Cloud computing

Your data everywhere

   Cloud computing, according to this website, is the storing and accessing of applications and computer data often through a Web browser rather than running installed software on your personal computer or office server.

  The real meaning of cloud computing came to me when I had to work on the same data from different computers. I had to export the data via a USB flesh and then I had to keep deleting the old files in both computers and paste the updated files. This doesn't happen when everything is "in the cloud", stored somewhere in the web. As long as you have internet access, your files can be accessed from everywhere, any time. 
    Not only files can be stored online but also software. More and more companies and individual users are now saving valuable space in their PC and are using online software instead. 
  However, since the entire data is "in the cloud" (which, in reality, isn't a cloud at all but a set of mega-powerful servers), questions like "Who is protecting the data?", "Is it safe?", "What if there is a leakage of data?" arise.  Google assures the safety and confidentiality of the data it stores. However, very few would risk giving sensitive data in hands of a third party, irrespective of the company's reputation. 

Google Apps

"Let the robots do the mechanical work and let the human mind shine in the rays of creativity."

 This video, though not groundbreaking by itself, made me think about just how much of my work is done by google. 

 Gmail  diligently sends and receives my messages as well as filters them according to my preferences, Google calendar helps me to save a lot of free space in my memory by scrupulously reminding me abut my tasks and duties, Google Drive makes my documents reachable from every computer on this Earth (provided it has an access to the internet) and helps me to give  feedback to my Ss' writings in no time, Google maps knows my city much better than I do, Google hangout is just the perfect tool for group works, Google search engine is universally acknowledged as the real Superman (if there ever existed one)... Do I need to continue? 

  And the best part of it is that all this is free. And we take it for granted. What we forget sometimes though is that there are many people in the world (teachers in our case) who stay blissfully ignorant of all this. Not that a good teacher can't do her job without google apps. You would never hear me say that. The point is that these G friends (you can call them personal house elves if you wish:)) take away the mundane, the mechanical, the dull part of the job and  create a comfortable a space for  more sophisticated, more creative work for teacher.If you don't use Google products, certainly give them a try. They are real treasures right under your nose!

Academic Analytics

"gut instinct" vs data-driven decisions

AND

Learning that leaves trails

 Suppose you are an EFL teacher and the next agenda in your lesson plan is teaching types of clothes. You have a look at the textbook and you see a list like "vest", "shirt" and "bodywarmer". You prepare a great lesson plan, , go into the classroom, introduce the words and BOOM!: the students find the words confusing. They seem to be ok with the other new words but these devilish three for some reason just don't work! After the lesson you talk with your colleges and  hear smth like this: "Yeah, those three are always a problem". Each of them knows this that but they still follow the book's plan over and over again. The procedure repeats itself, the experience gets reduplicated and the problem persists.

  This story could have been completely different if you have just  looked into another source for guidance. Namely, if you read some research on the topic, you would have found the following:

"It's easier for the human cognitive system to differentiate between two new different items than two similar ones. Therefore, words that are similar  in some aspect (meaning/pronunciation/spelling) shouldn't be introduced together as they present a challenge for memory."

  See how sometimes research beats the "gut instinct" or the "experience"?  This is why we should steer towards a more data-driven decision-making and make a very judicious use of subjective personal experience and instincts. 

  Research is based on data. The more date we have, the more reliable and valid our research is. Now the amount of data we can get in the modern world is simply breathtaking. It has reached to the point of the so-called "Big data". Let's consider the field of education for example. Virtual Learning Environments like Moodle  track every single click that the learners make, thus yielding a complete virtual footprint. We get information about which pages in VLE are never visited by the learners , which of them are most popular, which learners are active and which, on the other hand, are "at-risk" and maybe need guidance. This data is analyzed via Learning Analytics ( the measurement, collection , analyzes of data for the purposes of optimizing learning) and is used to inform changes in the learning and the curriculum. Effective use of readily available data, that's what this is. 

  Now, do you feel a little in a daze? Do you feel like the Earth under your legs is shaking? That's right! The world is changing and moving ahead! Are you coming? 

 

Learning Management Systems (LMS) vs. Personal Learning Environments (PLEs)

The other side of the mirror

  Here are some nice definitions of the two terms:

  Personal Learning Environments (PLE) are systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. Technically, the PLE represents the integration of a number of "Web 2.0" technologies like blogs, Wikis, RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, etc.— around the independent learner (from Wikipedia.com).

