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This week I had the honor to make a presentation at ELI in San Antonio with 4 remarkable women: Leslie Madsen-Brooks, Laura Blankenship, Barbara Ganley and Martha Burtis…”The Fear 2.0 Dream Team Bloghers” as Brian Lamb reportedly referred to us later in the week.

Our topic was Fear…the fear that we as educators, technologists, individuals … feel when we explore and use new social software tools in our teaching and learning. It is also about the barricades that our institutions (rightly or wrongly) create as a way to “protect” us from those nefarious evil things “out there.” It is about our institutions keeping an external facing façade that masks any of that messy learning that might be going on in the inside. It is about disruption to the old tried and true cycles…and then repair.

Our intended outcome was to move the group BEYOND fear. To stop being paralyzed and moving through it. As BG so emphatically said as she framed the “charge” for our audience, what are the tools we need to help ourselves move through the forest of fear? Can we collectively collaborate and come up with solutions, suggestions?

The presentation was well received. Perhaps it was because we encouraged our audience to break into small groups and collaborate. Or maybe it was the sticky notes. (yay for sticky notes) Maybe it was because we did not use powerpoint. I dunno. Anyway, we seemed to have hit on something because we encouraged people to think of solutions vs spending time wallowing in despair.

Here is a link to the presentations (our digidramas). Leslie’s is a Voicethread video and we hope people will register for Voicethread and leave a comment on her video. Please leave comments there and/or on the Fear 2.0 blog too.

Our Fear 2.0 presentations.

Podcasts, keynotes, and other information about the conference can be found here

For a grand description of what the ELI is like, please see Laura’s post here

For a really interesting post on what it was like to “attend” the conference vicariously via Twitter, please read Jim Groom’s post here

THIS JUST IN! Thanks to Martha for finding this little gem (also tagged elifear08, hmmm) on YouTube

[cross-posted on techotuesday]

After two days of Office2007 training, I’ve a few pieces of info that might be of interest to language folks:

• Publish Directly to Blog
  This is pretty cool: if you don’t like your blog’s online post editor, or frequently need to blog when no intartubes are available, Word can automagically take content you’ve created in a document and publish it to your blog. It works with Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, and any other blogging system that can accept posts via Atom or MetaWebLog APIs; it even stores passwords for those of us with differently-abled memory regions. Surprisingly enough, the formatting is preserved with fair accuracy (standard bolds and italics, in addition to ordered and unordered lists, transfer properly), and Word even uploads images directly to your blog or to a separate server. In theory it should work with .mp3s as well, but don’t quote me on that.
• Auto-Recognition of Language Keyboards
  I’m not sure if this is true of older versions of Office or not, but if you have certain alternate software keyboards enabled, Office will automatically make certain features available to you. For example: if Word sees a Japanese keyboard installed, it will give you the option to insert pre-loaded Japanese greetings and salutations into documents. It doesn’t provide any translations for said greetings, so user beware … but I’ll give Microsoft brownie points for trying to be helpful.
• Proofing Tools
  The plain vanilla installation of Office 2007 now includes French and Spanish proofing tools by default, no six-CD package necessary. For those of you who write in any other languages, you still have to purchase the proofing tools separately. Institutions still have the option to buy all the proofing tools in one shot on DVD - welcome to the 21st century - but individuals who may only need one or two languages, or who aren’t covered by a volume license, can now purchase individual language packs directly from the Microsoft website for $25USD.
• Translated UI and Help Docs
  Office2003’s Proofing Tools CDs included spelling and grammar checkers, as well as dictionaries … with Office2007’s Multi-Language Pack (MLP) you can also choose whether you’d like to fully localize application menus, dialog boxes, error messages, and the Help system. Fantastic for helping students learn technical terminology in their target language; also helpful for native speakers of foreign languages (TAs?) who may not have a strong English technical vocabulary.
• Community Glossary Project
  Speaking of vocabulary … for those language communities that lack technical terminology, Microsoft’s Linguistic Partnership Project is sponsoring a Community Glossary where users from around the world can collect and define terms for themselves. Unfortunately, this only exists for languages not included by the MLP, except Thai and Vietnamese.

