El uso de herramientas TIC para la enseñanza de la escritura argumentativa

Con este artículo se reflexiona acerca de los recursos TIC de los que dispone un docente para desarrollar los procesos cognitivos que se emplean en los medios digitales para argumentar. El fin último de esta investigación consistió en proponer herramientas para potenciar adecuadamente el desarrollo de la competencia de la escritura argumentativa. Para tal efecto, se presentan las herramientas TIC que sirvieron para el desarrollo de una secuencia didáctica de escritura de un miniensayo: Mendeley, Kialo, Essay Map y Google Documents. La secuencia se implementó en un grupo de la Universidad del Quindío, en la asignatura Redacción II. Los resultados ofrecen los logros y las deficiencias que se pudieron observar en el proceso de implementación por el docente-investigador del aula. Las categorías analizadas han sido las relativas a los aspectos de la escritura argumentativa específicos en el proceso de escritura general: estrategias argumentativas de planificación (búsqueda de argumentos; elección de la estructura del ensayo y esquematización de sus argumentos) y estrategias argumentativas de producción textual (empleo de la plantilla de cinco párrafos; cohesión de los distintos argumentos mediante conectores). Con la presente investigación se obtuvo una manera de revisar las herramientas TIC desde una perspectiva centrada en el proceso de la escritura, más concretamente, en el texto argumentativo. Por lo que se concluye con la necesidad de revisar las herramientas tecnológicas, desde la perspectiva procesual, para mejorar, en este caso, la didáctica de la argumentación; sin dejar de considerar que esto sería adaptable a la especificidad de la didáctica de otras tipologías textuales.

Exploring students’ view of using Google Docs in writing class

The purpose of this study was to explore what do students really think about using google docs for peer feedback? the potential of Google Documents in facilitating and supporting pedagogical practices in a writing course at Higher Education level. In this qualitative case study, it was carried out among 34 students that working in pairs on article report writing over one academic semester. At the end of the semester, students were interviewed and the results were qualitatively analyzed. The findings show what do students feel that they are effectively tooled in helping them write a report. Is there a difference of opinion about Google Documents using outside of the classroom and traditional course?

СЕРВІСИ GOOGLE У НАВЧАННІ СТУДЕНТІВ ПОКОЛІННЯ Z

The article describes the features of modern students from the point of view of the Generations' Theory. It is established that the dependence of students Z on digital devices and the global Internet network affects the organization of the educational process and necessitates the introduction of electronic educational resources. The possibilities of using the G Suite for Education (Gmail, Google Drive, Google Forms, Google Documents, Google Spreadsheets, etc.) in the learning process are analyzed, and the experience of their implementation in the study of the Bookkeeping has been described. It is argued that the use of information products by Google participants in the learning process provides an opportunity to raise the level of cognitive activity of future accountants, as well as a powerful motivational tool for person-oriented learning and self-improvement of students.

The Effect of Digital Dialogued Journaling on Improving English Writing: A Linguistic Communicative Approach

<p>Writing is a complex process that requires advanced linguistic skills. Although many college students studied English as a foreign language (EFL) for twelve years in preparatory and high schools, they still face major problems in producing correct writings that meet their colleges’ requirements. Students’ problems include inability to generate ideas, organize discourse, control sentence structures, choose appropriate vocabulary, and use effective styles. A potential solution to such problems can be found in the application of modern technologies in the classrooms. Telecommunication technologies which include synchronous and asynchronous communication have provided various tools that can be used to assist EFL students to learn writing skills. Therefore, the current quantitative, quasi-experimental study aimed at examining the effect of asynchronous communication, specifically digital dialogued journaling on students’ writing skills. Digital dialogued journaling includes blogs, webpages, discussion forms, or word-processed applications such as Google documents. Using the platform of Google documents, the present study attempted to provide new strategies for teaching writing courses at higher education to help EFL students develop their writing skills. Data was collected from undergraduate students in the College of Languages and Translation, at Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Data collection depended on a number of instruments: First, a pretest was used to measure the participants’ level of writing before implementing the teaching strategies of dialogued journaling. Secondly, an online dialogued journal, designed by the researcher using Google documents, was employed for the experiment. The journal was sent to the same sample via emails, and the participants posted their reflective writings on different issues regarding their academic journey learning English. Students’ interactive dialogues included prose writing, descriptive and argumentative paragraphs, poetry, and their personal stories. The students-teacher dialogues made the corpus data which enabled investigating the effectiveness of dialogued journaling on improving students’ writing. Thirdly, a posttest was used to collect data regarding the degree of change that occurred as a result of the experiment. Fourthly, a Likert scale questionnaire was used at the end of the experiment to identify the participants’ levels of satisfaction with dialogued journaling. Data analysis was based on using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to compare the results of pretest and posttest. A rubric with five scale criteria was used to examine each rank of students’ writing, and to report each student’s score before and after treatment. The Text Analyzer Software was also employed to examine the participant’s writing lexical density and phrase frequencies. Data analysis results indicated a significant statistical difference between the overall writing scores of the pretest and the posttest. Moreover, the examination of the participants’ writing revealed much improvement in writing styles, word choice, and the student’s voice, which are critical factors in writing. Hence, the significance of the current study is that it provides a new technological tool, such as Google document, for teaching writing skills at higher education. This study includes an instructional model that incorporates digital journaling into teaching English writing. The present research is also a contribution in the field of teaching English, adopting the communicative approach by integrating theories of connectives and constructivism into linguistic theories. <strong></strong></p>

Consolidating Google APIs for Improved Project Management

<p>The primary purpose of the study was to consolidate Google APIs to improve project management. The applications used for the development were Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Talk. The GDocs4Ruby was used to interact with the Google documents API and to store everything in the Google server. The researchers used classes that were included in the GDocs4Ruby library and the GCal4Ruby was used to interact with the Google Calendar API. GData4Ruby was applied to interact with any Google APIs based on the GDATA protocol. Through GData4Ruby, the researchers had the ability to authenticate with Google and had an access rule class for managing user through Google Access Control List (ACL) feeds. Constructive research method was applied. Interviews and survey were utilized to facilitate the data gathering and evaluation of the study. It was found that six out of seven or 85.71% of the testers were able to achieve the functionalities mentioned during the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) conducted to experts in project management.</p>