How did English become the Global Language?

One of the things I did today was comment on Scott Thornbury's blog post, O is for Ownership... and in my ramblings I talked about how sometimes ideas are out there, floating about in the greater Universe, simply lurking, waiting to be captured by he who listens and is prepared to act.  (It's that sort of day).

Those sorts of thoughts come, I guess though, from my youth when I was a NewAger and instead of being a reflective English teacher and practitioner or even a student,  I wrote NewAge articles philosophizing on the questions of one's path through life - instead of

"How do we learn?" "What is motivation?"
"How can the new technologies help us teach Speaking?' I wondered how we transformed from monkeys to... well, whatever we are now.



 
Even though it was a long, long, long, long time ago and many years have passed since those days of adventure, climbing up into volcanoes and knocking back beers while lying on Asian sandy beaches, curled up around men with long wise beards in front of dimming fires while arguing over the very nature of our beingness, the story, no matter how fantastical, of the 100th Monkey never really left me.

So today, through the rambling stroll of a streaming mind, the philosophy that we learn from those around us, consciously, subconsciously and through the trawling of multi-dimensional layered communications recorded in the shared higher consciousness, I am led to only this question:

How did English become today's one Global Language?

Okay, it's not completely, yet it surely is on the way.  By 2020, a prediction not a fact, a greater majority will speak it than those who don't, right?  It isn't the easiest language.  Nor the prettiest.  It is instead a messy code, made up of archaic irregularities, tortuous, nonsensical rules and ridiculous tongue-defying pronunciations.

So what on earth, or beyond earth, happened to set this particular meme into play?

When did the Tipping Point occur?

Who were the players, who washed the first sweet potato, who made washing it important? Who decided that English should take the place of Esperanto?  Was it life itself?  Was it a bunch of academics studying applied linguistics unraveling the codices of the brain and because they happened to be English speaking, while sharing the nature of our brains ability to learn, the onus was on English to prove the hypotheses... or was it the availability of native English speakers racing across a globe to have an adventure while earning a little cash?

Was it a curtain coming down or a wall falling down?  Was it the Almighty Dollar or Nike's abuse of children in factories? Was it Coca-cola's fault or a legion of British soldiers conquering a New World?

How did it all happen so fast?

We talk about our students' needs to learn English but somehow we don't ask how that need arose in the first place.

Does anyone have thoughts or theories?


Best,
Karenne
image credit: colobus monkey by garthimage

The Greatest Master is HE who

makes the most masters.

This post is not an attempt to gazump Fogarty's brilliant blog, the Tao of Te(a)ching even if the quote is from his guru....

and, considering how many of my posts these days are dedicated to dogme, I wouldn't want to bore anyone with more of that, even if there is one particular post in the blogosphere which is indeed annoying me - in my opinion: another attempt to justify non-student-centered classrooms.

It's also not about a completely different yet equally controversial blog post in the 'sphere... despite being rushed off my feet these days, I have one eye cocked as I vaguely watch my screen unravel an embarrassing scramble of folks killing themselves to be listed or to get their best mates listed on the  so-called "TEFL:100 the list of "influencers..." 

Ya gotta wonder. 

Ya do.

Hallo, it's 

E

L

T...  

Oh.. for heaven's sake, we're in a bubble...a micro-sized niche of education.  Get a grip - it's not Shakespeare and no one is shaking the ground, earthquake style.   Sometimes when you read through the testosterone-driven fields of our profession, you'd almost think we were writing novels, movies and competing for Oscars...

Sigh.

Arrogance is such a big subject in my mind at the moment.  

Sidebar

I talked to a dear friend over the weekend... she was telling me she got accepted to IATEFL and was pretty excited - when she told me about her proposal, I said  

What a great idea! Sometimes it's better to be a big fish in a little pond because  if you'd gone for x...  well, you could pretty much disappear in that very big pond -

and with a smirk she retorted...  

OR you'd have to become a shark.

Sometimes, 

I wonder if that's what happened to some of these old guys... 

They just had to become reef dwellers.. you know the ones I mean, the ones that can not stop talking about themselves.    I wonder if they're afraid that the current and amazing PLN of talented teachers and presenters are going to clean come and eat them up.  So silly, there's sea enough for all of us.   

But I wonder if this will wind up being us, one day - today's explorers and adventurers today - are we going to wind up in twenty or thirty years time scared out of our wits of giving up the stage to the brighter sparks?

Somehow I don't think so, though, as for the most part we have another vision - we share and we care.  And like some of my favourite folks  out there in the 'verse (Harmer, Greenall, Thornbury, Wilson) we'll join in and like them, we'll support: we'll build and we'll continue learning.

Sidebar 2

All this.. you know the Greatest Master stuff... gotta say, it was certainly something to mull over on the way home from the very best conference I've ever attended: TESOL France - Kudos Ms Cagnol - there were just so many incredibly talented presenters there and boy, what an audience!    

Active, lively, interested teachers - filled with super questions, determined to get down to the pedagogy (andragogy) behind all the flash and dash of tech.  

Engaged with the content and profession.

Except... for one old guy.  

A "master"... who hogged the stage in the evening's entertainment event.  

How much more impressed we would have been with him if instead of doing the

GeeLook@Mi 

all night, 

instead,

he'd allowed the real talent to shine.

How much more impressed with him we would all have been if he'd help create masters...

By the way, did I ever tell you I've swum with sharks?  

Twice, actually, once by accident...  months and months later I was sitting in a pub telling some Aussies that I had loved swimming in Nara Inlet at 6 in the morning because I was the only one there at that hour and they said, you mean the place with the tiger sharks? 