Of course there’s a lot more to know about Office2007, including a brand-new Apple-esque menu structure in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint called the Office Ribbon (here’s a demo video if you want a quick look). And I haven’t yet gotten my hands on Office2008 for Mac, which ironically enough retains the old 2003/2004 menu structure. Anybody using either new version of Office on a regular basis? I’d be interested to hear what y’all have to say!

I’m an English Teacher. I teach English to adults in Marseille, in the south of France.
I work with small groups of students, some of whom would like to learn English in order to find a job. English is necessary for jobs in tourism, education and international trade, like Import/Export.

During the day, I prepare lessons by doing research on the internet and using the coursebooks in the centre's library. I prefer doing communication activities rather than grammar.

I sometimes have to attend meetings, which are about planning the courses and discussing new contracts. I have been on training courses in Paris. I take the train early in the morning and stay in a hotel.

I am also an examiner for the diplôme de compétences en langues. I interview candidates and assess them on their linguistic abilities and how they accomplished their tasks.

What's your job? Send me your job description in English and I will correct it before publishing it on my site!

The session reported in the previous post was really great. Shortly afterwards I reported to Webheads something like this (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/17653):

I said, in so many words: Starting on a good note, we had an excellent session in Ustream. It was set up and running by Kim Cofino who is to be Jen Wagner's guest on Women of Web 2.0 this week. She'll be worth listening to. She has twittered me recordings of the session here:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/TKRcHIoaxJPcdL2rwLIJW5.VBYK3cgTY (view in popup
if any problem), and http://www.flickr.com/photos/superkimbo/sets/72157603729759649/

Doug Symington was kind enough, not to mention being on the ball enough, to webcast the event, and we're hoping to enlist him for a similar favor on Jan 18.

Now, for the downside, you never know what you'll encounter when you go on these gigs at schools in strange places, in this case in a foreign country. We were asked to prepare presentations, or at least to be ready to address the issue of reading in the context of the school we were visiting, and we thought we were promised wireless. That didn't seem to have been registered beforehand, but no problem, we were walked up to the IP dept where someone dutifully typed in our fixed IP addresses. We returned downstairs and prepared to set up our session. I had the usual ambitious mix of online venues planned and was trying to reach Skype, when someone noticed my browser swimming and said, Skype? You won't be able to skype here, that's locked down. Meanwhile edtechtalk.com chat room was not getting anywhere, Java chat apparently locked down too.

I tried Elluminate. There are three proxies to configure, your browser, Elluminate itself, and java. I hit all three in succession. My computer is slow, so this took some time. Over the course of an hour of trying different browsers, and rebooting the computer, I realized that this kind of traffic was also blocked on the ports we were given to use. Meanwhile, the Ustream had started and our session had begun.

I couldn't reach Elluminate as promised but talking in Ustream I directed traffic to my slide show at
http://www.slideshare.net/vances/reading-and-the-internet-228977/. Doug Symington, via the Twitter and Skype and Worldbridges networks of Kim and Justin, our tech-hosts, had smoothly twigged to our change of plans and was webcasting the event as if we had planned it that way, despite my inability to reach him in our pre-arranged venues. So cool the way the network works.

But that is the reality of the networked world as it is, and the experience got us all reflecting on the state of learning in the online environments we find presently. Someone asked on the futureoflearning listserv how we found the facilities at ISB and I replied that it was impressively endowed with technology, but we had trouble with the firewalls. Kim responded that we would have had any kind of connectivity we wanted had we requested what we needed in advance, but I hadn't intended my comments to reflect on her or her school. So I dashed off an email that I thought was worth blogging, and here it is.


I didn't mean to complain about anyone or facilities or turnout at what has been an incredible experience. I was simply characterizing the nature of the beast. There is so much we can do through systems we know and control ourselves, but turning up on site with a laptop and trying to connect in the familiar ways is never going to work they way you expect unless you have a clear and robust connection to the Internet, and that doesn't happen in many schools anywhere. So connectivity problems are to be expected and I'm always impressed that things work so well.

