The Connection between the Digital Youth Portraits, "The World is Flat", and "The Hole in the Wall"

While and after watching all the materials assigned for homework, I had to reevaluate my teaching philosophy and come up with new ideas or concepts. One general teaching value of these stories is that language learning through technologies goes far beyond just learning the language; it fosters the development of a personality both culturally and socially. I myself uncovered a lot through this assignment, and I would like to discuss their meanings for me as a TEFL professional.

As it was presented in Cameron’s story, there are different ways of communication most of which come off from screens. I was mostly struck by Cameron’s endless strive for technologies. It proved that the integration of technologies in education can improve creativity, problem-solving skills, and imagination. It can be more enjoyable and engaging. We shouldn’t be afraid of assigning learners creative tasks when they use all their strengths, become explorers for new ideas, research and investigate. Most importantly, they learn by doing and become learners-teachers. 
Dana’s story showed me that technology can really enable them to become autonomous learners. They do what is appropriate for them and follow their passion. This prompts that students should not learn the language just for the sake of learning it or because it is on their curriculum, but learn it for and by satisfying their language learning needs and interests. Hence, language should not be taught as a subject but as a means for meaningful interaction where all the dimensions of language use are explored. This will help learners better understand the importance of language learning. 
While watching the story about Dylan, I imagined how technologies can allow for interaction not only at a local, but also at a global level. Language learning is not limited to a textbook, but ranges from a textbook to a vast interactive learning environment where learners become more engaged and take more responsibility for their own learning. Furthermore, technology allows expressing their concerns through their own video materials, coming up with solutions and feeling the positive impact of their social role inside and outside the country borders. 
The other two materials about Nafiza and Olivia made me think of a role of technologies as a source of multi-skills development. They use and improve different skills at a time, relate their learning to real life, learn how to use the language via technologies and how to use technologies via language. Learners develop confidence and become leaders.

In his work “The World is Flat”, Thomas Friedman acknowledges that the global economic playing field has been leveled, meaning that a much larger group of people can compete for global knowledge. He argues that there are primarily ten forces that flattened the world. In my perspective, the most amazing of these flatteners is the workflow software, i.e.
technologies that allow work to flow and create a global platform for multiple forms of collaboration. The next six flatteners sprung from this platform. 
Quoting Friedman’s words “when the walls came down and the windows came up”, we understand that due to technologies, everything started becoming faster and faster, and more and more widespread. In terms of teaching and learning, one implication if this idea is that curiosity and passion are more important than intelligence now, which means individuals must possess the ability to learn how to learn. Hence, the role of technologies is tremendous in developing this ability. Another implication is that in the flattening world we need to be more open and willing to change our teaching and learning practices in order to have the best chance for success. Again, the adoption of technologies becomes a vital component in today’s education. Without this, the continuous process of world flattening will disempower people who are responsible for teaching and learning.

Sugata Mitra, in his project “The Hole in the Wall”, discusses certain factors that affect education. These are the remoteness and quality of education, integration of technology in schools, particularly in primary education, and self-instruction. His experiments revealed that unprivileged children in rural areas, not knowing any single word in English and being computer illiterate, had to learn the language through the exploration of the computer and the Internet, in groups, where mostly young kids taught the older ones how to use it; which means learning by doing and not by not doing. One final outcome from these experiments was that primary education can happen on its own; it can be a self-organizing system. 
Thus, my impressions about the connections of all the materials described above can be expressed by a brief conclusion that to succeed in this flat world the integration of technologies in the teaching/learning process is necessitated as it can stimulate curiosity and passion, and encourage people to learn how to learn.