Making meaning with WiRead
The pedagogic relations between the teacher and students through the use of WiRead is mainly mediated through screen interfaces. When the teacher uses this digital semiotic technology, most of the interaction happens between the student and the computing devices. Notwithstanding, the students interact with the multimodal texts, as well as engage with more peers and more frequently, than would have been achieved in a regular lesson. There is also a conspicuous lower extent of direct engagement with the teacher as a result. This shifts the dynamics of the pedagogic relations from being teacher-centred to one that appears more student-centric. In terms ofWiRead’s contribution to the organisation of the learning experience, through the use of this digital semiotic technology, the teacher steps more fully into the role of a facilitator of learning and a designer of the learning experience, and less as a sage on a stage.
Personal computing devices in the classroom
Like popular digital semiotic technologies, new digital semiotic technologies can also be evaluated from the social semiotic lens of the metafunctional meanings made as well as the affordances they offer. Unlike the PowerPoint, where a bigscreen is used to project the screen from the teacher’s computer, the use ofWiRead as a semiotic technology affords a different learning environment - one-to-one student computing device provision. The evolution in the classroom learning environment towards one where students have access to a personal computing device for use, especially at the secondary and post-secondary level, is gradually increasing with greater device affordability and a more compelling range of semiotic technologies, in terms of tools, practices, and resources.
Studies have examined the impact of the use of personal computing devices. For example a meta-analysis of literature by Zheng, Warschauer, Lin, & Chang (2016) reported that there were many studies which pointed to the positive impact of the use of a personal laptop on teaching and learning. For instance, Bebell and O’Dwyer (2010) found that more frequent computer use in classroom with students having personal computing devices tended to result in higher mathematics scores for students. Rosen and Beck-Hill (2012) and Shapley, Sheehan, Maloney, and Caranikas-Walker (2011) also observed that students with personal computing devices in the classroom had more opportunities to develop learning autonomy and collaborative learning skills.
Regardless, in the teacher’s design of the learning environments with semiotic technologies, it is important to be mindful of the observation from the 2015 OECD Report on ‘Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection’. The report concluded that while the impact of technology on students’ performance is mixed, it noted that 'technology' can amplify great teaching’. A confluence of factors impact the effective use of technology and personal computing devices in teaching and learning.These factors include teachers’ capacity and readiness, as well as the access and effective use of quality semiotic technologies — the digital tools, practices, and resources.
Artificial intelligence in the classroom
The advances made in artificial intelligence in today’s digital age have presented exciting and innovative semiotic technologies for teachers to design new learning experiences for their students. Learning analytics is but one of the many new digital semiotic technologies that are explored by teacher innovators. Other forms of digital semiotic technologies gaining increasing popularity amongst teachers, especially those with students that have access to personal computing devices in the classroom, include language feedback technological tools, educational apps, and digital games (Selander, Lim.Wiklund, & Fors, 2018).
New digital semiotic technologies are usually met with scepticism by teachers. It is thus important to develop ways of appropriate and meaningful usage of these new tools, in consideration of how they represent knowledge, enact pedagogical relations, and contribute to the organisation of the learning experience, as well as the affordances they offer. For example the teacher’s use of language feedback technology in the English Language classroom has been controversial, with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) putting up a strong position statement against the use of machine scoring in education (NCTE, 2013). Convinced that one should not throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, Jean Phua, lead specialist at the Educational Technology Division, at the Ministry of Education in Singapore, and I set out to explore how to design meaningful learning experiences for students with the use of a Linguistic Feedback Tool (LiFT) to teach writing.
Lim and Phua (2019) introduce the term ‘Linguistic Feedback Tool’ as a ‘type of automated marking tool [that] focuses only identification and feedback on students’ writing rather than the provision of a score on the students’ content quality and rhetorical effectiveness’. As such, artificial intelligence in the LiFT complements the role of the teacher by correcting the grammar, spelling, and syntax, while the teacher focuses on the ideas and style in the students’ writing. In light of the affordances of the LiFT discussed in the paper, Lim and Phua (2019) argue that such a semiotic technology of the LiFT should be used within the process writing approach, specifically during the drafting and revising stage or process writing.