Kim and her colleagues were switched on and accommodating. I had arranged for a webcast but our webcaster, Doug Symington in Vancouver, was already in the Ustream that they had set up for us at ISB so it was but a hiccup on my part to try (and fail) to reach him through Skype etc but discover he was already there and streaming through this network of which Kim and Justin were already a part.

Anyone turning up almost on spec to attempt complex Internet logistics through a firewall is going to be thrown off stride a notch, but the wonder of it all is that it connects and works. Hopefully the FUTURE of networked learning will entail more of a superhighway rather than this potholed road we sometimes find ourselves bumping along on, but we are on the road, and it's great to meet and have opportunities to work productively with its denizens along the way.

We had a similar interesting experience with the accommodating Thai teachers in Khorat. Our program of blogging etc required that they have Google accts but the Google spam guards attempted to thwart us when they detected multiple attempts from the same computers to start Gmail accounts, so almost half the teachers were not able to proceed through the gatekeepers at Google's website. What to do? The IT dept suggested that we reconfigure proxy2 to proxy3 etc, and lo and behold all these teachers were going into browser settings and figuring it out. It was a hiccup but in the end another hurdle smilingly overcome.

I found Elluminate blocked from Khorat (and also my own Homestead site with the handout I'd prepared for the workshop) but Adobe interactive presentation software worked (flash memory to the rescue on the latter issue) and I was able to connect with Alex who'd announced his Adobe session in the wiki. BUT 20 min into that my LAN password expired and I was thrown out of there. It was my excuse to go to lunch, but again, I don't wish to appear to be complaining about these techno challenges. The wonder of it is that we put people in touch around the world despite significant challenges.

Things can't improve until we describe the pitfalls. The wonderful thing about progressing through an environment like what we found in Thailand (and what I find in many countries I visit throughout the world) is that we have a chance to step outside our ivory towers and discover the reality on the ground that covers most of the planet, and then find means of coping with what is there. I really don't mean to be whinging about what we encounter at one site or another. My message is intended to be two-fold. One (fold?) is to acknowledge and describe the situation, the reality as it exists, and the other is to marvel at how people overcome obstacles to achieve the connectivity for which there is an overwhelming desire. By overwhelming, I mean to suggest that the movement for net neutrality is eventually going to overwhelm obstacles to it. Or at least I hope so.

I love the TV game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Do you have it your country?
It's actually great for learning English because the first few questions are really easy - if you are a native speaker. If you're not a native speaker, you might find the first five or so questions quite hard because they are often about local culture or other things that only the natives would know. Proverbs and nursery rhymes feature heavily in those early questions. I've learnt quite a lot about French life and culture by watching WWTBAM in French.

If you are a contestant on the programme, you can imagine how humiliating it would be to get the first question wrong. Well it does happen sometimes as the youtube clip below shows. I'v transcribed the introduction for you, it's good practice to understand American accents.

Notice "word whiskers" like "pretty much" and "I guess" very common in American English



Joining me now is Chase Sampson, a college junior in Nashville Tennessee, and I understand Chase that you flew in last night, you didn’t get here till three in the morning and that you havent slept a wink, huh ?

I pretty much have coffee flowing through my veins right now.

Do you really, but as a college student I think that maybe thats not so rare

Yeah I’m up pretty late mostly i’m kind of er insomniac I guess, but I’m feeling good, I’m feeling good

Good ,good! as long as you’re feeling good and you know the rules and the lifelines, and you’re ready to play , we’re gonna play.

I’m ready

OK, then let’s play !

This year’s Macworld keynote left me giddy with excitement about Apple’s new offerings. But I’m not talking about the MacBook Air … I’m talking about the AppleTV.

