Marlon Orozco Campos
Blog Entry # 1
Designing for whom?
Whenever teachers think of how they are going to teach a specific content with authentic materials, they are invaded by images and models of realia, course books, handouts, corpus and other language data be used as supplementary materials for teaching and learning activities.
That happens to Salvador (a fictitious name for thisL teacher) who one bright and splendid day wakes up thinking about designing materials for their students to work with. All of a sudden he pictures a rainbow of colors, a parade of geometric forms, and a carnival of illustrations and pictures, font styles, and materials to be used. As soon as he brainstorms these great ideas, he gets the show on the road and starts looking for the illustrations he likes the most; it is going to be okay if he includes resplendent colors to create those useful materials, so he uses only his favorite colors. Most importantly is to enjoy the creation process; therefore, Salvador pays too much attention to the way he feels more comfortable when designing materials. Texts are sometimes difficult to find and Salvador is a very creative and skillful teacher, thus, he decides to write some impressive texts by his own hand. He writes some amusing dialogues and other great written sources for students to use in class. Thinking about the fact that some materials are not affordable by all the students, Salvador prefers to design something that lasts for a long period of time. In order to do this, he uses long-lasting materials wrapped in adhesive plastic or scotch tape. Although some are not beautifully decorated, it will take time to become useless. Salvador is satisfied and contented for the great results obtained; his more visually-oriented students will enjoy these sources while learning and using the language. Additionally, there is going to be enough for everyone because Salvador contemplates the number of students; hence, he makes the necessary changes (materials adaptation) to be used by a large group of learners. Of course, this makes some of these pedagogical tools smaller but still fruitful.
The lesson has started and Salvador cannot wait to have his students work with the new and excellent materials. However, after a while he cannot believe his eyes; he is tremendously astonished; he does not expect his students’ reaction towards the materials for the English lessons. Salvador’s master pieces do not fit as good as they are supposed to; he realizes that his favorite shiny colors are not his students’. He discovers that in spite of his excellent writing skills, the written materials he designed are not enough to provide learners with language used in real situations. Salvador finds out that his effort and creativeness are not sufficient to achieve language development, especially if the material is not related to other content areas. In addition, not only the visually-oriented learners must use it but also the students whose strong areas and learning styles differ among them and that their styles differ from others. Now he knowshat that there are some simple, basic but relevant principles to consider when preparing and designing his sources. He discovers that there are some essential requirements when teachers design materials as well as some aspects provided only by the users of those materials. These factors are basically the spinal cord which motivates, stimulates, assesses and supports students’ learning process. This also provides meaningful feedback and language development. From now on when creating supplementary materials, Salvador will know that he is designing for his students not for himself. Today Salvador is designing, adapting, and evaluating new supplementary materials to be used next class. This time he is sure he will succeed as his students because now he knows whom he is designing for.
