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First, face-to-face conversation is a dynamic interaction between two people. Talking is a kind of turn-taking, and turn-taking is a rhythm that organizes how and when things unfold. When people talk, they modify their postures and tempos so that they correspond. (There is fascinating research on this sort of "coordination dynamics" by, among others, J.A. Scott Kelso and colleagues.) And moreover, they tend jointly to pay attention to what is going on around them. One upshot of this is that when you are talking with someone, you actually experience that they are listening. Talking, in this sense, is like dancing. You can tell whether someone is dancing with you or whether they have detached and lost interest.
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It is often very difficult to establish this sort dynamic engagement or coupling to someone over a cell phone. The connection is often just not good enough for that. One has the experience of speaking, but one lacks the corresponding experience of being heard. You literally lack the feedback — the coordinated breathing, the modulations of tones of voice, etc — that signals the other’s focus on you. And so you shout.
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When a cell-phone connection is excellent, you and your remote partner to start up a dance together. But crucially, you dance to music that only you and your partner hear. That is, you succeed in establishing the kind of dynamic integration and entrainment that is typical of face-to-face conversation. And that has the effect of transporting you right out of your physical environment into one that you share with your conversation partner. And this in turn has the effect of guaranteeing that your tone of voice and volume will be inappropriate for your actual physical conditions
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This use of language to signal presence is important. In particular, it sheds light on the transformations that are occurring as new technological practices such as cell phone use and social networking sites, etc, get embedded in our lives.
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Anthropologists looking at the matter were surprised to discover that the kids rarely send informative or detailed messages. As a general rule, they are not telling each other anything. Rather, they are just letting each other know that they are “there,” that they are online, in reach. Texting for the kids is a way of “pinging” each other. They bounce pings back and forth and so signal their presence for each other.
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Barbara Lindsey on 23 Oct 10

This is especially for Carsten!

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">This is especially for Carsten!</div>

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Schools starting to allow use of digital devices - 0 views

www.azcentral.com/...llphones-school-classroom.html schools mobile digital

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 26 Oct 10 - No Cached

"We want them to start modeling what they're going to see when they get out of here," said Lee, who envisions someday replacing students' print planners with online calendars. Most of all, he wants to cultivate what he calls good digital citizenship.
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Drawing inspiration from fake Twitter accounts that parody celebrities or historical figures, Haines has had his students tweet as characters from George Orwell's "Animal Farm."
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There is little data on how many school districts across the country have policies allowing the use of cellphones and other digital devices in class. A 2009 U.S. Department of Education survey shows only 4 percent of public-school teachers say a handheld device is available in the classroom every day.
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"Everybody in the technology end of schools are talking about not so much loosening the reins as opening the opportunities for students," she said. "That's the world they live in - not in a classroom, in rows, with books in front of them."
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"All the conversation, even at the grad-school level, is 'Put away your phones,' " said Sree Sreenivasan, a professor of digital media at Columbia University. "If I was a teacher, and as a parent, I would be concerned. Forty kids, all pulling out their cellphones - that's a total recipe for disaster."
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"If you stopped and waited for every unknown to be solved, you'd never get anything done," he said.
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"If a student is cheating, it's the same punishment as if they were using handwritten notes to cheat. If a student is using a cellphone to make threats, it's the same punishment as if they were making verbal threats," Ross said. "Cellphones didn't invent any of (those) things."
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forcing students to pretend their phones don't exist when they enter school creates an "unrealistic environment" for children.
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Langwitches Blog » Christopher Columbus Creates 21st Century Explorers - 0 views

langwitches.org/...creates-21st-century-explorers tolisano socialstudies Columbus skype beyondpowerpoint

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 26 Oct 10 - No Cached

I would love to have my students in China join in the discussion about Christopher Columbus.  They would like to share with your students the story of the great Chinese admiral, Zheng He (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He), and his exploration of the world 50 years before Columbus set sail. My students are studying US history this semester, and we are exploring the topic of the “Columbian exchange;” how the the early explorations brought plants, animals, and diseases around the world for the first time.
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Although Christopher Columbus day as come and gone and the 5th graders unit on the historical figure has (officially) ended, we will continue to make connections to expand our horizons and learn from different perspectives.
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As a class we analyzed the responses of the survey in the spreadsheet, although I received nightly updates via email from excited students as the numbers of participants climbed steadily.
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Then came the moment when the class formulated questions to be used in a survey asking others to share their thoughts, ideas and knowledge about Christopher Columbus. The survey was then embedded on the classroom blog. I tweeted and blogged about their survey and asked my network to please take the time to answer their questions.
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Education Week: Science Grows on Acquiring New Language - 0 views

www.edweek.org/...09window_ep.h30.html language learning brain research

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 26 Oct 10 - No Cached

For example, when babies born to native-English-speaking parents played three times a week during that window with a native-Mandarin-speaking tutor, at 12 months, they had progressed in their ability to recognize both English and Mandarin sounds, rather than starting to retrench in the non-native language. By contrast, children exposed only to audio or video recordings of native speakers showed no change in their language trajectory. Brain-imaging of the same children backed up the results of test-based measures of language specialization.
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The research may not immediately translate into a new language arts curriculum, but it has already deepened the evidence for something most educators believe instinctively: Social engagement, particularly with speakers of multiple languages, is critical to language learning.
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“The key to that series of studies is exposure and live interactions with native speakers,” Ms. Lebedeva said. “The interactions need to be naturalistic: eye contact, gestures, exaggerated phonemes.”
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“Human brains are wired to learn best in social interactions, whether that learning is about language or problem-solving or emotion,” Ms. Lebedeva said, “but language is such a ubiquitous human behavior that studying it gives us an example of how more general learning takes place.”
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at the science-oriented Ultimate Block Party held in New York City this month, children of different backgrounds played games in which they were required to sort toys either by shape or color, based on a rule indicated by changing flashcards. A child sorting blue and yellow ducks and trucks by shape, say, might suddenly have to switch to sorting them by color. The field games exemplified research findings that bilingual children have greater cognitive flexibility than monolingual children. That is, they can adapt better than monolingual children to changes in rules—What criteria do I use to sort?—and close out mental distractions—It doesn’t matter that some blue items are ducks and some are trucks.
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Barbara Lindsey on 26 Oct 10

