am still of the opinion that we cannot ignore the virtual and medial development and that it has to be involved into our lessons, but we should pay attention to other important values e.g. using traditional ways of communication and information exchange, too!!!