Good Teachers Need Technology.

Adobe Connect

"... a web conferencing solution for web meetings. eLearning and webinars. It delivers exceptionally rich interactions......"

How this tool will be useful for language teaching?

I would use this tool as a revision session outside the classroom.

If fate decided that I'll be teaching in a well-equipped school with majority of the students have the internet connection at home. I would be happy to use this tool as a medium for discussion with my students. Maybe once a week.

In the discussion session, I will come out with the latest topic that we cover in the class. I bet it will be useful for students especially to those who don't really understand the lesson in the class.

Or

Suppose one of your students has missed some lessons so you decide to give a catch up lesson. This tool may help you to arrange a replacement class for those who keen to learn what they've already missed.

How does it link to current idea about language teaching?

1) Captivate students with rich, engaging, and interactive experiences.

2) Possible in for anyone and anytime. Because this tool makes students available to virtually anyone, anywhere, on almost any device, with just a click of a button.

3) Assessible. Allow students to easily attend your virtual classroom without the need for additional downloads.

4) Enable rich, highly collaborative interactions between students and teacher.

5) One type of students that you may find in a class is 'the invisible'. So, this virtual discussion might be an advantage for them to express themselves. They may be quite shy and passive in a real classroom but active in a virtual discussion.

Limitations?

1) Not really appropriate to do all the time as a main lesson where you actually teaching a new knowledge to students.

2) You don't have eyes on the back of you head. You can't always monitor students at home. either they're actually actively participate in the discussion or playing around after they joined the discussion group.

3) The internet problem may hinder the progress of the discussion.

4) Cannot pass the power to control the cursor or discussion to others.

5) The only way to interact with the students is through the chat box. Sometimes you can't attend to all the questions and interactions.