And then once on purpose, off the coast of Sipadan...  and although I was initally fascinated by their focus and musculed mass I soon saw their greyness, their lack of intelligence and dead eyes,  and turned to concentrate on the incredibly beautiful turtles.  (That wasn't an analogy, btw, it's the way it was).

Hmmm... this is an convoluted post, isn't it.  I don't dare press draft though as it will disappear and become draft #53...

Which came first: time or tenses?

In the beginning, there was nothing.

There were no stars, no planets, no humans nor animals, no seas nor birds, no turtles nor grasshoppers.

Nor was there light

nor was there dark

Nor was there a before nor an after.

There was only nothingness.

But in a slice, of a slice of a slice - something we will never understand, all of that nothingness amassed itself and it was so unbearable, for the very nano of a nanosecond, that an inconsequential particle of a particle awoke.  

There was no going back to sleep.   For where there had always been nothing there was now a single something.  A single point of awareness... a single thought created out of a sleep which then swum through the seas of a vast and infinite 

 nowhere,

it searched, blindly, through the terror of the nothingness for somethingness,

anything

which would allow it

to know that it actually existed.



But there was only disappointment awaiting it.

It was the single,

it was the only

it could not be.



How could it go

backwards,
back into the void?


How could it go forwards
into that which was not any longer only void?



Our Something was suddenly

desperate:

would it always be locked in this

infernal now

there must be something there

it thought


for the very first time

as it stretched its new muscles of intelligence.



There

must be a way to

validate existence...


But yet, it pondered, if there was no before,

if there was no after

and only this

infinite nowness

it could not

be

for to exist must

suggest that there was time

a time

She did not exist.

For something, surely can not be created

from nothing...

Oh! To ask someone else

she said glancing at her navel.



Our Something was dismayed

to exist it

is most surely

an undoable curse.



But then, suddenly that nano nano of a

nano particle

turned upon herself

as she had had the very brightest of bright ideas...



She

understood -

in order to find out, to know if she truly existed

she would need to become more than one. She would need her opposite.  The light to her darkness.

So in that moment, in a flashing, flaming friction
Our Something rubbed against all that she was

and all that she
was not.

And as ... she split, a multiplitude of universes were born... and from then on...  moment upon moment...
millenia upon millenia...

something in her
reflected back
on the nothingness
it conversed with the somethingness

and it was content for... all that struggle was good.  It showed her
what it most surely means
to be.



Okay, so there is a point... sort of...


Why do we teach grammar to adults in sequence, in steps?

I asked this a couple of weeks back in the ELTchat and a recent post on Berni's blog reminded me yet again of this age-old question...



Present Simple

then

Present continuous

then

Adverbs of frequency

then

Past simple regular verbs

and then

well, you know the drill...


Those fond of grammar do (and hey I revel in a little grammar too - just the sequence bugs me)

Why do we impose this bubble of now?

Why do we get a slightly panicky feeling when our adult English beginners try to express, dare to try to say something which might be happening to them, temporarily, at a far point in the future...

Who said the chicken has to come before the egg.  Or was it the egg before the chicken - I forget now.

Why do we think that if we teach grammar in step-by-step stages, they will get it?   If who they are is the sum of their pasts, the blend of all actions and experiences, the good, the bad, the ugly...  and if their opportunities rests upon their futures, how come we don't just teach them the words they need? 

Do we speak more in the present?  I suppose we probably do..or do we?  

Who made this system up?  

Who put this grammatical system we use today in place?  When? Why?  What was his intention, his agenda? Is grammar taught like this in all languages?   What do the linguists say about our brains and how we process time?  

Does this step-by-step structural system consolidate in our brains and has this been measured on those electrical thingiemajiggies.... do we have any empirical evidence that this system is supported by the way our brain processes meaning... and no, by the way I don't know the answers -I'm so really not being socratic this time - I just don't know, 

I simply just can't wrap my head around why we do this...

And then there's the whole imposition of time upon cultures...

Did you know that your perceptions of time are cultural?   As I mentioned in a comment a while back on Vicki's blog, there are those of us for whom 400 years ago was yesterday and there are those who see yesterday stretching back thousands and thousands of years and there are others of us for whom the past is an illusion in front of you and the future is behind you (South Seas or something)... and yet there are plenty of others who can only see tomorrow as being something they have influence over: to know they exist.

So...

Musings, ramblings...

thoughts, y'all?

Potentially interesting
Read a book review of The History of English Language Teaching by Alex Case

Another post on motivation

In the ELTchat last week, a few tweeters raised the issue of grades being motivating for students...

and I mentioned that I'm not a fan of them myself.

In fact, pretty much, quite passionately, I hate 'em.   They've got little place in my classroom today.

(thankfully I teach adult Business English -

don't know what I'd do if I was in a institutional setting...

die?)

Maybe because as a dyslexic with, apparently a high IQ, (whatever that means, yet another test, one could argue) I was consistently either given an A+ one day and an F- the next...  The teachers said I was a lazy child, obviously, who couldn't be bothered to work - because, see, the rhyme and the rhythm to all that yo-yoing depended, usually, on whether or not I was able to adequately memorize.

(I used a color system and could learn entire chapters off by heart;  

entire Shakespearean plays but life got way more difficult once I hit Higher Ed.) 

And the thing was... even by the age of ten I realized that if I used all my attention, gritted my teeth and clenched in my stomach to concentrate and then regurgitated facts in the format required by the teacher I could make it come out like they wanted it... yet doing this never proved whether or not I had made any sense of what I was supposed to be learning.