  An LMS, on the other hand, is an information system that administers instructor-led and e-learning courses and keeps track of student progress (from http://www.pcmag.com).

 As a student, I have only been exposed to PLE and found it to be a good tool in the hands  of a competent instructor. However, after exploring two PLE platforms 

(  www.edmodo.com, http://www.twiducate.com/ ), I was able to assess the appeal of these types of learning environments as well. As compared to LMS, PLE platforms are more student-centered and require a more autonomous learner.

  For more detailed and informative explanation on the differences between LMS and PLE, watch this video.

 

Distance learning

Mouses ready!

  This last week I was engaged in active participation in Livemocha. For those who don't know, livemocha is a language learning website that connects people who want to learn a foreign language. While registering, I mentioned English as my native language and Spanish as the language that I would like to improve. Below are two highlights of the experience I have had. One is positive the other is ... well, you'll see.

Great Free stuff!

 Here's how livemocha works. Language items are first introduced, then recycled through activities that integrate all four language skills. What's more,you can get feedback for your speaking and writing task from the community and the experts. All you need for this are coins which can be earned via assessing other learners' work. The whole system is based on the idea of a "swap-circle": help the others and the others will help you! Fair enough, isn't it?

Lack of ... smth

  As great as Livemocha is (and I am sure we will have even better distance learning tools in the future), I can't imagine it to be a substitute of formal learning. This may be my Taurus traditionalism steering the wheel of my mind, but to learn a language without a face-to-face human contact takes away part of the pleasure for me. People, learning a language in a group, enjoy the process because there is typically somebody in the group with a great sense of humor, there is someone super clever, someone silly, someone bossy, etc. There is the teacher, who can never be as perfect as the computer software, who will sometimes make mistakes but who will also sometimes be funny or kind or encouraging, who will, in short, display a range of human emotions, unknown to the computer. Maybe I am just an old-fashioned human being. I want my teacher to encourage me when I succeed and to show her disapproval when I don't. I am an old-fashioned human being. I don't want a perfect computer software, I just want an imperfect, good-old human relationship.

 After all, imperfection, as the highly talented actress Helena Bonhem Carter once said, is underrated.

Mobile-assisted language learning

 With just a little bit of help from my phone...

  

 90 percent of people in the entire world have a mobile phone network and 41 percent of the world's population has more than one mobile device. These are data taken from the most recent surveys done by Colley (in 2010) the Oracle (in 2011). The numbers, I imagine, have increased by now.

   How many of students nowadays keep exercise books, notepads or other paper-based learning equipment? Text, written on paper is non-transferable, non-printable, non-editable and non-interactive. Digital text, on the other hand, can be easily edited, converted to other formats, printed, shared and copied. When was the last time a student actually took the time to browse the pages of a paper dictionary? Why should he?

    According to the same survey mentioned above, 85 percent of mobile phones shipped worldwide by 2011 will have an in-built internet browsers and between 2010-2015 it is estimated that the mobile access to web will exceed the computer access. So what does this all mean? Basically, it means that  students worldwide constantly carry a tool with themselves which can potentially be used for education but which is being ignored. There is already quite a variety of mobile phone Apps for language learning. Here  are some examples:

• Speak English (improves pronunciation)
• Grammar
• English verbs
• English podcasts (lsitening and speaking)
• Toefl IBT preparation apps
• IELTS preperation
• Dictionaries
• Language games                                                                                                                                 Unless the educators start seeing all these as valid learning tools, there may be a danger of a potential gap between the way we understand learning and the way the learners do.  I would have to repeat myself here and re-post the quote I had in one of the earlier posts.
   “In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.”
  
  Eric Hoffer 
  
  Think of  this. Does your world still exist?

  

Open Educational Resources for TEFL

Mindblowing

 (The brewing perfect storm of opportunities)

      The world we live in is changing so fast (and has already changed so so much!) that some of us actually run the risk of waking up one day in the morning to find themselves in a perfectly strange world. Or wait, aren't some of us already living in a vacuum of an imaginary world that no longer exists? Let's do  a mini-test. Do you still think that knowledge is a "substance" and needs to be transmitted from the "knower" (the teacher) to the learner? Do you still think that practice needs to be preceded by theory? Do you still live under the false  illusion that learning implies a classroom, a board and a textbook? And finally, do you include words like "graduated from", "got high grades from...",etc. in your definition of an educated person? If you answered "yes" to to at least two of the questions above, you may consider reading this post till the end (doing so is encouraged anyway though:).

