ELTWeekly Vol. 5 Issue#9 | March 11, 2013 | ISSN 0975-3036

Introduction

In very simple terms digitalization means converting texts/images into digital forms. Digitalization is fast changing the teacher student relation in a class room. A student might be having an expert at a click away which can tell him at times much more than a class room teacher could. Even the teacher finds information presented in a more interesting way than many other resources. With the advent of digitalization the role of a teacher has taken a whole new perspective. The digital world has the potential to change the whole of teaching and learning process with its real world simulations, accessibility, ease of use and above all its cost effectiveness. It is also student centric as it is flexible and gives the students the chance to learn at his/her own pace and own time. The digital world has blurred the walls between a school and other learning places and has opened a whole gamut of learning objects ready to use.

The digital resources or learning objects can be many which a learner/ teacher of a language can use for their own benefit. Cohen and Nycz (2006) define learning objects as knowledge based objects that are self centered and re usable. Gallenson, Heins and Heins (2000) refer to Learning Objects as units of instructional content that facilitates content mastery and link to learning outcomes. Keeping this definition of learning objects in mind we can say that the digital world offers us songs, movies, on line grammar games, quizzes e-books, presentations and many more as learning objects. All these ae easily fall into the category of digital resources as they are re usable can be used in a class room for achieving different learning goals and are quite adoptable or adaptable according to the need. (more…)