Blogging Across the Curriculum ... continued :: Blog

http://knowmansland.com/learningpath/?p=128

The Summer Season is over :(, but EVOLVE is back to warm us up with hot topics!!!
 
This Month is about PLEs. Hopefuly a lot of food for thought here - good to exercise the brain!!!  
This mionth our guest speaker is Scott Wilson from CETIS UK, who will share [...]

http://knowmansland.com/learningpath/?p=127

Have been invited by Nellie Deutsch to take part in Connecting Online 2009 - I just love this kind of initiatives, so how could I refuse it? You know me… I have just posted on our Ning site a small reflection about what Connecting means to me. I am also sharing it here, in case [...]

http://theconnectedclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/08/girls-world.html

With the Olympics in full swing it seemed obvious to turn my attention to China this time round for the podcast. Yaodong Chen, an English teacher at Guangxi University in Liuzhou and one of his students Justina, currently working as an intern, gave me an insider view of how the Chinese felt about the games when I asked them about whether they would be watching the games or not. As expected they saw the games as a tremendous opportunity for the world to learn more about China. Rightly or wrongly the Chinese feel misunderstood.

So what are the intercultural aspects of the Olympic Games? The list is long and could begin with the opening ceremony which was a lesson in world geography with the majority of the world’s countries represented, even those currently in conflict such as Afghanistan and Georgia as well as many small nations such as Andorra and Cape Verde.  Be honest, how many flags did you recognize? I was also struck by the number of parading athletes using their mobile phones mostly to take pictures but also in conversation. The formality of the occasion has obviously been very much reduced. I can feel a theme for a future show coming on! More inter-cultural aspects of the Olympic Games? Well how about, is it about individuals and teams or about countries? I know many people are simply looking at the medal tally for each country but in the Olympic Charter it does explicitly say, and I quote:

‘The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries.’

A recurring theme seems to be homework in China (children were too busy doing homework to spend time on sport). This reminded me of an interesting initiative happening in the USA at the moment called 2 million minutes.  That is the amount of time available to the typical teenager to qualify themselves for university in high school. The project is making a series of films documenting how teenagers in India, China and the USA are spending their time during this critical period and it will be no surprise to learn that the Chinese students spend a great deal of time doing homework compared to the Americans. Although you need to buy the main film there are many short clips available for free on the project website and on You Tube. One of them features Bob Compton, the executive producer, giving his answer to a typical question about how students in China feel when they get low marks. Rather than feeling that this means they are no good at the subject, the reaction is instead that they need to work harder in order to succeed.

I also talked at length with Ken Carroll, an Irish man who has been living in Shanghai for over 14 years. Ken was a contact because he is in charge of a growing number of language podcast sites including Chinese Pod, French pod, Spanish Pod, Italian Pod and soon also Arabic Pod. Under the banner of Praxis language the Pod approach is to produce short podcasts of the language being used in context so that Ken reckons that it shouldn't be difficult to pick a smattering of Chinese in this way. There is a lot more behind the Pod language sites and we will return to this topic in a later podcast.

The show, inevitably, is just an impressionistic view of one of the most international events in existence.

Tags: absolutelyintercultural, podcast, China, Beijing, Olympics, Praxis Language, two million minutes,

http://theconnectedclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/08/computers.html

"....Computers are not rescuing the school from a weak curriculum, any more than putting pianos in every classroom would rescue a flawed music program. Wonderful learning can occur without computers or even paper. But once the teachers and children are enfranchised as explorers, computers, like pianos, can serve as powerful amplifiers, extending the reach and depth of the learners." Alan Kay

Computers are tools that kids must learn how to manipulate to be successful in their work-lives. I see my job as helping students make the most of each of these tools.

http://theconnectedclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/08/balance-is-important.html

Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn

As a lifelong learner, relationship and task oriented facilitator, teacher and instructor, it should come as no surprise that I would find a connection between mindfulness, falun dafa (gong), and technology. I have been reading Coming to Our Senses for a few weeks now. The process has been such a pleasure, I don't want to complete the book. I could go on reading the book indefinitely. The reason I am adding mindfulness here in this blog is that Kabat-Zinn states that we are so tied up in using technology to connect with others that we forget to connect to ourselves. Isn't it time we came to our senses to make sure technology facilitates our lives instead of draining us and keeping us from our true selves as Kabat-Zinn suggests in his book? Kabat-Zinn's sense of humour hits home as he keeps reminding us that we should also consider checking in on ourselves from time to time just to make sure we are still there.

Here is the first of five exercises from Falun Dafa (Gong):

Here is the second of five:

Her is the third of five:

Here is the fourth:

Here is the fifth and last set of falun dafa (gong) experices:

When I was at university there was no question of an internship, never mind a foreign one, unless one was a modern language student. But with increasing globalisation students are increasingly encouraged and sometimes compelled to experience at least one internship. In Europe this is facilitated by the European Union in the form of formal schemes and grants under Erasmus.

Although we have touched on internships several times in the Absolutely Intercultural podcast before, the latest show is devoted completely to the topic and looks at it from many different angles. There is an interview with the person who facilitates incoming students at the Remagen campus of Fachhochschule, Koblenz as well as an interview with the person who arranges outgoing students. There is also a chat with one of the students at Remagen, Carsten Ritterath,  to examine his reasons for trying an internship. Language learning is not top of the list of priorities and I was interested to learn that for Germans, learning Danish is not such a challenge. Another surprise was to hear Carsten say that he had not until now been away from home for more than two or three weeks and that he was looking forward to the experience of living in a metropolis as a change from the small towns he has lived in to date. 

There is no guarantee however that if I were starting my degree studies in Britain right now that I would be touched by much of this since British students remain those least likely to take up these internship offers.

http://theconnectedclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/08/here-we-go-again.html

Free Rice - a vocabulary game that donates rice through the UN World Food Program to help end hunger
Aid to Children - another vocab game
Free Poverty - geography game. See how many cups of water you can donate by testing your knowledge about the world. Each correct answer means they will be donating 10 cups on your behalf.
Free Corn - the more you visit, the more you give . . .

http://knowmansland.com/learningpath/?p=126

Leigh, this is a very hard question to answer…!!!!!
I thought this was going to be a easy, relaxing course…after all it’s summer time! Just kidding. Although this was my immediate inner-response.
Defining online communities is not as easy as it may seem. Despite all the theoretical background, how do you define, [...]