It kicked off in the dogme yahoo!group. A long time member said "anything 'online' has absolutely nothing to do with the materials-free ethos which is Dogme."
Now, I've heard this argument so often before that this time I couldn't even be bothered with the illogical bias against technology as every single other generation has been frightened of changes too... didn't stop them from coming though... (yawn)
at the end of the day...
some people in the world have access to computers and some people don't (yeah, and... are we expected to feel so sad for them that we should not move with the times but wait patiently for them to catch up or do we just get on with it - I mean go work for or donate money to a charity if the social conscience itches I say, that would be heaps more effective), because let's face it, in a few years, just like Coca Cola, most people will have a computer* just down the road or maybe even on their mobile phone...
some teachers use computers in their classroom
and
some teachers don't
(yawn!)...
I mean why bother pretending that life as we know it hasn't changed., draaaassssttttiiiicccalllllly in the last ten years, five years, three years...
personally, it's become so completely normalized in my own teaching practices that I could hardly give a hoot whether or not another teacher finds this a good thing or not. I don't make value judgments of those who're still use whiteboards instead of laptops or IWBs - in fact blackboards are very much still around in some German community colleges (along with the beamer on the wall) and chalk, well chalk is still a staple in any local stationers.
at the end of the day...
some people in the world have access to computers and some people don't (yeah, and... are we expected to feel so sad for them that we should not move with the times but wait patiently for them to catch up or do we just get on with it - I mean go work for or donate money to a charity if the social conscience itches I say, that would be heaps more effective), because let's face it, in a few years, just like Coca Cola, most people will have a computer* just down the road or maybe even on their mobile phone...
some teachers use computers in their classroom
and
some teachers don't
(yawn!)...
I mean why bother pretending that life as we know it hasn't changed., draaaassssttttiiiicccalllllly in the last ten years, five years, three years...
personally, it's become so completely normalized in my own teaching practices that I could hardly give a hoot whether or not another teacher finds this a good thing or not. I don't make value judgments of those who're still use whiteboards instead of laptops or IWBs - in fact blackboards are very much still around in some German community colleges (along with the beamer on the wall) and chalk, well chalk is still a staple in any local stationers.
I like computers.
(Your turn to yawn!)
I find them useful and supportive and they happen to suit my approach to teaching and those of lots of others but so what?
After all, my favorite chocolate is made of 80% cocoa beans, comes from Ecuador and has a cherry chili flavored nougat center. Does it matter than many other people would rather eat a flavored milk product which only smiled at a cocoa bean for a micro-second before it was drowned in a vat of sugar?
Not a jot, it doesn't.
(Your turn to yawn!)
I find them useful and supportive and they happen to suit my approach to teaching and those of lots of others but so what?
After all, my favorite chocolate is made of 80% cocoa beans, comes from Ecuador and has a cherry chili flavored nougat center. Does it matter than many other people would rather eat a flavored milk product which only smiled at a cocoa bean for a micro-second before it was drowned in a vat of sugar?
Not a jot, it doesn't.
Anyway, I didn't start this article to talk about chocolate or have a dig at some guy who thinks that the computer is the end of civilization, but instead to compare Coca-Cola to Dogme.
Dear Scott and Luke, forgive me...
Regular Coke = 139 calories in a 33cl bottle.
Coke Light = 1.3 calories
Coke Zero = 0 calories.
The calories, while negligible, count.
Materials Lite
is not
Materials Zero.
The reason why we churn out students after 8 years of language lessons in English, still not speaking English, is because in class they're loaded up with a whole bunch of stuff they don't need and not given enough chance to express themselves about what they do need.
It's not the students.
Nope.
It's not the students.
It might, oooooh, dangerous territory, not be, indeed, just the book's fault, in part it might be the teacher's too. Thing is, Meddings and Thornbury even included a section in Teaching Unplugged on working with coursebooks and I've heard many a teacher say they see parallels in dogme to many a methodology and of course, Thornbury did acquiesce, somewhat, at SEETA last year on the issues of Dogme2.0.
If a teacher is personalizing a text to extract the students own thoughts on it, creating an environment of communication, enabling the emergence of new language and then scaffolding this process, then heck, the use of the book doesn't matter, what matters is it's been used lightly to go deeply...
see, the crux of the issue, the matter, the philosophy, the dogma, once the gold foil wrapper has been unwrapped and all that is that
Dogme
is
not
a
methodology,
it's
an
approach.
It's the how you teach, not the what or the with what you teach.
It's keeping the classroom all about the participants within.
Useful links related to this posting:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/top25.htm
Best,
Karenne
image credit, by Lvklock on wikimedia commons
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