Language and Technology

To SOAS for a conference on technology and language learning run by its CETL. Programme is HERE. Astonishingly for a technology conference, no wifi allowed so no communication from the inside. Ah well, at least got some proposals written in the boring sessions (there were a few)

What the academic speakers don't get, is that this field is about dynamism, energy, initiative and taking part. I heard at least three funeral orations, I am sure.

Honourable exception: Graham Davies. A consultant well past retirement (by his own confession) who is more energised and participative than all the post-doc whippersnappers put together. Check him out, and his language lab at Edunation in second life. He goes by the name of Groovy Winkler and Second Lifers would do well to befriend him and get the tour. A gripping use of the Startrek concept of the holodeck, to beam the language learners into every conceivable setting and really stretch their social and metalinguistic powers. Bravo EU for supporting this guy.

Saw a demo of a videoconference-linked joint class format between Aberystwyth (Wales) and Masaryk (Czech Rep). The setting means that the learners are also picking up mediation, film use, technology... as they learn language. The Welsh group is mostly Asian and exposes the Czech learners to different accents. The Wales learners are doing a foundation access course and come out with social confidence as well as English. Some slides here

How to get 15 mins to catch up with work

Headphones and a kiddy download to itunes create the small space necessary to deal with something right now.

Says it all

Thanks to Iain Tait for finding this. Follow him www.crackunit.com

A Web for Learning in an IT-free space

The kids' school asked me to construct a site and online service to help them to use their remarkable GREENSPACE better. Greenspace (current holding site here) is an unused portion of a cemetery behind the school, which a group of parents has taken over and reclaimed as outdoor classroom. Now, we want to get the kids using it on a regular basis. Some schools teach up to 80% of lessons outdoors. We'll start modest.

The job of the web is to sow inspirations online that can be taken offline by the teachers into the Greenspace.

So: video, searchable resources, community and support....

I'd wondered about a googlesite simply because it's so simple to get every person in the school and community adding stuff to it. But the search is poor so you have to construct an elaborate hierachy of content to get navigation to the right pages. Sure, that conflicts with an anarchic site. But the lack of a webmaster authority brings benefits too.

Maybe it's not a site but a wiki, anyway ?

This video by Michael Welsch at digital anthropology got me thinking that perhaps it doesnt' matter so long as the tagging and bookmarking are powerful...

Colours of the Past

This kodachrome from summer 1978 came to me from the friend third on the left. The visit of our French Exchange students, and another family (Davis) to our home in Beeston, Nottingham. The table, made of sicilian tiles, is still my dinner table in London. The colours have such a 70s emotion ! I still have the silver teapot (bottom centreleft) and indeed it makes my tea most mornings.

Online kids games what a mess

Looking into a selection of best-in-class interactive websites for target age group 5-6.

What a disaster.

First, the lack of any discriminating and up to date sifted selection. All the SERP returns claiming to connnect you to the best, are ancient rubbish, and they connect you to ancient rubbish or to really unsuitable adult gaming sites.

Then, the pedagogy (when you do find something). So much of it unclear to follow, ambiguous, requiring literacy skills the age group doesn't possess. And geared to making the PC experience repeat or mimic a classroom experience. Don't these guys get it, that we try to sit our kids down to the internet as something different to whole class learning ?

Here's one that's half decent and oriented to making the experience fun:

Victor is a French site, with an English version, where the experience of being online is a pleasure of intuitive, involving celebration of interactivity. Flash based.

The BBC offer is a nightmare by contrast. Try Ceebeebies Little Animals Activity Centre. You can't even get there until you download the latest shockwave (which wants to bundle Norton antivirus "free" pop-up to spoil the rest of your life). And what little you can glean from the "help" shows you this is just another version of teacher knows best - not the message of internet, surely ?

You would aim to sit down with your kid and give them a positive and clear experience, showing that time online can be fun and refreshing... and you would end up pushing a fence-post into your screen with frustration.

Banned: McDonalds and YouTube

Two things banned here in Tunisia, flip sides of a controlled state.

I can live without McDonalds. I think Tunisians can survive too. I want to congratulate them. Ostensible reason is failure to source ingredients locally but I bet its a simple whack of demagogy.

YouTube is harder. Not because I use it every day. But it means I am cut out of a main channel of expression. People do create useful things on that channel, and it takes away from the full set of applications I need for research. Harder also for people to be aware of what the lack of it means and to evaluate how much they are short-changed.

Would I ever employ, for a creative online task, a team based in Tunisia if they had no access to one of the web's major phenonmena ? No.