Yes yes, I know - the AppleTV has been around for quite awhile now, I’ve already posted about it once, and anyway all Apple really gave us was a (free!) software update and more storage space. But that’s the brilliant part! The AppleTV was meant to be simple … to do one thing (give me access to iTunes via my TV) and to do it easily and well. All that was really missing was enough storage space so that I could be lazy and sync my entire iTunes collection to my AppleTV, instead of going through and choosing 40GB of my most favoritest media.

For educational / informational / instructional technologists, who often need to provide students and faculty access to a vast array of digital materials on a daily basis, this isn’t a matter of laziness. Our language a/v files don’t take up a ton of space on our CMS because we’re lazy or disorganized. It’s because each textbook has its own ancilliary materials, and then there’s the student video projects going back ten semesters, and SCOLA videos, and high-res photos from a Russian Culture course, and hundreds of podcasts, and, and, and - you get the idea. It’s not like we can shove this stuff in storage; believe it or not, it gets USED. And it can’t be gone for more than a week before someone’s darkening my doorway asking where did that Russian student video about a squirrel from 2001 go … ? Besides, disk space is CHEAP. Why should I have to pick and choose?

So, at first glance, the AppleTV seems like a shoo-in. But I do have some concerns:

• Network access:
  The AppleTV has a built-in wireless card, and we have full wireless coverage in our lab, but it can be flaky (as with any wireless network) depending on line-of-sight, number of concurrent users, and even that day’s foliage density. (I wish I were kidding.) It also has a built-in ethernet port, but then I’m slave to the location of live ethernet ports relative to the location of the TV or projector.
• Security:
  I’m not too concerned about software security; the AppleTV’s parental controls should be enough to prevent students from downloading first-run movies on the College’s dime. I’m more concerned about hardware security. I don’t see a spot for a laptop-esque lockdown cable, and how in the world am I going to keep track of that tiny Apple Remote, especially in an A/V equipped classroom?
• Portability:
  Our faculty -love- being able to run up to our lab five minutes before class, grab a movie from our collection, and show a clip of it to their students. Although having an AppleTV with said film accessible in the classroom would save them a trip to our center, I wonder if the faculty would have full access to DVD menus (including chapter selection, language & subtitle selection, etc).
• Copyright & Fair Use:
  This is my biggest concern. It’s clear that making a copy of something for archival purposes is permissible under copyright law. But as I understand it, it’s not permissible to change the format of something (converting a video from PAL to NTSC, for example). So, if I were to rip a DVD to a Quicktime file, put the DVD in storage, and “check out” the .mov out to students via an AppleTV - am I breaking copyright? What happens if I sync multiple AppleTVs with one iTunes library? Now I’ve got multiple digital copies of a movie floating around, and only one license to cover them all. Can I tell iTunes to only allow one AppleTV access to a file at a time?

Anybody else - concerns, questions, comments?

You know, I like teaching with music. At least we have a good time and I'm sure this way students learn something. I have prepared a new song for this Friday and I think most of the students have enjoyed it; they still have to watch the video and answer the questions for next Monday (Lucia Negredo a colleague from Barcelona sent me this video exercise before Christmas). They were a bit surprised that I chose this song because it's disco music, but why shouldn't I love disco music. I love all kind of music. The message in the song is also "food for thinking" not the typical love song.
As usual, you can see the exercises on my website http://www.isabelperez.com/songs/worldholdon.htm. Just in case you think it can be good for you, too.

The other two songs we have done until now this year are Relax, Take it easy by Mika, and Umbrella by Rihanna. We also did Lemon tree, though it's already an old song.

Enjoy the song and the weekend

I'm currently in Caracas, Venezuela, where I'm the facilitator of this seminar: Web 2.0 for EFL Teachers: Podcasts, Blogs, Wikis, Virtual Worlds and Digital Games. The seminar has been organised by the British Council & AVEALMEC, a relatively new CALL Association for teachers in Venezuela.

We have started a ning and over 40 people have joined, although only 27 of these people will be at the f2f seminar. Today, day 1, we'll be looking at social software, blogging, RSS & tagging, and some of the teachers will be presenting a few of their blogging projects they have been involved in.

