Reflection on Connie Yowell's (2009) Talk

Keywords: Digital media, young learners, paradigm shift, technology

Connie Yowell’s talk was very critical to me in understanding and appreciating the role of digital media in education. Several important questions, such as how young people are changing as a result of digital media, how their learning is changed and what are the implications of those changes, were touched upon in this talk.

Connie Yowell’s talk enlightened my understanding in a way that today only technology can address the young learners’ needs and that several paradigm shifts in traditional education should take place.  The paradigm shifts mentioned by Yowell (2009) that need to be addressed were as follows:

       ·        Reducing the gap between formal and informal learning context

·        Shifting from consumption to participation

·        Creating a community and taking participation actively

Based on the findings of different researches done, in the 21^st century 96% of young people play games, which is true across race and gender. The problem is that all the nice things that they are doing via technology are happening only outside the classroom, in informal learning context, thus creating a gap between the two learning environments. From Connie Yowell’s talk I inferred that when kids are playing games they don’t need a teacher or a textbook to learn how to play “Pokemon” or “Hyper Spider”. They form groups, sharing the same interests and form communities without anybody’s instruction. So, they simply learn by doing and giving feedback to each other through comments. According to Yowell writing comments is a feedback loop, which is modeling the young learners how to be reflective, as well as how to continue to improve the quality of their products.  

In a word, the learners become not only consumers, but also doers and producers and they shift from being private to public, because they are no more individuals, they are communities, who teach each other, learn from each other, as well as give feedback to each other’s works.  

My personal opinion concerning suggestions for the research agenda in the field of technology and TEFL are the following:

•  Use of VLC for watching movies and videos
•  Use of web applications, such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, etc.
•  Use of Blogging and iTunes for listening to different podcasts on various topics