When I was a young kid, I used to cut images out of newspaper, then glued the laboriously worked contents into my newly established "tabloid magazine" along with the carefully selected articles that would suit them and alredy I was on a good way to become a publisher. Many things have changed since that time. I no longer need to cut the images and articles from magazines to make my own. Neither I need to glue the contents on the paper anymore. My desire to be creative and an originator of something, however, remained. I can still take part in the interactive process in which I am a writer, photographer, publisher and manager of my own project. I do not need to have a company in order to have the roles which I feel myself fulfilling daily. All I need is a computer and an internet connection. It sounds perfect and it is perfect. Technology gives me skills which I would otherwise not be able to acquire and present to the wide public.
It is said that the best way of study is through experience and a famous Czech philosopher and educator Jan Amos Komenský was of the same opinion. He believed that everything one learns has to be immediately put into practice, a student should be a teacher at the same time and that the school should be fun. This is an ideal how a school should look like, this is the best environment for studying and learning. So why do our society still thinks that nothing is better than an endless memorising of facts that one forgets in a few days if they are not revised? Why do we think that we cannot learn by doing? Why is theory according to their instructions given precedence to praxis which is much more useful for our everyday lives? Theory is good, but useless without practice.
Langues are learned for the only reason - communication. I can see nothing in the world being more practical than learning languages to connect nations, countries, continents. All the skills one needs to acquire in language such as reading, writing, listening could be easily and effectively approached through technology. Creating blogs where I can improve my abilities to write coherent texts, using soundclouds to record myself anf thus improve my pronunciation and speaking skills, listen to a radio or watch a foreign TV station where I encounter the language in its authentic usage, create presentations to build my confidence when speaking in a foreign language to a bunch of people. Many of these skills could also be acquired without technology with a slightly different approach. Nevetheless, maybe it would not make the learning process so fascinating. Maybe the value of creative acitivity would not be so strong. And last but not least, when learning without technology, one does not get skills useful for one's future career. So what about that: papers or screens?