       Let's cast a look back at the old world. Remember the desks, the teacher, the classroom, the textbooks and the exercise books. How much have you written? How much have you read? What part of it do you remember? What part of it was forgotten or lost while you were counting the minutes till the end of the lesson? Were you interested? Now, isn't it curious? You probably mostly remember the things you were interested in. The cribs, the learning by heart, nothing helped. Your mind now only keeps the things that were relevant to your interests. Now, try to reverse the process. Start from the things that you are interested in. Say, it's Creative writing in English. Now if you agree to be the learner of the new world, here are just two steps I suggest you to do.

     a) Find Online Creative Writing forums

 Learning is a self-organizing system. Internet forums are there to unite people who share similar interests or problems. Jump in, take a share. There is no teacher. There are only collaborators. There is no teaching. There is social learning. Start writing from the offset. Get and leave feedback. Get a taste of a real audience. Fail, get feedback, fail again and again until you  succeed. Start from BEING a writer, not LEARNING how to be one.

b) Take an online Free Creative Writing course

     Now this may be a shock for even a fairly modern mind. Professional, highly-valuable courses from the world's best educators can actually be FREE. This, honestly, makes me feel proud of living in the age that I live in. Here's a list of websites that provide completely free online courses on a variety of topics:

• https://www.coursera.org/
• https://www.udacity.com/
• https://www.udemy.com/
• https://iversity.org/
• https://www.edx.org/
• https://novoed.com/
•  http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/forstudents/freecourses
• http://www.ocwconsortium.org/en/courses  

Here are some of the courses that are related to Creative Writing:

The Future Of Storytelling  

Creativity, Innovation, and Change  

Inanimate Alice:Digital storytelling 

Writers Tips – practical advice for creating better books

  

   This post has already extended far more than I intended. That's why I would just like to finish with a brief summary of what this all means. Basically, the opportunities that the internet, the flattening of the world and the open resourcing give us result in the mind blowing idea that an Internet connection, a computer and sufficient interest in a topic is just what it takes to become educated in the world we live in. So if you feel comfortable with your knowledge just because you have graduated from a decent University, I suggest you take a second thought. Go and check your neighbor that rarely leaves his house. Who knows how many online Universities has he graduated from?

Learning English via Video

Games

Where do you know all those words from?

-I just play games!

   Almost in every group there is one student who is typically not very proficient in grammar but shows a remarkable range of vocabulary. In most of such cases the student is either a regular gamer or movie watcher or is engaged in any other activity whose content is engaging and relevant to his/her interests. 

   A typical modern child is born surrounded by a variety of technological gadgets.  By the time  the kid starts school, his mind is full of characters and adventures from GTA, Sims, Call of Duty and a myriad of other games. These are words that have no limits except that of imagination. And a child's imagination, as is universally known, needs no additional kindling!

  Arguably, this new technologically abundant world changes  the perceptions and the ways we get and process information (McGrew-Hill, 2008). Children, used to fantastic, fun, graphically mesmerizing worlds with a lot of mysteries to unfold and challenges to overcome, are sent to schools where the processing of information is linear and the students' main role is that of a passive listener.

  A number of studies have been done to assess the effectiveness of video games in L2 learning. The results, though tentative, suggest positive outcomes. The main challenge of anyone that would integrate games into teaching is to to find a meaningful balance between fun and educational gains.  The question, in short, is the following "Can we integrate gaming into language learning without losing the fun aspect of it? Can games be manipulated and structured to serve pedagogical goals?".

Though there is no magical formula, these questions currently inspire heated discussions in EFL and ESL.

  Let's look at one specific case. Can the PC game The Sims be used to teach vocabulary? A study done by Jim Ranalli yields a positive answer. I tried to get a first-hand experience on the subject myself. The implications I got, which are briefly summarized in this presentation, are mostly promising. Though no way an alternative to traditional course-based learning, Sims and games in general, if scaffolded and structured appropriately, can help to supplement the main language learning course.

   If you  hurry to end reading this post just to articulate a harsh and firm "No", just  pause a second  and read this sentence:

 “In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.”