It's great to see so much enthusiasm and expertise here in Venezuela and can't wait to get to know everyone better and find out what they have been doing.

Later this month will be the second in a monthly series of educational talks, visits and other events to be held at the island of Edunation III in Second Life

Sunday January 27th
12.30 Second Life Time (20:30 UTC, 21:30 CET)

Teen Grid Angst

In this session,I'll be talking about the differences between running educational projects on the Teen and Main Grids of Second Life and will be sharing my experience so far of being involved in setting up a three-island virtual self-access centre for language learners

I'll be looking mainly at the project that I've been involved with for the British Council, which recently opened in beta on the Teen Grid. We have just started running a trial with EFL students and I should be ready to report on the first impressions and have their feedback for this session.

More Info here:
http://www.theconsultants-e.com/edunation/educationedunation.asp

I had the good opportunity this January 16-19 (2008) to take part in an interesting peripatetic unconference, the second annual run of the TALO-sponsored Future of Learning in a Networked World http://flnw.wikispaces.com/, a traveling road show that got under way about that time in Bangkok, Thailand.

I happened to have this week with no students and with nothing more worthy to do, and so I flew to Thailand at my own expense to engage in an act of edu-tourism, and share with many educators and students in that country whatever expertise I have in return for 'gala' evening meals and other gestures of good-will.

On Jan 16 we were at the International School of Bangkok, an incredibly well resourced educational setting where we met Kim Colino http://www.kimandalex.com/kimabout.html and Justin Medved http://medagogy.edublogs.org/. Kim is going to appear on Women of Web 2.0 this Wednesday January 22, and when she does I'll put the link to the podcast here (at the moment their archive reaches up to Jan 8, but Kim's chat will likely be linked from here: http://www.womenofweb2.com/weeklychats.htm).

Some of the artifacts we produced from this session were:

• Slides of my presentation on Reading on the Internet: http://www.slideshare.net/vances/reading-and-the-internet-228977/
  
• The Ustream.tv recording made during the session (2 hours: first hour, a great conversation, then my presentation): http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/TKRcHIoaxJPcdL2rwLIJW5.VBYK3cgTY
  
• Pictures from this event: http://www.flickr.com/photos/superkimbo/2197528680/in/set-72157603729759649/
  
• The wiki we made on going to Suranee http://rong-rien.wikispaces.com/

Also, there was at least one blog posting on the session at http://ddraig-goch.blogspot.com/2008/01/networks-enable-discussion.html. This link will create a 'trackback' to Mr. Harrison's post, assuming that he has the feature turned on. A trackback is where his blog informs him each time that someone else in the blogosphere links to one of his posts (he'll see links to this post, and any others linking to him). The trackbacks generally appear beneath a blog post under the heading: Links to this post. When someone references this post with a link to it, for example, their blog pings mine, and the link where the ping originated is appended to my blog.

I used this post to show the folks at SUT how to embed the Ustream recording here, and also how to edit the all important TAGS or "labels" for this post.

My students want to see how to do this so to show them I'm embedding the code here for my slide show</>

If any of you were wondering what my accent is like, here is clip of a famous comedian called Jasper Carrot, who like me is from Birmingham and so has a similar accent (I talk a bit posher, cause I'm a teacher!)

You will learn something about two very well-known stores in Britain, Argos and Woolworths, and what people in the regions think of London.

By the way, pick'n'mix is the self service sweet counter.

'innit' is an even more contracted version of 'isn't it?'

'bloke' is like 'guy' in British English

'nicked' is a slang word for 'stole' or 'stolen'

'spud' is slang for 'potato' but here is used as an insult for an Irishman (they eat a lot of potatoes in Ireland).

This afternoon, hundreds of the biggest geeks in the country gathered in San Francisco for MacWorld 2008. Although last week’s announcement of updated desktop systems pointed to Something Really Big to come, I was disappointed by what we got. Do I want a MacBook Air? Duh, of course, even though I think it would more aptly be named the MacBook Ultimate (Frisbee edition). But where’s the much-rumored Apple Tablet? (Being sold by a third-party company, apparently.) Where’s the Next Big Thing in computer design? Throw the geeks a bone, Steve!

