Watching You Tube

After viewing the You Tube video entitled, Did you Know 2.0?, I found some some remarks very interesting. The future statistics were extremely impressionable and brings a sense of reality and urgency that technology information and learning are vital in education. In order to prepare our students for what will come, we need to engage, hold conversations, and reflect on how we currently teach the use of technology and how we empower our students with that knowledge.

It was most surprising to me, even as an English teacher, that 100% of college graduates in India speak English and in about 10 years, it is predicted that China will be the number 1 speaking English country. One could state that both countries have a much larger population than the U.S.A and Britain combined, however; it doesn't account to that America is still mostly a monolingual county. Granted, many technological advancements are based in English, but imagine how much our students could be on edge if they are allowed to express thoughts, feelings, and insights with technology in another language or even if they were aware of the power of connecting with people outside of their familiar environment. Technology is opening up the doors of communication and information, so one could say that culture teaching is just as important in our classrooms alongside with proper technology teaching.

I also found it interesting that 1 in 8 couples married in the U.S. in 2005 met online. With my experience in ESL, most of my students' mothers met their new partner on the Internet and moved to the U.S. This happened to some of my districts that didn't even know anything about ESOL until someone from another country married a community member. I feel that this will continue to grow and rural districts, not up to date about ESOL regulations and methodologies, will quickly have to accommodate this change. I have seen this happened, the shift has happened to many rural districts.

It was very interesting to hear the if My Space was a country it would be the 8th largest in the world. I am not surprised by this. Maybe if you combine it with Facebook, it will be the 4th largest country. Social networking is visited all the time by children, teenagers, and adults. It's another way to invite other opinions, ideas, and cultures into your personal world.

New information just streams into our technological world. Teachers must be able to capture, comprehend, analyse, apply, and teach this information to our students. We must open the door of opportunity for our children, therefore; we must empower and engage our students in order to compete in a world of constant change.