Eric Hoffer   

Video production in EFL

A step on a shaky field

  This week I have had a video production experience with my peers from the TEFL program. Our main goal was to get an experience in video shooting and editing with the purpose of evaluating the potential of video production in EFL.

  Creative projects are fun, engaging and sometimes inspiring. However,  all these often go hand in hand with a lot of time investment and , if technology is concerned, sometimes with a good deal of frustration. 

  The implications I got from my experience are still vague and non-conclusive.By itself, video production is a powerful tool but it's true application in  EFL environment is rather unclear to me. What would be the linguistic goals that would justify the massive investment of time,energy and creativity used in producing videos? This is the main question that I have. Right now there seems to be a lack of solid theory and research on this topic. The picture is still blurry. Any teacher using video production in EFL should be ready for an unsteady and uneven ground. The results, however, can potentially be rewarding.Now the next question is "Who will be(and already are) those pioneers ready to bring video production to EFL?". I suppose, as is the case with every innovation, the driving factors will mainly be passion and interest in the subject. We will see what comes.

   “Watch for the thing that will show itself to you. Because that thing, when you find it, will be your future.” 

Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha 

Digital Storytelling

Stories come alive

   Stories are inherent in human culture. We all love hearing and telling stories. In EFL classrooms, stories have had and will most probably continue to have their well-deserved place too. However, the only constant in the world we live in is the change. Modern technology enables us to refresh our understanding of the traditional paper and pen story writing. 

   Digital storytelling is the art of combining storytelling with some mixture of digital graphics. Digital stories abandon the notion of paper-based storytelling and make full use of sound and picture to enhance the story-telling experience. Have a look here to see some examples of digistories.

   The integration of digital sound and picture in EFL seems quite an intriguing and promising idea. The benefits are many and, arguably, outnumber the possible caveats. It's no surprise that a story with good visuals is a treasure for every child.  Remember how you turned the pages of the book with the hope of finding the pictures? Remember how words alone weren't enough for you? Or how you relished the changes in your mother's voice as she read a story at your bed? Confess to yourself, as a child you sometimes refused to give a chance to a pictureless book. This is because a book with only text is an almost-dead book. In a sense, it's like an unsociable child, reserved and reluctant to communicate. This may not be a problem for a book-loving adult but teenegers and especially children will probably cherish  good, powerful visuals and sound effects.

   Having said all of the above, I'd also like to stress out that making good digistories is an art. Both the visuals and the sound need to supplement the story and enhance the experience and not just repeat the same story. Therefore, a good deal of skill, talent and creativity is needed to make a good digistory. 

  So should our students create and consume  digistories? The research and the numerous examples in the net eloquently enough say "yes". You never know the potential of a tool unless you give it a chance and explore. In my opinion, digistories are worth to be given a chance and have quite a future.

  On a final note, here's a digistory I created myself. I used one of the 3D templates of Prezi which immediately set my story in the right context: a deep, maigical forest. I also added some sounds and ... ok, let's leave the old-fashioned texting. Let THE STORY come alive.

Wikis

 "Multiple pens, one paper"

  Remember the times people wrote long letters to each other to receive or send information? Well, that's clearly old-fashioned, isn't it? But would you think that even emails are now becoming, in some respect, old fashioned too? Suppose two people are working together over a distance on the same project. Suppose this project is a translation of a document. Each writes his own piece separately and sends it to the partner. Then, they have to proofread each others' writing  and again send the documents to each other. Finally, one of them takes the pain to merge the two pieces and make the translation a holistic piece. Two pens working separately on two different pages.

  Now imagine those two (and you can have three, four, ten collaborators!) pens working on the same document! One of the writers translating  a piece, the other simultaneously proofreading or writing his own piece, a third one maybe helping the first two with the vocabulary, etc. Do you see the magic? Wikis do this magic. They create, what can be called, a real-time collaboration, a platform for multiple individuals to join their efforts at the same time, at the same place.  Intrigued? Here are two wiki platforms you can start from: Pbworks.com, wikispaces.com.

  On a final note, have a look at this simple yet informative video on Wikis. These people know how to explain things.
Wikis in plain English.