I knew this at ten, I tell you, sitting on a cushion 

with my colour felt-tips memorizing stuff off by heart 

so my parents wouldn't get mad at me, again...

So grades?

Pah and double pah to that.  Nice for competitive types who need the psychological assurance that they've been in a room doing something but really, very much not for those seeking any kind of deeper learning experience.  They're just not that motivating..

Anyway.. don't get your nose out of joint if you're someone who likes them... lots  and lots of people do...

This week, Larry Ferlazzo posted up a video of Alfie Kohn's take on motivation and aside from its sheer brilliance and deeper teaching, it made me laugh out loud so I hope it will you too:

Says it all really...


Useful links related to this posting:

• More on motivation by me (links here) 
• Joel H Josephson Don't Give Up (as per comments below)
• StrictlyNicky's "Are tests biased against students..?"
• Daniel Pink on Drive & Motivation (RSA animate mentioned by Q.E in comments)
• Joe Bower on abolishing grading: numerous, excellent posts (as mentioned by NJ in comments)
• Have you written something on motivation? Let me know below 

ELT Chat

ELTChat is a fantastic global initiative for live discussion on current issues in the TEFL industry and is moderated by Berni Wall in the UK, Jason Renshaw in Australia, Marisa Constantinides in Greece and Olaf Elch in Germany and, of course, masterminded by the brilliant do-everything-be-everywhere Shelly Terrell.

The chats take place every Wednesday: at 3 and 9pm (London) -see world clock for your own time zone. Transcripts/podcasts summarizing the events are posted on their website after each session.

Best,
Karenne
education


p.s. I love hearing from you!
Please add your thoughts if you feel like there's something you would like to say - don't worry about perfection, It's just nice to hear from you.   

Worried about spamming me?  What is spam = you haven't read the discussion but yet you want to come to my page to advertise yourself... 

Contribution = you've read the post and discussion from various other educators and you would like to add/share your own thoughts and experience.  You've written about this subject as well?  Do please add your link, I welcome the opportunity to participate in your conversations too!

Thoughts on being an Edu-blogger

Today when people ask me what I do,

the first thing I say is

I'm an Edu-Blogger.  

Then I might add...

I write Kalinago English and on it I discuss issues related to teaching English as a Foreign Language, put up  free lessons plans every now and then, I talk about what's going on in my classes, waffle on quite a bit about dogme, do you know what dogme is?  I'm most proud of having a running series featuring amazing women in our industry - those are mostly guest posts from other bloggers, and sometimes I rant on about textbooks (not fond of them, me) but quite often I'll show how I use/d a particular computer application/ program or web 2.0 tool in one of my classes. 

Then, inevitably, one of the people that I'm talking to, in an after-work business suit, will say something like

So... do you make money from doing that?

and I'll blush and mumble something about how not everything in life has to be about money, you know. 

But then, because I have my pride and don't want him to suddenly think that 2010's answer to being a loser is being a blogger, I'll confess, of course, that  well, with regard to the moola, it's not so cut and dry, nope there's no income directly, but...   thing is, sometimes people do go on to my website from the blog and sometimes they buy my materials there but I tend not to "market" that very often (almost never) so most of the traffic on that particular site actually tends to come from Google, from countries and teachers who are non-native English teachers.  

And yes, well, of course I've gotten some paid writing work based on a lesson I did (Susan Boyle led to Working with Films).

At which point MrBusinessSuit begins to roll his eyes.

But, yeah

I have a topsy-turvey life:  my hobby (teaching) pays the bills and my job's a mind adventure.

There's something to it, tho'

There's something to all this work done by so many of us.

Where it's going, who knows...

EduBlogs, who offer various platforms designed specifically for the practice of EduBlogging,  list on a banner trailing across their website that there are

517, 432

Blogs 

written by teachers,

for teachers

for teacher-trainers

for students

and
with students.

To be honest, given this extraordinary figure, it does seem a really good time right now, to sit down, to stop, to take a pause, to look at this really quite astonishing and amazing development.   

I've decided to do this, partly on here but also, mainly, by specifically offering guest articles to my fellow Edu-bloggers  because it  is, in my humble opinion, working with your community that is one of the most, one of  the absolutely most essential parts of becoming and being a blogian: 

blogging is not just about one person 

who says that blogging is 

either this or that

but what the wider community, 

made up of each
of its individuals, 

says it is.

Blogging, or what I refer to with my own students as the digitization of paper, represents an incredible realizable step towards the democratization of education.

We're on an adventure.

It is teachers who are talking to teachers. 

Globally.

 images based on a poll of 137 EduBloggers June 2010

And although this new series is specifically aimed at giving advice to the NewbieBloggers, based on the reading I did before I dipped my toes in, based on the successes and failures I've had along the way, delving into some of my strengths, revealing my own weaknesses ... telling you exactly how I managed to build a blog that gets so many visitors, has won and been nominated for so many awards, reaches an incredible global audience through versions of some articles rewritten for the academic journals in my field -  even though I'm just a TEFL teacher and EdTech teacher-trainer, really, who had no "special" personal or professional connections prior to hitting the page.

It is also an invitation to you, those of you who have more experienced voices, to disagree with me, to add your own pennies' worth in the comments on various posts (no zumping the theme tho').  

It is an invitation to share your knowledge with your community.

