Reflection on question 1:

Digital youth portraits: What struck you most in these stories? What do these stories teach you? What do they mean for you as a TEFL professional in Armenia?

      The stories gave us a view about new technologies. These stories taught me a lot of new things about new devises.

      They were quite different stories but had the same idea and the same purpose. I found out an important thing from all of these videos. I understood that teacher’s role has become  less important now. Children have started to become visual learners. They say if they don’t understand the materials the teacher explained them,  they can learn it from the computer very easily.  Children want love learning and they don’t want search, they want use they searched for. New technologies are better for kids, because the children have great ideas. It is said that the literacy is not about the text, it is about the combination of the visual, the oral interactivity and began to support children in all different way. The technology is the way to do it. So children don’t need to be gifted to teacher all the time. The computer can be their teacher as well.

              I as a future TEFL teacher think that new technologies still are being developed in Armenian schools. Teachers must be informed about the new technologies and help students to learn easier and faster. The stories mean for me that we have a lot of opportunities to teach them with new devises, on the other hand according to the stories the students didn’t need the help of any teacher. They could connect to the internet and find or search the things that are interested in. 

Reflection on  question 2:

What flatteners discussed by Thomas Friedman do you find most amazing and why? What kinds of implications does this idea have for teaching and learning?

Thomas Friedmen talks about 10 flatteners. The first being the falling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which tipped the balance of power across the world towards democratic free market and away from authoritarian rule. A second flattener is identified as our ability to not only author our own content, but to send it worldwide with the 1995 launch of the Internet. Subsequently, Free workflow software was developed, allowing people from around the world to collaborate and work together on projects using a shared medium. As Apache and Wikipedia came into play, people became able to develop and upload web content and community collaboration became another flattening force. Then the next flattens are Netscape, which is one of the most important flattener in the planet. It was a huge flattener that gave us an internet, 4.Uploading, 5.Outsourcing, 6.Off shoring, 7.Supply-chaining, 8.In sourcing-again talks about the collaboration between people and companies which is done through UPS, 9.Informing and the last one 10.The Steroids- it is the wireless internet connection which gives people an opportunity to connect with the internet without any devise.

As for me each of them were amazing and interesting. These are the new use of technologies that are going to be developed. I liked The Steroids which is very usefull and gives a lot of opportunities to connect with the internet everywhere without any cables and devises, Netscape, and Free workflow software-  I liked them because these are collaborations on more different things, and helps colleges and universities to connect easier and faster, to send e-mails and do assignments via internet.

This gives a lot of implications in teaching and learning. It helps people to learn everything easier and faster from the internet and be able to communicate with each other

Reflection on question 3:

What connections do you find between the Hole in the Wall project by Sugata Mitra and the other two sources above: Digital Youth Portraits and Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat"?

     

     All the videos that I watched were connected to each other. The main connection was collaboration. As it helps people to connect and communicate with each other.

The story of Sugata Mitra was very interesting. It was about the project which was called The Hole in the Wall. Sugata has done an experiment with kids. He put the computer in the hole and let the kids to come and use it. After some time later he saw that the kids could use the computer and talk with each other. Children who knew nothing about computer and English, started using it all by their own, and say some English words like delete enter, etc. This resulted that kids became self educated.

      In Digital Youth Portraits and in Friedman’s “The World is Flat” i could see more similarities. Kids became better partners when they started using technology mainly computers to find more opportunities to serve for their needs. They didn’t need anyone’s support. They had a lot of ideas that could help them to be informed and learn more by their own.

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