Then I got to thinking, which as my boss can tell you is a very dangerous thing. At $300, the AppleTV was overpriced, and with only a 40GB hard drive, you had to be selective about what you chose to sync from iTunes. However, with today’s price drop (40GB @ $229 or 160GB @ $329) and addition of features (YouTube, Flickr, movie rentals, and .Mac accounts), we are seriously considering doing some AppleTV beta testing in our lab.

Before we do, I have a little research to do. Is anybody out there currently using an AppleTV at your institution and can tell us what your faculty & students think? Has anybody considered using an AppleTV, but scrapped the idea and wouldn’t mind sharing what happened? Any information would be welcomed, and of course we’ll share our findings as we move ahead. Thanks in advance!

Is it possible to comb your teeth? Personally, I brush my teeth, but comb my hair (sometimes). But I recently read an advertising e-mail (not spam, I did request it) urging me to go over the document with a "toothcomb"! Duh!

The English expression that means to examine something very closely, to look at the little details is 'to go over (something) with a fine-tooth comb', that is, a comb with fine teeth, not a comb for your teeth!

I'm not immune to these types of mistakes, so I won't do any more Mickey-taking. Just to say that while looking for examples of 'tooth-comb', I stumbled on this marvelous site by an American professor. Have a look sometime, it's got some great stuff: errors in English.

While Barbara was back and addled, I was in Oklahoma, with little to no time and less Internet access, but enough to read the post, only to have to sit and let it seethe until I could get back and react (after the dust of the new semester settled a bit).

Frankly, Tim looks like he has repackaged a tired and quite old model of learning, which has its roots in an instructional design model in which complex tasks are “reduced” (deconstructed, whatever) into simple elements. I wouldn’t even call this “learn but not master”, because this “method” actually makes the performance of complex tasks harder if not impossible. To paraphrase Grellet: the system of references, tasks and supportive information as well as the discourse indicators one relies on are often removed or at least significantly altered.

Now, Pete’s idea resonates with an idea I have come to love, which is Merriënboer’s 4C/ID model:

Practicing whole tasks based on real life competencies with an aim at integration and scaffolding (not chunking) of components. THIS is called learning a language, isn’t it?

Blogged with Flock

Tags: 4C/ID, Doug

Use crazy associations.

I have been writing quite a lot recently about the linkword method, which involves associating something memorable in your own language to something that sounds similar in the language you are learning. Somebody came up with a great list of French phrases that could be converted in into English. The list appears on a lot of 'joke' websites, but it is in fact the basis of having a great memory, not just for foreign words, but for anything else too. Here are a few examples:

French
Canaille (rogue, rascal) - can I?
ail ou radis? (garlic or radish?) - are you ready?
six tonnes de chair (six tons of flesh) - sit on the chair
guy vomit sur mon nez (guy vomits on my nose) - give me some money
oeuf corse (Corsican egg) - of course

Now the trick here is to create a funny scene in your head that will make it impossible to forget. So a French speaker would imagine a huge six-ton elephant trying to sit on a chair, because to him 'sit on the chair' sounds like 'six tons of flesh' in his language.

You can read more about linkword here

In a few weeks, I will have the pleasure and the privilege of presenting at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), with 4 other women teachers/technologists. I am honored to be a part of this extraordinary group of women, thinkers, and troublemakers (heh heh). The conference title and theme is “Connecting and Reflecting: Preparing Learners for Life 2.0″ Our topic is Fear 2.0. Here is a link to our presentation.

Fear 2.0 …you have heard of Web 2.0 (til yer ears bleed, I’m sure)… well, Fear 2.0 is a term one of us came up with (let’s blame BG) to describe the backlash that has erupted in Academia as Web 2.0 tools require teachers, administrators, sys admins and others to move further and further out of their traditional, definable, discrete, neat and tidy comfort zones and into the unknown of the collaborative, intersecting, intertwingled learning spaces that these tools provide.

