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Thinking Activity: Education & Technology

Thinking activity on Education and Technology

Video-1: Changing paradigms by Ken Robinson


This video starts with this line How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century? Economic, culture identity, globalization, economic circumstances and industrial revolution they all are discussed in this video. The current system was designed and conceived for a different age. The arts are victims of this mentality. Aesthetic and Anaesthetic. Aesthetic experience- when senses are operating at their peak and Anaesthetic- shut your senses off deaden yourself to what it's happening. Gene pool education: we have to think differently about human capacity academic or non-academic education, abstract, professional, theoretical and myth. And in last great learning happens in groups is the collaboration is the stuff of growth.

Video- 2 & 3: Sugata Mitra on SOLE and Future Learning

What is the future of learning? Schools, as we know them are obsolete; schools are not broken, the education system is not broken, it's wonderfully established.
These are points Sugata Mitra discussed in both videos.
-) He invented the School in the Cloud
-) He’s the guy who put a computer in a hole in the wall in India
-) He wants to get rid of teachers
-) He thinks children can learn all they need from computers


SOLE: Self Organized Learning Environment
The School in the Cloud brings together Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLE) – groups of children wanting to learn and with access to a computer and the internet. The teacher in today’s environment is at his or her best… if they are dealing with the question to which they do not know the answer and they are finding out along with their children. What Mitra is a system which would focus on enabling children to access, understand and use knowledge, rather repeat it.

Video- 4: Let's use video to reinvent education by Salman Khan



Salman Khan talks about why and how created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos. He shows the power of interactive calls and exercises for teachers to consider converting the traditional classroom notes- gives students video lectures to watch at the classroom or home. From video resources and flipped learning video resources students are using sources and they enjoyed the option to pause and repeat his lessons, thereby providing self-pacing their learning. Instantly other learners found the videos online, followed by educators.

Video- 5: Audio track by Marc Prensky on Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants.


In this video, Prensky talk on Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Both are often used to describe the digital gap in terms of the ability of technology use among people born from 1980 onward and those born before. The term digital native describes a person who has grown up in the digital age, rather than having acquired understanding with digital systems as an adult, as a digital immigrant.

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access like hypertext. They function best when networked.

But Digital Immigrants typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that the Natives have acquired and improved through years of interaction and practice digital Immigrants don't believe their students can learn successfully while watching TV or listening to music because they (the Immigrants) can't. Of course not – they did not practise this skill constantly for all of their formative years. So if Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives, all their students – they will have to change.

Video- 6,7 & 8: Influence of technology on the English language by David Crystal




In these videos, David Crystal, talking about how new technologies have an effect on English today. There are new varieties of English, such as newspapers, then the development of the telephone people thought that the telephone was going to the emergency as they did not think people were going to communicate face to face anymore. New technologies developing into a new style of English. Technologies influence the English language quite specific ways obvious example are shows messaging like twitting or text messaging or Facebook or many kinds of ways. As a global language, it develops very fast and it is both studied and used everywhere in the world as an official language, a second or a foreign language. What people or children study in the classroom or at home can hardly be qualified as the language spoken by natives.

The teachers of English have always taught RP English as a standard variety. ‘For the teachers, it is important to show respect to RP’ argues David Crystal (2013). The difficulties experienced by students range from pronunciation differences, vocabulary differences to grammar and cultural background issues. The existence of so many varieties will pose teaching problems, and influence the way English is taught.

Thus the purpose of the study was to discuss some reasons that would account for the mismatch between classroom English and the everyday, informal, language practice of native speakers, and to suggest ways of battling this.



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