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 You can watch free academical video courses from leading universities on AcademicEarth

You can watch free academical video courses from leading universities on AcademicEarth .

Five years since secondary school pupils were allowed to drop languages after the age of 14, the number of young people taking a modern foreign language at GCSE has slumped. The Government currently has no plans to make languages a compulsory subject again, preferring instead to make them available to all primary schoolchildren. But there are new initiatives afoot to encourage secondary school pupils to learn foreign languages.

athryn Board is the chief executive at Cilt, the National Centre for Languages, which is working to motivate young people through initiatives such as the annual Language and Film Talent Awards (Laftas). She says the removal of foreign languages as a compulsory element of education for children older than 14 puts British youngsters at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to carving out international careers. But her message is more about using language-learning to boost employability, literacy and reading skills than attempting to push school-leavers into specialised languages-based careers.

While our sometimes smug attitude to foreign languages rests on the belief that the rest of the world speaks English, this is no longer the case, according to Cilt.In 2000, 51 per cent of internet use was in English, but this figure has now dropped in favour of Chinese and Arabic. While English remains a key language of business for the present, it is quite possible that Mandarin will overtake it."Less than 7 per cent of the world speaks English as a first language and 75 per cent of the world's population don't speak any English at all," says Board, "so to assume that our mother tongue is sufficient to get by in most circumstances simply isn't true any more." If, at a time of increased globalisation, being able to offer at least a smattering of someone else's language puts you ahead of the game in all sorts of different walks of life, then in terms of popularity, languages are at an all-time low.

We had another great experience this week. A few of the children who stay at school  for After Care joined me at 4:00pm to Skype a class in Jacksonville USA. The Jacksonville kids are doing a tour Around the World with 80 Schools. It was a real WOW experience for the boys as they saw and spoke to children so far away in real time. They caught a glimpse of life beyond our school or city. Most of our learners have not travelled outside of Port Elizabeth and few have access to computers or the Internet outside of school, so their general knowledge is a bit lacking. This morning when I checked my Twitter account there was a link to a video clip that Silvia had edited and uploaded for us which means the rest of the grade 3’s can view it next week. So thank you to innovative and creative teacher, Silvia Tolisano for the experience. Which brings me to another difference technology makes in education. Twitter. I would never have met Silvia without Twitter. Three little boys’ lives have been enriched by a 15 minute Skype call and hopefully it will ignite a desire to learn more. Technology in education is dynamic!

Are we (teachers) going to become digital users or subscribers?  For decades we have been comfortable using packaged instructional content (textbooks, etc.) to help students learn, and this was probably necessary in closed learning environments.

What’s to come of social networking? Will we, as a larger defining education community, come to accept social learning techniques and integrate them, or will we continue to fear and block these opportunities?

Just how much influence might I have, as a teacher, on the learning that my students are engaged in outside of my classroom and outside of the school’s bell schedule? How might emerging ICTs enable more interesting and potent learning experiences beyond the confines of traditional schooling? How responsible am I to pursue these opportunities or do I continue to follow the traditional role of teacher and leave tech and the networks to the “natives?”