The Audacity to Teach with Technology - A Case of Integrating Technology in Pre-service Language Teacher Education

Integrating technology in ELT as a means to enhance language teaching presupposes that teachers have acquired necessary technology skills. In pre-service teacher education often the acquisition of technology skills takes place independent of other content making it rather difficult for students to perceive how technology can be applied in other areas, or how they can experience the benefits of its integration. Consequently, for in-service teachers, the integration of technology in their work depends on their knowledge of technology, knowledge of how to integrate it in language teaching, their confidence, motivation, enthusiasm, and opportunity to do so given the pressure of reaching learning outcomes within a limited time. The paper presents an action research focusing on the integration of technology in pre-service language teacher education. The driving force of action research is the need to improve teaching in three areas: (1) enrichment of course syllabus with technology; (2) student acquisition of technology skills; (3) the possibility of collaborative interdisciplinary team teaching at university level. In addition to reaching the intended aims in each segment of the intervention, the outcome of this action research is the widening of the project to include others affected by the practice, i.e. students themselves, their peers, and consequently their future students and their colleagues.