researchers long thought the window for learning a new language shrinks rapidly after age 7 and closes almost entirely after puberty. Yet interdisciplinary research conducted over the past five years at the University of Washington, Pennsylvania State University, and other colleges suggest that the time frame may be more flexible than first thought and that students who learn additional languages become more adaptable in other types of learning, too.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">researchers long thought the window for learning a new language shrinks rapidly after age 7 and closes almost entirely after puberty. Yet interdisciplinary research conducted over the past five years at the University of Washington, Pennsylvania State University, and other colleges suggest that the time frame may be more flexible than first thought and that students who learn additional languages become more adaptable in other types of learning, too.</div>

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YouTube - lifeinaday's Channel - 0 views

www.youtube.com/lifeinaday video onedayonearth annotated

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 26 Oct 10 - Cached

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Tweeting the terror: How social media reacted to Mumbai - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html twitter Mumbai tweeting

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 27 Oct 10 - Cached

One tweet from "Dupree" appeared to be coming from inside one of the hotels: "Mumbai terrorists are asking hotel reception for rooms of American citizens and holding them hostage on one floor." A group of Mumbai-based bloggers turned their Metroblog into a news wire service, while the blog MumbaiHelp offered to help users get through to their family and friends in the city, or to get information about them, and has had a number of successes. Flickr also proved a useful source of haunting images chronicling the aftermath of the attacks. Journalist Vinukumar Ranganathan's stream of photos were published by CNN and other major broadcasters. iReport.com: Are you there? Share your photos, videos and stories A Google Map showing the key locations and buildings with links to news stories and eyewitness accounts, and CNN's iReporters flooded the site with their videos and images of the terror attacks.
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However, as is the case with such widespread dissemination of information, a vast number of the posts on Twitter amounted to unsubstantiated rumors and wild inaccuracies. For example, a rumor that the Indian government was asking tweeters to stop live updates to avoid compromising its security efforts was published and republished on the site.
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As blogger Tim Mallon put it, "I started to see and (sic) ugly side to Twitter, far from being a crowd-sourced version of the news it was actually an incoherent, rumour-fueled mob operating in a mad echo chamber of tweets, re-tweets and re-re-tweets.
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What is clear that although Twitter remains a useful tool for mobilizing efforts and gaining eyewitness accounts during a disaster, the sourcing of most of the news cannot be trusted. A quick trawl through the enormous numbers of tweets showed that most were sourced from mainstream media. Someone tweets a news headline, their friends see it and retweet, prompting an endless circle of recycled information
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Barbara Lindsey on 27 Oct 10

Neha Viswanathan, a former regional editor for Southeast Asia and a volunteer at Global Voices, told CNN, "Even before I actually heard of it on the news I saw stuff about this on Twitter.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Neha Viswanathan, a former regional editor for Southeast Asia and a volunteer at Global Voices, told CNN, "Even before I actually heard of it on the news I saw stuff about this on Twitter.</div>

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In Defense of Open, Online Communication in Education | U Tech Tips - 0 views

www.utechtips.com/...ine-communication-in-education onlineprivacy rights safety digitalfootprint

shared by Barbara Lindsey on 28 Oct 10 - No Cached

I suggested that perhaps his daughter should not leave her full name when commenting on my blog, and that I would make this suggestion to all my students so as to protect those who wished to remain anonymous.
- Barbara Lindsey on 03 Dec 10
  
  It seems that Jason Welker hadn't discussed this with his students prior to this.
  
  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">It seems that Jason Welker hadn't discussed this with his students prior to this.</div>
  
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If, in your personal view, these ethics interfere with your own child’s learning, and reduce the likelihood that she will achieve future academic or professional successes, then I would encourage you to engage her in conversations about economics in your own preferred manner and direct her to online or print media that you think will better enhance her understanding of the subject yet still allow her to meet the requirements of my course without having to participate in the public discussions and debates occurring between students and teachers around the world on my blog.
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At the beginning of the year, we talked about the privacy issues resulting from name-identified and web-searchable articles from ZIS students and class work on your website. By when do you think you will have past, present and future contributions annonymized?
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The father’s wish was that I would require all those who participate in discussions online to do so anonymously.
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The most I can do is encourage my students to respond to posts using only their first name or even initials, and more importantly, to post responsible and thoughtful comments relating to the economic topics the blog discusses.
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To the contrary, in my years of using the blog and other online media, I can point to several examples of students who were uncomfortable or shy about participating in face to face discussions with their peers in the the traditional classroom but blossomed in online discussions and debates such as those held on my blog, expressing themselves much more freely and openly in online discussion than they were ever capable of through traditional, classroom based discussions.
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By participating in public discussion about the subject, my students have improved not only their understanding of the economic concepts I teach them, but have also strengthened their ability to critically evaluate economic topics and to engage in a broader discussion about the subject than they would have ever been able to achieve if these conversations were confined to a brick and mortar classroom of 16 students and one teacher.
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My blog presents a forum through which my students, myself, other Economics teachers and their students, and anyone else interested in Economics can come together to learn about how our subject relates to what’s going on in the real world, but more importantly to engage in discussion and debate with one another over the issues our subject focuses on.
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