Albert said that he found it important to teach his students how to use digital activities, for example TED videos, for multiple purposes as opposed to only playing the video. He said he liked using them as the centres of projects, with many accompanying pre- and post-tasks, and the video itself could serve as the basis of additional activities such as phrase or vocabulary hunt or learning about structuring speech and delivering presentations. Erika mentioned that she also liked project-based approaches such as carrying out mini research projects with the help of technology from finding sources through discussing the arguments to delivering presentations.

Participants referred to using digital technologies to broaden their teacher education students’ methodological repertoire. Richárd said, “[r]arely, but I get feedback [from learners] saying why do I have to do this online; and then I tell them that this is a different kind of practice opportunity”. Dóra, Éva, Erika and Richárd said that without knowing the specific teaching environment, it was best to offer students an array of digital methodological knowledge through hands-on experiences. László asked his already practising teacher trainees to check the pedagogical program of their schools and look for specifications of students’ ICT use. Dóra, Éva and Erika frequently brainstormed with their students how an activity could be carried out with or without using technology and found it important that teachers always had a plan B. For example, Éva said, if only the teacher had access to technology, word clouds could be printed, cut out and distributed in the classroom on paper, substituting the digital tools. Éva and László said that it was very important for them to teach about websites where ready-made activities could be found (e.g., Kahoot! quizzes, Quizlet word sets, or presentation templates made by others) because it was always easier to use or alter already existing materials.

Magdolna observed that when she instructed her first university ICT class, she went to the extremes with how much she wanted to teach. She realised that less was more; classes seemed to work better if they were linked to the specific needs of students and if she designed the activities providing hands-on experimentation. As Richárd summarized it, “[i]t absolutely cannot be taken for granted that someone who owns digital devices knows how to use them purposefully”. He also said that it was difficult to build on learners’ perceptions of their digital competences, and even if students reported knowing digital environments such as the LMS system or Quizlet very well, he always made sure to show them how they worked or – to save time – designed a tutorial that could easily be reused later.

Gábor said that the balance between how much technology was needed and how much was available in each classroom or institution were two very different aspects and the two should not be mismatched. As he put it, “[s]ome [teachers] believe that they will become really good teachers because they can project videos in the classroom, I call it showroom pedagogy”. Therefore, according to Éva, teachers’ methodological and technological pedagogical knowledge were most developed if the two were successfully linked by understanding on- and offline alternatives. Éva expressed her aversion to certain technologies being promoted too much, for example by the aggressive advertising of Microsoft or Apple products; thus, by developing prospective teachers’ digital awareness and critical skills, arbitrary use might effectively be prevented. Similar to this, Erika mentioned that she found it important to explicitly teach her students how to avoid fake news and biasedness. Dóra, Éva, Erika and Richárd hoped that their students would become able to combine the knowledge they learnt from other classes too, and that other classes also frequented reflection on the instructors’ technology use. Richárd said, “when [students] finish my course, my intention is that they have a teaching toolbox that supplements what they already learnt from other instructors in other courses”.

Dóra, Erika, Erzsébet, Éva, Richárd and Zsombor mentioned the importance of their experimenting with new possibilities to keep themselves updated and to make it possible to teach about most recent technologies. Zsombor said that he told his students about the instructor not being the source of all knowledge; thus, motivating learners to be proactive, and explaining that it could occur that the teacher would not know the answer to certain questions. Zsombor encouraged learners to read reliable online sources linked to their interests or research areas because they could best learn about the norms and terminology of their field by reading quality texts in the genre. Kálmán found it important to link the digital possibilities of his gaming-oriented methodology class with second language acquisition theories and cognitivism, and Albert also said that it was very important to point out that pedagogy was also a discipline, not only a profession. Finally, Erzsébet recommended that her EFL teacher education majors start learning an additional foreign language (e.g., through Duolingo) to remind themselves of the hardships and successes of learning a FL that could emphatically bring their teacherly selves closer to their learners’ perspective.

 

Nonetheless, arbitrary use was heavily advised against by the participants. Just because certain technologies are available in the classroom, it should not mean that they must always be included (Czirfusz et al., 2020; Kárpáti et al., 2015). When technology is planned to be included, ideally teachers should have a plan B in case something does not function. Given that the majority of methodology teachers have been teaching classes for a longer period of time, it is possible that they already have an array of paper-based teaching materials. These could be used as backup plans, what is more, can be the sources of brainstorming how to transform them into the online sphere to ensure that their delivery is implemented in ways it meets 21st century needs. In methodological classes, it is not solely teaching methodology that is being transferred from instructor to students because the instructor emerges as a role model. Teachers in primary or secondary institutions do not only take up roles as subject teachers, but they might also eventually become form teachers as well. Probably that is why several participants emphasised the importance of developing the technological, technological content and technological pedagogical knowledge of their students simultaneously.

Finally, participants reflected on the emotional side of the transformation from being a student to becoming a teacher. In technology-rich environments oftentimes teachers refrain from digital device inclusion because they are afraid of not knowing how to run them or they are afraid of losing face in front of their learners (Venezky & Davis, 2002). Perhaps this might be overcome best by explicitly reflecting on the planning and operational processes of technology in the classroom, what rationales are behind inclusion, what the pedagogical aims are, how the digital environment needs to be set up, and how it is expected to behave in the classroom. If the environment does not live up to the expectations, each process could be revisited reflectively, and if it does, reflections could centre around what made it work, how it could be transferred to other similar contexts and how using the environment again could be even better linked to the pedagogical aims of inclusion.