Useful links
Carnival! (27 bloggers writing on EduBlogging, 2009)

Blogging, chatting, discussions online: (we're still just writing on cave walls)
IATEFL 2011:  The ELT blogosphere symposium (call for YOU to join me as a co-presenter)
Recorded Presentation on Edublogging at the Reform Symposium July 31st, 2010

The Guest Posts

Glossary of EduBlogging Terms, Mike Harrison's Blog
Glossary of phrases and expresssions based on the word blog, Sue Lyon Jones's blog

The Dogma of Edublogging, Nick Jaworksi's blog

The Best Kept Secrets of Highly Successful Edubloggers
Part 1 Shelly Terrell's blog
Part 2 Janet Bianchini's blog
Part 3 Berni Wall's blog
Part 4 Monika Hardy's blog 
Part 5 Anne Hodgson's blog (coming soon)

Also on its way...

• Lords of the Armchair (coming soon, on Jason Renshaw's)
• Comparing EduBlogging platforms (coming soon, on Marisa's Constantinides')
• Blogging with students (Barbara Sakamoto's)
• Blogging tips to share with students (Tara Benwell's)
• Why do Edu-Bloggers quit? (don't know yet, but help me out with this poll...)

What do you think?  Are there any topics in particular you'd like me to cover?


Current Poll



Best,
Karenne
education

image credit: Artemis blogging, after Rembrandt by MikeLicht NotionsCapital.com

The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference

Ever had students say to you they hate(d) English at school?

Ever had teachers rise up in protest at all the rapid changes in technology, yelling about how the way they've always worked has always worked?  It falls on deaf ears, when you tell them quietly, gently, the world is a different place today, it really is, and my oh my, tomorrow... well, tomorrow you won't recognize most of what we take for granted today.

Whether it's with students learning telephone phrases or with colleagues challenged to adopt the new technologies, change inspires great emotion.

But mostly this is because they don't understand the Why.

See, thing is, we humans (since the age when we stopped starving) really need good solid emotional reasons to do the things we do and we need an even greater knowledge when we're asked to change.  Reasons that connect to our needs.  

It's simply not enough to say, look lots of others are doing it.  

We have to believe that the reason for the change makes sense and that it will, in fact, bring  us happiness.

It's simply not enough to say, the whole world's learning to speak in one language so hey, you should to.

It's not enough to say your boss wants you to speak English so it has to be.

It's not enough to say if you learn English then you can go to the US on holiday next year.

Instead, a better approach might be:

"As the world's economies change it's no longer enough to do business on one's home turf.  Mastering another language (English) will enable you to master your communication when dealing across different cultures and as a result you'll probably get more projects or make more sales."

Selling them, if you like:

Put in the effort now to learn this language and you'll be able to earn more money and take care of your family even better in the long run.

When dealing with colleagues wary of edtech, your approach might be:

"Taking time to master a handful of tech-tools will help you to organize your teaching strategy, saving you a lot of time and energy in the long run.   It will make your lessons more up-to-date and dynamic and as your students will be excited with your innovative processes and their own marked progress, they'll talk to their friends and colleagues about how much they are learning with you and recommend you to others.

Selling then, if you like:

Become a part of a global community of innovative educators and you'll be able to earn more money and take care of your family even better.

Of course, different people have different reasons that motivate them.  

And to be truly effective an exercise it's even better if you can get your students or colleagues arriving at their own whys.  But whichever way, directly or indirectly, it's only once the people you're asking to change understand the reasons for the change that they will adopt and adapt. 

I'll leave you Simon Sinek's thought on inspiring others:







Useful links related to this posting: 

• 8 radical technologies that changed education
• That rush, that knowledge high
• How to keep language learners learning

Best,
Karenne
image credit: Questions by Oberazzi

p.s. Business English Lesson Tip: The Sinek video is a great one to take into class with top management types, 1-2-1s... ask them to talk about why they do what they do and make the products they make.

education

I'm Not Afraid: Banish the Word and U give it its Power

Ooooh, I'm musing on a Tuesday.

That's, in my editorial calendar, not allowed (did you know that I have one of those?  For a private edu-blog, yeah...) because I save my deep thinking for Sundays.

But, see... thing is, I tweeted out this fantastic link to Enimem's lastest video:

If you are reading my blog in a country where this youtube video is not accessible, 

the song I am discussing is I'm Not Afraid by Enimem

and many of the teachers who saw the link immediately saw it's potential because the song is so fuckin' rich: each line filled with delicious collocations and examples of real life and its real life street pronunciation; subliminal messages in idioms which almost make a joke of the listener.  

It's backed by a solid, deep, belly-hitting beat which is powered by rhythmic personal storytelling as Enimem begs his fans for their forgiveness, like a gambling man promising to never pick up the cards again.   There is so much here for teachers to exploit  (the language / the story of his past: his despair, depression, obsessions: predictions for his future; the business of fame and how it wears on those who reach it)  sparking off numerous authentic conversations.  

Can Shakespeare reach teenagers or young adults like this piece could?

Oh...wait, are you still reeling - did you stop to blush in horror at the use of my phrase above, the so fuckin' rich, each..?  Are you sitting in front of your computer gob-smacked, in shock, that OMG, you saw me just use that word, out-loud and in-public, on my blog? 

Why?

Don't worry, though, it's probably for exactly the same reason that this absolutely amazing poetic resource won't get used by many teachers and it sucks.  Really, it does....

Because if you listened to this song (and to the majority of Rap) and you don't ever use it because you're worried your students' parents and/or your DOS will raise wagging fingers at the inappropriate language - can I just say: please - you think they don't know those words anyway?  Check out Chaucer desalinated, take a good ole gander at Shakespeare's insults:

Our language may have been cleaned and spruced up around the 18th Century, but you know what, those words only attained power as a result.

Without a doubt, undoubtedly

And all those who look down on me

I'm tearing down your balcony

Enimen, 2010

Thoughts? 