Neat and tidy stress-free comfort zones and exceptional language learning environments are not always mutually inclusive. Learning a language involves, at some point in the process, a willingness to take a risk and move out of the familiar and delve into the darkness (or the lightness) of the unknown.

Alas, with the economy as it is today, not all of our students can afford to travel abroad. So, as language teachers, one of our obligations to our students is to bring as much of the real world to them…including (GASP!) putting them in touch with complete and total (native speaking) strangers with whom they need to converse or from whom they might need to information, assistance, direction.

It is one thing to sit and listen (passively) to audio CDs that correspond with the lab manual from your language textbook. It is quite another to engage (actively) in a conversation with a human being with the goal of information and knowledge sharing.

Why not just turn to the person to your left and him or her for that information? Well, of course it can be done, but here is some interesting data from my students: Time and time again they have told me that they would prefer to take those linguistic risks with people they do not know, outside of the classroom, rather than making a mistake (or worse) making a fool of themselves with a classmate, roommate, hall-mate, ex boyfriend…i.e. someone you are going to see again and with whom your language faux pas might end up taking on a whole other life.

And as was in the case of one of my students last semester, some of these chance meetings with strangers that they met in our class via Skype or via their class blogs have ended up being long term, ongoing, almost life changing conversations with people they will probably never, ever meet.

Of course some of the students are anxious about whom they might “meet” during our skypechats. Even though we found reputable, responsible folks interested in language exchanges (via sites such as Todd Bryant’s ever-wonderful Mixxer), there is of course still tension. And that tension is an exquisite example of a “teachable moment.” Please note: I don’t throw my students to the wolves, rather, before entering into these conversations with strangers I have hopefully created enough of a trusting environment w/i the classroom that they can express concerns, confusion, hopes, questions as these conversations develop and grow.

And we have seen that willingness to take chances with a stranger in another language reciprocated as well. My students have had language exchanges with native Spanish speakers about issues that the Spanish speakers would not talk about in their own language (as it was taboo) and they felt they could talk about in English. Imagine the delight and surprise of one of our Arabic classes talking with a group of university women (dressed in black abayas, only their eyes visible to the world) from a very rigid Middle Eastern country when the women suddenly started to talk excitedly, in English, about Beyoncé and pop music and other very western things as part of their language exchange.

My point is this: We need to allow our students the opportunity to struggle to understand a heavy accent, or to wrestle with all of the slang that no textbook ever taught them. They need to learn first hand that saying some words in one country without incident can cause a fracas in another. We need for them to be shocked at least once by their own ignorance of a different culture. These are all important pieces of the language acquisition puzzle. And the beautiful thing is, thanks to Web 2.0 tools, one need never leave his or her chair to engage in these meaningful activities. While it is no substitute of living in another land, it has become a productive first-step towards that Life 2.0 goal.

And so, as we prepare our students for Life 2.0, I would contend that it is unjust and unfair to insist (because we are consumed by our own fear of the unknown) that our language students use Web 2.0 technology only to communicate with people within their closed CMS communities or inside of their heavily firewalled networks.

To close our students off from the myriad of possibilities that these collaborations and connections portend, simply because we are consumed by strangerdanger, is a justification that is as irrational as the fear itself.

A while ago I suggested learning 'Moses Supposes' to practice the vowel sound 'o'. Well here is the clip of Gene Kelly and co performing it in the classic movie 'Singing in the Rain'. Enjoy!





If you want to learn it, take it slowly and increase the speed only when you have memorised it completely.

Welcome to 2008, dear readers! As you might have noticed, we’ve given the site a facelift. Call it sleek, call it sloppy, call it whatever you want … but please do tell us what you think, either by commenting or by sending us an email. We’re always looking for ways to make the site better, and any input you have would be greatly appreciated.

From us to y’all: have a happy and peaceful New Year (and be sure to eat you some Hoppin’ John)!