Scaffolding a Language Learning Community

In my opinion, teacher is like a scaffolder. An ESL literacy class that I’m taking this semester explores Lev Vygotsky’s theory of socialcultural theory. In his theory, Vygotsky defined scaffolding instruction as the “role of teachers and others in supporting the learner’s development and providing support structures to get to that next stage or level” (Raymond, 2000, p. 176). The article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age by George Siemens reminds me of this scaffolding instruction.

In the article, Siemens states that “Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.” From my understanding, by using social software in language classroom, teacher scaffolds a language learning community. The language learning process is shared between the teacher and students. The role of teacher is to build the development of a democratic advanced learning community in order to get every student involved in the social network.

The video The Network is the Learning also helps me to be more aware of how social software can be used in the classroom in order to build a learning community in social network. Just like what the video illustrates, in daily life, people use technology in order to find better ways to share with individual because they feel the knowledge changes extremely equipment. Through social means, people are able to share and connect with each other. The usages of Facebook, MySpace, blogger and twitter are the examples that people have ability to talk and to have conversation. “The ability to share information by using social software leads people to have conversation, this is important because our learning today is one a forming network with each other.” Most of people enjoy communication since we are social beings. When we have dialogue and communication, we grow our own understatement and our own idea, when we express our ideas, our knowledge increases. Being a scaffolder, teacher needs to know students’ abilities, and provide learners support what he or she needs in order to motivate learners to know that he or she is the center of learning process. Therefore, language teacher can be the scaffolder to help students to build this communicative learning community together, by using different social software, to provide numerous opportunities for them to talk whatever they want, to share their different ideas, and to learn from each other from dialogue and communication.

Raymond, E. (2000). Cognitive Characteristics.  Learners with Mild Disabilities (pp. 169-201). Needham Heights, MA:  Allyn & Bacon, A Pearson Education Company.