Useful links related to this posting:

• Pinker: The Language of Swearing***
• The F-bomb by Anne Hodgson for Spotlight Magazine
• The origins of British Swear Words, BBC
• The history of American Swear Words, CBS
• Urban Dictionary see blog post by Chris Cattaneo
• Flocabulary: a new movement in teaching through Rap music (thanks Teresa)
• $trictly 4 my teacherz  (blog with rap songs)
• Shakespeare was, like, the ultimate rapper (thanks Nicky)
  

Best, Karenne
image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smileham/3543823314/sizes/m/

p.s. follow the hyperlinked links in the text too :-)
p.p.s see Practical English Usage, Swan, page 573-578
p.p.p.s. thanks to my bro' Martin for sharing the vid with me on Facebook

At the top of Maslow's Pyramid

Wow, I am finally surfacing and trying to get my head in gear this afternoon - upon opening up my google reader  and quickly browsing through the ELT blogosphere, I notice many excited reports and reflections on the IATEFL conference which took place in Harrogate this year.

It was, quite simply, one of the best educational events I've ever attended: mega kudos to the organizers, online team headed by Julian Wing and Gavin Dudeney plus the numerous  IATEFL committees  and volunteers who worked so hard at putting something like this together incredibly successfully.   One of the best parts of it all, in my opinion, was Graham Stanley's LT-SIG pre-conference event which was held live, via twitter and also within 2nd Life - I'll blog separately about that later.  But first,

one of the things which struck me most profoundly at IATEFL was something I've been musing on for a while now - covered briefly in my crowd-wise discussion but actually got to see happen in real-time, confirming my thoughts on the process.

It has to do with Maslow's pyramid of needs, so apologies that in just a moment, I'm going to go all deep with you here.

But first allow me tell you a couple of stories:

On the first official day, climbing up the stairs to the conference, I bumped into Jeremy Harmer.  For those few of you who don't know who that is, Jeremy is one of the most influential  and widely  read authors and editors in the field of ELT.  The man who wrote the book on teaching English.  He is also an accomplished poet and edu-blogger.

I apologized to him that I wouldn't be able to attend his session (I was totally gutted) because we were scheduled at the same time.  Jeremy apologized back, saying that he would have loved to attend my talk and   he was interested in the development of e-communities.

Side Bar Confession:
I didn't think he was serious, let's face it: why on earth would the Jeremy Harmer want to attend my swap-shop and musings on the historical, evolutionary and psychological aspects/practical issues involved in setting up e-communities?

But as the conference raced on and all the evening events took place, here is what became immediately obvious: Jeremy was absolutely everywhere.   He attended most of the sessions of his PLN,  attended the LearningTechnologySIG's preconference event, via 2ndLife, tweeting back like the rest of us towards the external twitter community and was very much, not just a professional guru in our field but authentically interested in what we had to say, think and how we teach:  he was above all, an engaged, active, excited member of the Educational Community of Practice.

The second story has much more to do with me and my decisions about which sessions to attend and it wasn't just me I saw doing this...

There were, at the IATEFL conference, a number of very, very famous and important speakers.

Presenters, globally renowned for their years and years of contributions to ELT, prize-winning authors and glorious trainers who I couldn't believe I'd actually get the chance to see live... and then there were people like me who do what we can, train teachers on a small scale, spend most of our time in the classroom  but many, many of us there were spending  hard-earned pennies on an educational event (some presenting, others only attending): money which would normally be earmarked as holiday funds.

In just about every case, whenever there was a clash between one of my PLN (whether from Twitter or from an educational yahoo!group or Ning I belong to) and a famous author, I found my feet walking me towards the member of the community.

One morning, after staying up 'til 4am, there was an 8.20 session.

A slap of ice-water on the face, deep breaths to wake up and a quick jog took me down to the conference centre on time.   There was simply no question that we would be there and his room quickly filled out as the rest of us, bleary-eyed, twitterers and blog-readers stumbled in - some without our first coffee.   When he asked us why, didn't we already know what he was talking about (it was on PLNs) the answer was simple.



Nik Peachey is someone who has provided us, for free, for years, with so much content and ideas through his blogs and explorations of the web2.0 that we were there to thank and support him.

He is a member of our PLN.  Wild horses wouldn't have kept us from going to see him live.

A couple of days later, when schedules began to severely clash, I missed two community members' sessions back-to-back, sessions that I really very much wanted to attend - I got grabbed into a conversation I couldn't get out of - I was genuinely sad and upset about that.  Still am, so they better be at Brighton next year :).

So, anyway, what has all this got to do with Maslow and when am going to stop gushing and get serious?

Lindsay Clandfield's Pechua Kucha discussed his worries about the me, me, me aspect which just about everyone sees when they enter Social Media but undoubtedly, that is for me, just one minor step along this journey.   

When Maslow made his pyramid, he forgot the top of the triangle.  And as it has been missing, through this blog post, am putting it on now.

Beyond personal self-actualization lies the actualization of community.

(cc)Karenne Sylvester, 2010:  adaptation from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg by factoryjoe on wikimedia commons)


What social media and the web 2.0 is doing, most profoundly is that it is working on the we, we, we.

