"One-World" Schoolhouse

How much has education changed from the Industrial Age to the Information Age to…tomorrow?

While advances in technology continue daily, advances in education seem to lag behind about a century. The education professionals and innovators featured in the Future Learning Documentary (2012) give greater insight into the already apparent backwards US education system of today. Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, UK, explains that education stemmed from war and military education goals. We are continuing to use an industrial mode of thinking that requires quiet and submission, a system designed to produce copies. This short documentary highlights many of the major issues the field faces today: motivation, purpose, engagement, and relevance. How can these be addressed in the 21^st century foreign language classroom?

Las Redes Sociales

Two words: social media. The Social Media Revolution (2011) quotes author and keynote speaker Erik Qualman, stating, “we don't have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it." Social media is certainly not the only option, but it is no longer optional. What better way to make learning Spanish, French, Russian, Mandarin, or any other target language relevant than by building connections and relationships with speakers of those languages? And what easier way to accomplish this than through social media?

Darren Cannell explains in the Educational Change Challenge (2010) that teachers must understand their [students’] culture in order to have credibility. He also expresses that we must “use it [technology] or lose it [relevance].” Students and educators need to not only see technology as a valuable learning tool, but as a necessary one. It is an essential part of students’ culture; it affects the way they acquire information, write and communicate with each other, and understand the world. Although society may not have a clear vision of what school is for (Educational Change Challenge), youth have a crystal clear one of what technology is for: discovery, play, entertainment, and communication. “Social media is about people,” (Social MediaRevolution) anywhere, using any language. There will be much less to translate once we fully tap into our students’ language and culture and bring our foreign language classrooms up to speed with today’s technology.

The world is our classroom.

Students are being educated in a totally different world than that in which the system was created – and they are being prepared for an unknown world that does not yet exist. Foreign languages are far less "foreign" with speakers just a tag, comment or Skype call away. We have come from a one-room to a one-world schoolhouse (Cisco Systems in Educational Change Challenge), an exciting change that opens up vast opportunities for foreign language education of today – and tomorrow!