Preparations are under way for the 4th Foreign Languages Forum. Spring’s theme has to do with technology in education and the digital gap that exists between teachers (Digital Immigrants) and students (Digital Natives). A debate is taking place in the educational field, these days, about the decline of education. However we ignore the most fundamental of its causes. Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.
Today’s students – from the kindergarten through university – represent the first generations to grow up with technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.
It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. These differences go further and deeper than most educators suspect or realize.
Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet. They are Digital natives.
So what does that make the rest of us? Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants.
The single biggest problem facing education today is that Digital Immigrant teachers, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.
Marc Prensky
The Panel Discussions
Three (3) Panel Discussions will take place (1 in Thessaloniki and 2 in Athens) in which Foreign Language School Owners -5 School Owners in each session- will talk about the technological tools they use and their impact on the improvement of language teaching and learning.
The Panel Discussions will be one-hour-long in both events and will be conducted in Greek.
The 4th Foreign Languages Forum will also future:
• Dr Ioannis Kritsotakis, PhD in Commercial Sciences from Vienna University of Economics and Business, speaks on how FL Schools can survive in times of crisis;
• Victoria Prekate, Teacher, Psychologist and Author;
• Dave’n’Luke, a theatre sketch in English performed by Luke Prodromou and David Gibson (in Thessaloniki only).
• Professional presentations;
• Commercial presentations;
• a rich Book and Resource Exhibition