The IATEFL 2010 conference in Harrogate confirmed it: there is a deep need within humans to support a community they co-create.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shellyterrell/4519170550/sizes/m/in/set-72157623849013638/

The conference was very much not just about only saying hey to our old-new friends and sharing hugs (how quickly we all knew each other) nor was it about how wonderful, wonderful it was to smile in real time at Vicky Saumell and giggle with Jamie  from China, to talk blogging with Nik Peachey over a beer (how cool) or to listen to Shelly and Ozge as they went through their presentation in the apartment for the 20th time (fantastic, fantastic -best presentation of the conference) or to bossily tell Marisa and Shaun to pay attention to our real-life discussion too, not just to one with the 2ndLifers, or to share a cigarette with Emma  Herrod and Scott Thornbury; to find out how nice Luke Medding is in real life, to attend Candy van Olst's presentation of dogme in Business English settings or to get one of Ken Wilson's massive bear hugs, to  rehearse my PK with Sue Lyon Jones, to congratulate Lindsay Clandfield on his mega launch of Global,  to play with Tamas' little Sophie and break bread with Amanda, to have Jamie Keddie profusely worry about me and whether or not I'd make it up to the stage without fainting beforehand; to quickly converse with storyteller Jan Blake and  with Herbert Puchta on the value of non-self-promotion via twitter... but also, also more importantly

how we did not forget our twitter friends 

and how we felt connected to the PLN members who could not there  in person.

We truly didn't want them to miss out on a single moment of the excitement we were going through;  we really didn't want them to miss out on the learning we were receiving so we let them know what was going on... we didn't want them to miss out on how well our fellow community members were doing as they stood up, sometimes for the first times, in front of large crowds and shared their knowledge so....

we shared and shared and shared. And we tweeted and we tweeted.

Collectively, both inside and outside the IATEFL conference, we continued to work at building and strengthening our amazing global community of educational practitioners and I'm so incredibly proud to have witnessed this and in my small way, been a part of all that growth.

Useful links related to this posting:

• Mark Andrews and the Great Tweet Forwards
• Clarissa Ryan, The Twitter Divide
• Shelly Terrell on PLNs, Twitter & Conferences (see Jeremy's poetry on video there)
• Nik Peachey on "famous" women :-)
• Ken Wilson on Tweet-ups and Tweet watchers
• Shaun Wilden's fantastic talk 
• IATEFL Pwned by Gavin Dudeney
• When the dust settles by Jeremy Harmer 

Best,
Karenne

Crowd Wise 5a: R u U online?

I first started asking this question long before I entered the world of the web2.0.

It was based on what I'd heard about second-life, way before I even knew teachers taught there, and I wondered if a person could 'exist' in 3D, as an Avatar, ultimately more beautiful and dynamic than their real selves and still maintain their personal sense of identity.   I never really did get into second life, in the end, I s'pose because that question never really went away for me.

Some people believe personality is static, something you're born with and that's that: neither changing nor evolving, not influenced by circumstances or location, no matter where you are or what you are doing.   Others believe that we are constantly and consistently changing in order to adapt to new environments. 

I'm not sure what I believe.

Having traveled all over the world and been part of so many different kinds of societies and real life communities I would be lying if I didn't say that I have witnessed my phraseology, body-language, accents and mannerisms change many times - adapting to fit- and it was hardly surprising to see me evolving once I embraced the culture of the web2.0.

Unquestionably, I'm bolder and friendlier online than I am in person.

Much more likely to approach strangers and say hey and much more likely to "friend" and randomly chat to others than I do in real-life.  In real-life, if we want to be honest here, unless I am in the classroom then I'm the one sitting nursing her glass of wine in the back of the room, on the comfy sofa and the one who goes back to her hotel room early while others sit around to drink 'til dawn - 

Online I tend not to lurk.

And yet...

Hmm...

In life, I love introducing like-people to like-people, adore the thrill of finding someone else in this big fat world who thinks similar to the way I do about a certain subject and boy do I get a kick out of that in my online life. In real life, I delight in having a good philosophical debate, even arguments- a toss of ideas which lead to me learning something brand new / gleaning a different perspective on an issue I might have once felt passionately the opposite about... and of course, we won't even begin to go into giggles I get out of taking the p* out of certain members of the twitterverse, just for the.. the fun of it.

In life, I take risks: try out things which are way too hard for me to really do (like climbing into volcanoes, like riding elephants, like swimming in shark-filled seas)  because to be honest,  I don't really care that much about the consequences...  I just don't really take my self all that seriously (says she the blogger reflecting on her serious thoughts on-line).

Am I different?

Dunno. Dunno.

As above all else, most importantly, in my real-life I don't suffer fools gladly and most surely do not online either.   So how is it that certain things change in virtual realities and other things become more pronouncedly the same?  Why those things?

What do you think?
 
Are you... U when u're online?

Best,
Karenne


This posting is part of a series, Crowd Wise, and is, in part, preparation for the swap-shop on web based communities at the IATEFL conference in Harrogate, April 8th, 2010.  Your answers, as brief or as in-depth as you'd like to be, is very much appreciated!  To subscribe to all the posts within this specific series, copy and paste this url:  http://kalinago.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/crowd-wise  into your reader.  

Note: if you would like to participate in this conversation anonymously, please do feel free to do so.  Alternatively, if you would like to specifically mention an online educational community when making reference to your experiences, adding your group's name and/or its URL, you are most welcome to!

Monkey See = Monkey Do 2

I wonder who first coined the phrase Monkey See Monkey Do after noticing primates copy each other - probably it was someone in a village somewhere who was keeping one as a pet or it might well have been a circus entertainer - - hmm, whoever it was, it was definitely way back before a bunch of men in white coats studying macaque monkeys yelled Eureka.

The Italian scientists were yelling because the monkeys not only copied their actions but apparently also seemed to experience pleasure even though they themselves didn't have any "reason" to.

