Digital Youth Portraits

All the stories that I've watched were very interesting and inspiring. I was fascinated by the passion of this young generation which leads them to be creative and explore the world. I used to believe in the power of the young generation, but after watching these videos I've realized that the young generation can work  three times harder when they do something they enjoy it. As a TEFL professional, I think that the learner-centeredness can be embraced in ESL classrooms by taking the learners' passion into consideration. Learners are less interested in learning just for the sake of learning, than in learning to achieve their goals. For instance, Cameron, who is a visual learner, he learns by watching videos. He starts to use the green screen at school, and even teaches his teachers some techniques. Moreover, Dylan is another 13 years old teenager, who makes his own podcasts and works on projects with people from all over the world. They collaborate while they are in different countries. Undoubtedly, the passion of the learners to discover the world is the key of their success. We need to support the learners to achieve their goals in all different ways. It is not enough to have the learners think globally, the teachers should also think and act globally.
Additionally, Thomas Friedman in his book "The World is Flat", discusses ten forces that flattened the world. All of them are amazing, but I think the Netscape is one of the basic forces which prepared the platform for all the other forces. Netscape made the internet accessible to everyone from five-year olds to eighty-five-year olds. Besides, Informing is also an important flattening force because Google and other search engines helped millions of people to find so much information about anything they may want to learn. Thinking and acting globally have great impact on the education. Because of all these collaboration, we are able now as teachers and students to work with people from all over the world. We are able to exchange experiences with professions from different countries and share our education without even meeting these people in person. Friedman says, "We need to know the tools of the world to prepare people for that world." This latter inspired me in all aspects of my life.
After watching all the above mentioned videos and reading parts of Friedman's book, I think there is a connection between Sugata Mitra's "The Hole in The Wall" project and the other two sources. They all present the idea of globalization. They also encourage the idea of thinking and acting globally, in a way that people from all over the world collaborate and work together on projects using a shared medium. As Friedman says, "Whatever can be done, will be done." So I think we should work to move forward and support ourselves and our learners to get a life-long learning.