Podcasts

 

"Ears, I say, not the eyes "

   I love podcasts. I really do. In the world where eyes are the main medium of getting information (reading, watching TV), many of us are running the risk of exploiting the natural capabilities of our eyesight. I often feel tension and pain in my eyes and this often leads to feeling demotivated to read. This is a shame, since I find a great pleasure in reading.

   This inner conflict of mine has recently been resolved by the introduction of podcasts and audiobooks into my life. I started to listen to wonderful books and to lively discussions via podcasts. It only takes me a few minutes to download them and to to send the mp3 files to my mobile phone. The rest is magic. 

  Podcasts are liberating and empowering in the sense that they help you to shift the tension from the eyes to the ears, to use the multiple mediums that human body has for getting and processing information. Podcasts are my absolute heroes. They are with me in the public transport, while washing the dishes, taking the dust and even while walking out the dog. 

  Given the amazingness of podcasts, why not use them in education as well? While researching the topic ideas such as "student-created podcasts", "teaching skills like synthesizing via podcasts", "giving the students the ability to meaningfully participate in the world", "real audience" ,etc invaded into my mind. Are there any disadvantages of using podcasts in EFL? Apart from some possible ethical and copyright issues, which are clearly not podcast-specific, I see none. So why not? I am very optimistic in the potential of podcasts in EFL. One of our responsibilities as teachers is to empower our students with choices. Podcasts seem a very viable audio alternative to the heavily text-dominated way of getting knowledge in our world. 

So close your eyes and get your ears ready, they have relaxed far too much :)

Using Blogs and Twitter in an EFL classrooms

 "Feedback, Collaboration, Community"

  In this post I will try to outline a sample EFL project that makes use of blogs and twitter as learning tools. My hypothetical situation is a group of teenage EFL learners who attend a course that develops learner's creative writing. Learners would be asked to read Margaret Mitchell's novel "Gone with the Wind" and write a sequel to it afterward . Each group of 3/4 students would write its own ending to Mitchell's unfinished novel and would post the sequals in a blog created specifically for this project. Learners of the group would have to read the sequals of other groups  and leave feedback be either adding comments in blogs or making updates in twitter. Each students would have to post at least one comment for each sequal. The sequals will be both peer-assessed in the form of peer comments and tutor assessed. The latter will mainly be in the form of comments on the content but will also include some feedback on the accuracy and the organization of the narrative. 

  The main challenge might be to overcome the learners' fear of writing creatively in a foreign language. Activities of pre-writing stage, such as introduction and practice of free writing, narrative, descriptive writing, may help to lessen the anxiety related to writing in English.

  This project would be aimed at fostering collaboration among the students and would help them to have a first hand, authentic practice in creative writing. The technology used would help to realize the project in a cost and time efficient manner.

Blogging and Microblogging

 "Blogs are much more than a diary",Will Richardson

    We live in a world where every person from every part of the world (where internet is accessible) can share his ideas with the rest of the world without having to pay anything. This is what blogs and microblogs have done for us. What's more, blogs have enabled us to comment and to discuss each others' ideas. Finally, we can spread  the information via as many channels as we have (Twitter, Facebook,etc). The world has never been flatter. 

  The potential of blogging for teaching purposes has scarcely been researched. However, the changing world requires changes in the way we view education as well. Bellow are some of the benefits and caveats I see in using blogs as a learning tools. 

Benifits 

a) authentic, worldwide audience

b) improvement of research skills

c) the opportunity to make choices about what to read

d) improvement of reading skills 

Caveats

a) a lot of messy, sometimes inappropriate content

b) distracting factor of social networks

c) the need to work a lot in front of the computer screen and not paper, which some people (including me) find demotivating

No one knows what the future holds. However, it's relatively easy to assume that blogs will most probably enter the field of education as well. Will they prove to be effective triggers of learning? With all the irrelevant but attention-grabbing and easily digestible information floating all over the net, I am a little uncertain of whether the learners will be able to concentrate on more serious and intellectually demanding topics.  In any case, time will show.

 

Teachers in the new world

“ A teacher that can be replaced by a machine, should be”.

  I find several clear-cut parallels between the Hole in the Wall project by Sugata Mitra, the Digital Youth Portraits and Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat".