As the story goes, a monkey's brain had been wired up to detect the firing of his neurons when planning and carrying out a movement such as grasping a peanut. One researcher returned from lunch licking an ice cream cone. As the monkey watched the researcher, some of his neurons fired as though he were eating the ice cream, even though he was not moving. The monkey's neurons were "mirroring" the activity that the monkey was observing.
Neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti and his colleagues at the University of Parma reported their discovery of monkey mirror neurons in 1996. Researchers soon found evidence for mirror neurons in human beings. Just like monkeys, it turns out that when we see someone perform an action—picking up a glass of water or kicking a ball—our mirror neurons simulate that action in our brains. Researchers have suggested that mirror neurons are crucially involved in the distinctive human development of language, morality, and culture.

Ronald Bailey, The Theory of Moral Neuroscience

I first came across this concept while reading Buy.ology by Martin Lindstrom because I am a nerd and I take business books on holiday with me. In one of the early chapters of this book which explores the reasons we buy the things we do, he mentions our purchasing decisions are often mirrors of what the people around us are buying.
e.g. I-phone, U-phone, we all I-phone

The book is brilliant: he unravels the psychology of our daily purchasing decisions, revealing influences like tradition, security, religion, superstition and sex, sensory input such as smell; somatic markers and subliminal messages - and if you're a Business English teacher of adult learners like I am then you'll no doubt find it an invaluable materials resource for authentic, stimulating conversations on topical themes.


Anyway, enough on that...

because actually,

actually it hit me like a brick,

falling out of the sky and

landing smack dab

upon my dreaming brain

while I lay lying there,

peacefully on the beach.




If most of us do things that other people do....

do we learn new words and grammar and language because other people are communicating in a certain way and we copy them? Is that how language evolved?

Oh right, yup, the men in white coats have theorized on that one already.








Not an epiphany after all.


Hmm... how does it apply to the L2 though? Maybe that's why so many expats learn second and third languages using television soap operas or why full-immersion programs are better than years of classes in a non-native speaking country. Hmm... but what about all the learners who do achieve fluency despite never having stepped outside their own countries?



My mind kept spinning as my toes wriggled in the sand...

Jeremy Harmer's fluency dilemma drifting in and out of consciousness, my feeble attempts at trying to label the rush for him - the thing I see in students' eyes when they "get it" - when they cross an L2 language threshold...

In and out... round and round in my brain.

Cloudy skies drifting past lazily and waves crashing against the shore.


I decided to push the mirror-neurons theory towards the basic processes of education:


1. We observe the world around us.

2. We notice that which causes pleasure or pain in others.

3. When we notice other people's experiences we simulate identical feelings in our own brains: pleasure inspires desire to go through the same; boredom may generate the same unless we repel or avoid the experience.

4. We remember most the things that give us pleasure.


So what I'm actually saying is this, if it is that the teacher is the most important factor in deciding whether or not students learn, as Bill Gates seems to think, is it enough to say the teacher is Factor it?

Shouldn't we be delving deeper into the why?

Shouldn't we look for what the unifying similarities are amongst different yet equally amazing teachers?

Briefly, my 4:

Mrs Lewis in grade 3: warm, helpful, supportive - she was the first person to believe in me, she told me that I would be a writer and I have spent my whole life attempting to prove her right.

Professor Hein who stood on tables and rode into class on a unicycle, passed on the gift of teaching through humour, inquiry and outrageousness! He gave me a deep appreciation for history that I've never lost.

David Langsam how many of us left his journalism course, I wonder, with not just the love of a well-written piece but the desire to become him: to have all those adventures, the prizes on the walls and the grainy photos in dark, foreign places.

Scott Thornbury, though not directly my teacher is my guru nonetheless: his cocky arrogance and abyss-like intelligence stretch my mind as he persuades those around him to dig deeper into language and communication.

What did/do these teachers all have in common?

They inspire.

Is it possible that whenever we notice our teacher's pleasure of being in the classroom, whiles she's sharing her knowledge, that we want to copy her in order to taste the joy, the secret to her happiness?

Could it be that the maximum potential for learning is when others around us are actively engaged - that we are not only enjoying the content of what we're learning but that motivation is, in itself, contagious (as is boredom) and the teacher is the virus carrier of knowledge?

Does L2 acquisition simply boil down to enthusiastic, engaged, motivated copying?





What are your thoughts? Am I on to something here or should I just go back in the ocean for a nice long swim instead?

Coming with me?

Useful links related to this posting:

• Vilayanur Ramachandran: A journey to the center of your mind
• Tories to make teaching brazenly elite
• Bill Gates on creating great teachers
• Learning Language with sing-a-long birds
• Michael Arbib, Linking Language to Theory of Mind
• Language Acquisition: Do As You Hear
• More Links: videos, articles on the subject of mirror neurons

Best,
Karenne
draft version written overX-mas/NewYear09

Bring on the teenies...

The decade of the uh-oh's is finally done.

Hallelujah!!

For me those ten years were made up of:

A marriage... a divorce, surviving volcanic eruptions and political coups, moving from South America to Germany, completing a full-length screenplay, not selling said screenplay, trying to sell a conversation skills supplementary book then putting pieces of it for sale online instead, working on an animation film, writing materials for Klett, meeting President Obama, joining facebook, completing a pilgrimage across the north of Spain, creating this blog... abandoning the other one... becoming addicted to Twitter and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember...

'xcept co-convincing someone important that there really is a paradigm shift going on in education today :-)


What's next?

No doubt another roller coaster of a ride but also...

• teacher training for teaching associations
• presenting at conferences
• participating/hosting online training sessions
  
• more writing... tons more writing
• more blogging... lots, lots, lots more blogging

and hopefully...

