Innovation in Language Learning

As part of an ongoing pilot project, this study examines the integration of iPads as a learning device to enhance the critical thinking and creative abilities of students in specific English language and literature courses at Bethlehem University, Palestine.  Western educational institutions have strived to incorporate the Apple iPad into their curricula since its release in 2010 in an attempt to revisit the definition of college learning and bring it into the 21^st century. Few initiatives if none, however, have been made in the Middle East to implement and examine the practicality and efficacy of using these interactive touch screen interface tablets, facilitating and enhancing the teaching and learning dynamic, as well as enabling and empowering students to become active agents in their academic and personal productivity in institutions of higher education. In this paper, we contend that the integration of technology—iPads—in higher education in the Middle East, in general, and Palestine, in particular, is emancipatory—that it is a subtle decolonization technique against an outmoded system of rote learning and testing that, as Paulo Freire argues in another context, turns both high school students into passive receptors and teachers into passive depositors of knowledge. Exposing students and teachers to an alternative method of teaching and learning which utilizes the interactive nature of the iPad, along with a reformed syllabi, is likely to produce non-conformist minds, cleansed of all the asymmetrical power relations that define a traditional teacher-student relationship. Utilizing this technology will also empower both to find a shared creative space necessary for a true liberation of the mind. This paper also strives to disprove the traditional approach that criticizes such technological initiatives as causing a “digital distraction” in the classroom. This study rather demonstrates that iPad technology can have a positive impact on students’ engagement, motivation, collaboration, and overall achievement.