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Barbara Lindsey

Wade Davis on endangered cultures | Video on TED.com - 0 views

  • And I know there's some of you who say, "Well, wouldn't it be better? Wouldn't the world be a better place if we all just spoke one language?" And I say, "Great, let's make that language Yoruba. Let's make it Cantonese. Let's make it Kogi." And you'll suddenly discover what it would be like to be unable to speak your own language.
  • What's interesting is the metaphor that defines the relationship between the individual and the natural world.
  • It's not change or technology that threatens the integrity of the ethnosphere. It is power. The crude face of domination. Where ever you look around the world, you discover that these are not cultures destined to fade away. These are dynamic living peoples being driven out of existence by identifiable forces that are beyond their capacity to adapt to.
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  • You know, genocide, the physical extinction of a people is universally condemned, but ethnocide, the destruction of people's way of life, is not only not condemned, it's universally -- in many quarters -- celebrated as part of a development strategy.
  • Do we want to live in a monochromatic world of monotony or do we want to embrace a polychromatic world of diversity? Margaret Mead, the great anthropologist, said before she died that her greatest fear was that as we drifted towards this blandly amorphous generic world view not only would we see the entire range of the human imagination reduced to a more narrow modality of thought, but that we would wake from a dream one day having forgotten there were even other possibilities.
  • When these myriad cultures of the world are asked the meaning of being human, they respond with 10,000 different voices.
  • the central revelation of anthropology: that this world deserves to exist in a diverse way, that we can find a way to live in a truly multicultural pluralistic world where all of the wisdom of all peoples can contribute to our collective well-being.
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    When each of you in this room were born, there were 6,000 languages spoken on the planet. Now, a language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. A language is a flash of the human spirit. It's a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed, a thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.
Barbara Lindsey

Brains benefit from multilingualism - 0 views

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    "Learning a language strictly as a separate subject in the curriculum does not work as effectively for a broad range of young people as compared to embedding second language learning into other subjects. Thinking about numbers, for example, does figure naturally in a lot of school learning as well as in real life outside the school, which supports learning and knowing mathematics. The same may not always be true of foreign languages," Marsh argues."
Barbara Lindsey

Foreign Language Faculty in the Age of Web 2.0 (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT - 0 views

  • The iPod might have an instructional potential, but it is the educators who arrange and structure instructional events around it to make learning happen, not the instrument itself. To realize the instructional potential of technology requires a set of skills that can only be acquired through adequate instruction and practice. Just as speaking a foreign language is not a qualification to teach it, knowing how to use a technology does not mean that one knows intuitively how to use it as a teaching tool.
  • A keyword search for the word "tech%" and "computer" in the Modern Language Association (MLA) job list1 returns over 43 relevant ads out of 236 job postings (as of November 20, 2007): "familiarity with teaching-related technologies" (tenure track in Spanish, Missouri); "experience with technology in the classroom" (tenure track in French, Michigan); "ability to use technology effectively in teaching and learning" (tenure track in Japanese, South Carolina). The wording varies slightly from one ad to the next, but the message is the same: job candidates are well advised to have an answer ready when asked how they use technology in the classroom.
  • Because the field of language technology is at the crossroads of technology, instructional design, and languages, it calls for the close collaboration of experts in each area. Today, language centers are the only campus units where such a wide range of expertise can easily be found.
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  • Unfortunately, graduate students interested in becoming acquainted with relevant instructional technologies have a limited number of options.
Barbara Lindsey

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | North West Wales | Expert says txt is gr8 4 language - 0 views

  • Prof Crystal said that texting had had a bad press, and it was merely another way to use language.
  • The panic about texting and its effects on language is totally misplaced... it adds a new dimension, enriches language, gives you a new option
  • "In the past comics such as the Dandy and Beano would have had quizzes where you had to guess a sentence from letters and pictures
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  • "The only difference now is that people are using it with mobile phones."
  • "If you ask kids if they use the same style in their work they look at you as if you are mad. "This is just a story going around, a huge urban myth," he said.
  • A linguistics expert has rejected claims that texting by mobile phone is bad for language and literacy skills.
Barbara Lindsey