• studying film and its application to learning English
• some kind of techie related job, related to the above
  
• coming back home (Grenada) and working online from here
• lots of pictures with loads of ultra-cool ELT people :-)
• some travel (Tibet, Machu Picchu, Pyramids)
  

How was your decade?

What are you hoping to get out of the teenies?

How are you hoping to develop professionally or personally?

Whatever it is, I truly wish you much happiness, heaps of passion in your journey and many, many smiles along the way!

Best,
Karenne

New Year Lesson (Abba video, worksheet, conversation prompts)

• Be the hit of your New Year party by Shelly Terrell
• Bridget Jones and my New Year Resolutions by Marisa Constantinides
• New Year celebrations by Sue Lyon Jones
• Best sites for learning about New Year celebrations by Larry Ferlazzo
• 2009: the year of living technologically by Janet Bianchini
• How to survive in 2010 by Ozge Karaoglu

Thnx 4 ur RTs

A rather popular figure in ELT kicked off a rather big discussion two days ago - one which captivated my attention and distracted me from doing a thousand other, much more pressing and urgent, matters.

It was regarding the social niceties which should or shouldn't go along with life in web 2.0 and whether or not we understand the culture emerging there.

For the most part, Gavin's observations were spot on but still, I was annoyed about a couple of things. Regarding the narcissism of web2.0, he's right - it is something I have observed and dislike also but the blogosphere is abuzz with it, it's not only happening in our field.

I remember my own nervous beginnings but as someone who's traveled quite a bit, I also remembered that because I wasn't sure of the map and cultural faux pàses so easily tripped on, I bought, watched, read and bookmarked the 'guide-books.'

I studied before I entered.

One particular point in the blog comments on That' SLife was whether or not thank you's for ReTweets are appropriate: if they're a form of spam and whether or not they should be made privately or publicly and discussions erupted on how they "clutter up" the hmm... really rather busy twitter stream.

So here's the thing...

I say thank you to you because I am thankful.

Actually, I'm excessively, overwhelmingly, abundantly grateful.


Let's get something pretty straight, just in case it isn't clear:

I am no big deal.


As much as I love my blog (can you tell?) and it's nice (but mostly weird) that some of you are now referring to me as a VIP, it just ain't so.


I'm an English teacher.

I pack up my backpack every weekday, just like you do, well mine usually has a netbook inside it, I go to my classes and teach there and sometimes my lessons work out well so I blog about these.... so you can go try these ideas out too and I can find them again... but sometimes, to be frank, they're not all that clever.

I train teachers in workshops however I'm not a teacher-educator.

I haven't written a major textbook and no, I haven't created an earth-shaking pedagogy.



So, how did this no-one arrive in the place of having a "popular" blog?



When I started in September last year, I wasn't on Twitter. So in the beginning I got maybe 5 visitors a week..? And probably of those visits, 50% were made by my parents. But I came to the page and I wrote.

I put in the hours.

Some of my articles were just awful. Embarrasingly so.

Some of them were average.

Sometimes I thought, wow, is like no one ever going to read my words? All those so-called supportive colleagues at the school I used to work at - too busy, they kept saying they'll look at the weekend but the weekends went by and they did not come.

That so-called best friend who told me she liked my blog and then when I asked her, did you like what I did with the pictures, she said huh, what picture... and I knew she too, had not come and visited.

And though I was hurt I came to the page and I wrote.

I went out and I learned from the better bloggers. I offered to do guest-pieces for those who knew what they were doing because I read that you should do this. Some of these were accepted, some were not.

I visited your blogs and I learned from you.

I wrote more articles.

I bought books on blogging.

I combed through slideshare and the 'net for tips on how to become a good blogger: Darren Rowse and Chris Brogan helped me enormously - their mantra became my mantra and if you really want to be a popular blogger too, make it yours:

Write.

Somewhere around the 4 months mark... I came up with something which was considered useful by you: some of you decided to share a lesson plan I'd spent 12 hours writing with your colleagues on Facebook, you sent it on by email and it got listed in various yahoo!groups.

Now all of a sudden I was getting 20 - 50 visitors a day... and some of you even began to subscribe to my posts.

Which meant, holy cow, responsibility...

I had to write...

So I came to the page and I wrote.



You started talking back to me.

At around six months, some of you started writing to thank me for what I was writing and it was this gratitude of yours which pulled me to the page and made me write even more articles, now twice or three times a week instead of every now and then.

I joined Twitter in May and as we bloggers of the blogosphere connected daily in the Twitterverse, suddenly the number of visitors to my blog increased exponentially and with that, the deepening obligation to keep writing.

I enrolled on a course with Darren Rowse and did the tough but rewarding 30-day challenge to become a better blogger.

I wrote every day and did every exercise...

My writing improved and now you began to regularly share my posts with your friends, with your colleagues, - you RT'd my work, ideas and tips and passed these on to your own professional and personal learning networks.

Let me say that again.

You read my posts and you commented on them and then you decided what I wrote had enough value to be shared with your own colleagues. This may seem to a casual observer as no big deal... this may seem odd as "in real life we don't thank people for repeating what we say" but this is what you did:

You rewarded me with the highest praise
any writer could ever wish to receive:

you told me my words were worthy.

So though I'm no VIP and though I don't write the best blog in the blogosphere you keep bringing the obligation and responsibility to do the thing I love doing most: writing.

Through your appreciation, you have transformed my quiet life - - you've gotten me two paid writing assignments, you've given me a thousand new ways to smile, confidence in my concepts and ideas about teaching - - you have challenged me to be consistent and true, you have helped me grow as a person and a character in the edu web 2.0 world and

you have given me the gift of the page.

Thnx
4
ur
RTs,

Best,
Karenne