   The main recurrent thread that I see in them is the following: because of the technological innovations the world has changed and the roles and attitudes in the newly-shaped world need to be altered accordingly. The world is now one global ecosystem and the opportunity of showing one’s potential  is becoming more and more equal,  irrespective of one’s social status and country of origin. In the words of Friedman (2007), “The playground has been levelled”. A curious, open mind, with or sometimes without any outer stimulation, can find the tools and the pathways to success. In the Hole in the Wall project Sugata Mitra notes that younger kids usually taught the older ones. This, in my view, shows that the more open the mind is, the more easily it finds the pathways of fulfilling its curiosity. For such a mind, neither the foreign language, nor any other barrier is an obstacle. The digital portraits of Edutopia illustrate this point very well.

    All this seems to point to the following question: Do we need teachers in a world where information is just one click away? I think we do and we do so even more than before. In the complexity of the web and the abundance of distracting, low-value information, a guiding and motivating teacher is invaluable. I would just quote Sugata Mitra’s friend’s quote here, since I doubt that I can put it any better: “ A teacher that can be replaced by a machine, should be”.

               Thomas Friedman, ''The world is flat"

"The playground has been levelled" 

 

   In his book, called "The world is flat"  Thomas Friedman discusses the changes that technology has brought into our lives.

  All of the ten flatteners discussed by Thomas Friedman are groundbreaking and amazing in their own way. That’s why it’s hard to single out only some of them. Also, it would take too much time and space to discuss all of the flatteners. Therefore, I would rather discuss the flatteners that have had a very palpable influence on education. In this respect, “8/9/95”, open-sourcing , in-forming and  steroids have a huge influence on learning and teaching.

 

1) “8/9/95” and “In-forming”: Browsing and search engines

 I find browsers and search engines  absolutely amazing. The internet would have a been a messy, extremely non user-friendly  pile of information without search engines. With the availability of so many online language dictionaries, thesauruses, language learning websites and communities, the opportunity to browse and find the required information seems priceless to me. Google’s ability to locate relevant web pages with the help of the user queries is getting more and more advanced. With the addition of supplementary services such as mail, calendar, translation, blogging, etc, search engines like Yahoo, Google, Bing have already become invaluable tools work and study.

2) Open-sourcing

  The internet is full of free, downloadable applications, tools and software that can help any learner to improve his knowledge of virtually any subject. Numerous wikis, blogs and forums are available for free. It is becoming less and less difficult to protect intellectual property since the idea of sharing and open-access resourcing is central in many internet communities.

  

3) Steroids

  It’s not at all uncommon to see a situation like this in today’s classrooms: A teacher explains something and then notices one of the students quickly google-ing and either checking what was said or making additions to it. Cutting edge ipads, iphones and other gadgets make it one click’s work to find virtually any information anywhere, anytime. Taking this into account, it becomes naive to hold the idea that the teacher is still the all-knower. Clearly, a change of perceptions is needed here.

  

 

 Digital Youth Portraits

 

   “Give them the tools and get out of  the way"

 

 

 

Dylan,13, uses the internet chatsto collaborate with his like-minded friends all over the world and promote a more green planet.

  




 



 Digital Youth Portraits is a series of video stories of young kids educating themselves and exploring the world via technology.
   Watching the videos I was mostly struck by the obvious capacity of very young children to learn and explore all by themselves through technology. These portraits show that very young and teenage children, who are technology native from very early on, can and do use technology not only for fun but also for pursuing their passions and educating themselves. These children are problem solving, independent learners, who use their creativity and the opportunities created by the modern technology to explore their passions. 

  Literacy is not only text and knowledge. In modern times, more than ever before, it includes values such as creativity and problem solving skills. This has an obvious message for primary school teachers all over the world. The role of the teacher is no longer that of an information provider but more like a guider, a facilitator. As Sugata Mitra puts it: “Learning is a self-organized system and primary education can happen almost on its own”. (watch Sugata's Ted talk entirely here )

    As a TEFL professional in Armenia, I am well aware that the majority of teachers in my country are far from just giving the tools and getting out of the way. Teaching in my country is heavily teacher and textbook centered and is stubborn against changes. Teachers are still the all-knowers and the students are still treated as a passive audience. Drilling, habit formation and repetition are still the core of our mainstream education system. Having said this, it’s worth noting however that the youth is getting more and more technology native these days and is starting to make use of the advancements of technology for learning and exploring. Nevertheless, when will the technology also enter the classrooms and when will the teachers willfully give way to children’s ability of self-learning, is still not clear.