In search of enlightenment ...: Screencasting & language learning - 0 views

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    Great ideas for using screencasting as a way for students to practice their language skills.
Barbara Lindsey

Foreign Language Faculty in the Age of Web 2.0 (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE - 0 views

  • graduate students interested in becoming acquainted with relevant instructional technologies have a limited number of options. Few graduate programs include such training as a part of the curriculum. As a matter of fact, pedagogy itself often represents a negligible fraction of graduate program requirements. The University of Minnesota offers excellent training through its summer institutes,4 but access is an issue. Most IT departments offer training sessions on how to use the university course management system, build a web page, or create a PowerPoint presentation, but technical training is not enough.
  • Today, language centers are the only campus units where such a wide range of expertise can easily be found.
  • The role of language technologists goes beyond teaching what a blog is and how to set up a browser to display Japanese characters. It includes sorting through novel technologies, evaluating their instructional potential, researching current educational uses, and sharing findings with educators. The most promising applications available today were not designed for instructional use and do not come with an instruction manual. To use them in the classroom requires the ability to redirect their intended purpose and, more importantly, to think through possible consequences of doing so.
Barbara Lindsey

Wade Davis on the worldwide web of belief and ritual | Video on TED.com - 0 views

  • Right now, as we sit here in this room, of those 6,000 languages spoken the day that you were born, fully half aren't being taught to children. So you're living through a time when virtually half of humanity's intellectual, social and spiritual legacy is being allowed to slip away. This does not have to happen. These peoples are not failed attempts at being modern -- quaint and colorful and destined to fade away as if by natural law.
  • The myriad voices of humanity are not failed attempts at being us. They are unique answers to that fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? And there is indeed a fire burning over the earth, taking with it not only plants and animals, but the legacy of humanity's brilliance.
  • In every case, these are dynamic, living peoples being driven out of existence by identifiable forces. That's actually an optimistic observation, because it suggests that if human beings are the agents of cultural destruction, we can also be, and must be, the facilitators of cultural survival.
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    Right now, as we sit here in this room, of those 6,000 languages spoken the day that you were born, fully half aren't being taught to children. So you're living through a time when virtually half of humanity's intellectual, social and spiritual legacy is being allowed to slip away. This does not have to happen. These peoples are not failed attempts at being modern -- quaint and colorful and destined to fade away as if by natural law.
Barbara Lindsey

Language Journeys: A Kid's Tour of Latin Music through Google Maps - 0 views

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    Fantastic application of google maps for world languages.
Barbara Lindsey

B is for Body « An A-Z of ELT - 0 views

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    The role of gesture in language learning
Barbara Lindsey

AdelaideNow... School uses mobile phones as learning tool - 0 views

  • St Johns Grammar is encouraging mobiles as part of an Australian-first trial to promote the benefits of mobile technology in increasing fluency in foreign languages.
  • The Year 10 students, studying Indonesian, are given a mobile each which they use to call up an automated service that guides them through a menu. They choose from conversations about booking a hotel to a menu and are prompted to go through the details in Indonesian. Their answers are uploaded on to a website and get marked on their use of the language.
  • unique trial by the the Government's Le@rning Federation's Mobile Applications for Language Learning project.
Barbara Lindsey

The Global Dimension: Walter Payton High School | Edutopia - 0 views

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    New doors open as these students learn an international perspective reinforced by four years of language study, global video conferences, and travel abroad.
Barbara Lindsey

About » OpenLanguage Blog - 0 views

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    OpenLanguage is a mobile learning network designed to help language teachers augment their classes with best of modern web & mobile technologies while helping students study while on-the-go. Need to recognize connection with publishers and product developers.
Barbara Lindsey

ToniTheisen - home - 0 views

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    Wonderful collection of resources for language teachers.
Barbara Lindsey

ReadSpeaker webReader - 0 views

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    Reads text to speech on your web site. Free for individual blog accounts with 9 languages and 18 voices to chose from.
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