Also, my former tech teacher is going on to become a tech intergrator. she’ll go and make sure technology is utilized more in classrooms so that we stay above the achievement gap, and are working to close it. She taught us about blogs, aggregators, and Ustream. It has literally changed my life and allowed me to do soo much more and meet more people.

Another point, often ( and I am soo guilty of this), i find myself from Iming and texting sooo often. Writing ‘ur’ or teh number two (2), when I am starting to write a formal email or essay.

diane~ my teacher also introduced us to twitter! I love it, tweeting in the otehr tab, as a matter of a fact!

Finally, the world is changing and evolving, so the classrooms must too.

Kimberlys last blog post..through the years….

I think you are correct in your claim that our student already have the means with which to communicate on another level than traditional writing.

I will go as far as saying that if schools don’t start employing different learning strategies very soon, then school will become increasingly irrelevant to all students. Kids today live and learn in the world of web 2.0, but most schools don’t. This is twice problematic: Students think schools is old and irrelevant, and school can offer no guidance in the use of the web - which students really need - they don’t master it even if they think so. Check out a British JISC report about the Google Generation, and their technologiacal strengths and weaknesses:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/reppres/gg_final_keynote_11012008.pdf

Thanks for the tip on the Google Translator, it has much improved since last time I tried it! This tells me that my Star Trek analogy isn’t pure fiction, and we will have universal translators in a few decades… Maybe we could give one to Yoda, to correct his horrific grammar

Fascinating input. I’m trying to make a similar point that the technology my students have today in their MacBooks - simply the webcam, built-in mic, and iLife a/v editing software - already provides modes of communication transcending the traditional writing bias in school assessments.

Reading your vision of the speech-to-text translation technology of the future (or was it speech-to-speech? or both?) came at a coincidental moment that makes me smile. I read your post at a Korean real estate office, as my Korean wife conversed with the agents about available apartments, the local market, and so forth. Right before reading your comment, I swear, I was idly imagining a not-so-distant future when that conversation would be instantly translated into English for me, so I could follow along.

Another coincidence. My current (newly adopted) Wordpress theme includes Google Translator buttons into European languages. I studied enough French years ago to be able to read it fairly well, and recently checked out one of my posts in “Google French.” It was a far cry better than translation programs were just eight years ago, when I was an Arabic linguist exploring translation technology to help me in my job. The gibberish factor has decreased impressively in that mere eight years.

Star Trek indeed. “The future is now.”

Thanks so much for the input. Quite a mind-zap.

Clay Burells last blog post..Aggregators as Couches, Comments as Salons

While I find the debate valid today, I doubt it would seem very relevant in 50 years time. Vygotskyan psychology teaches us that the evolution of human societies is closely linked to the use of artifacts, tools. We constantly invent and reinvent tools to make life easier. The complexity of the tools is always increasing, which had led to an ever-increasing division of labour. Professions become ever more specialised.

The tools we use help us to grasp the world, and many tools help us perform complex tasks without understanding the underlying mechanics of things. More and more basic skills are becoming obsolete because a tool is invented to carry out the task. Then we can use the tools to perform complex tasks, without necessarily understanding fully the underlying processes carried out by the tool. They who invent and maintain the tool (e.g. a computer) must fully understand it, but the rest of us doesn’t have to.

The main point is that thinking is not a process that can be clearly separated from the use of tools, or from the social context in which the thinking exists. When we perform a task using a tool (e.g. writing an essay using a computer or a pen/paper) the thinking is only understandable within the social context (school work) through the use of tools (computer or pen/paper). The writing in itself is meaningless (and impossible) without tools.

Within this school of research, learning is a social phenomenon, where thinking is a process intertwined with the use of tools. Seeing that tools constantly develop and become more complex, it is easy to see that in a few years we will have more complex grammar checking programs, able to point out all sorts of wrong syntax, even the “they’re/ their”-problem (which really isn’t that complex). Later on, we will have computer programs which translates spoken language to written language – you will speak to the computer and it will write it down, possibly in a S.A.D syntax as well  It’s like that on Star Trek, and that’s just a couple of hundred years into the future, isn’t it?

(this text was written in Word 2003, even though I’m sure it has a few examples of bad grammar – like the use of passive forms (some green lines) – the grammar checking has corrected at least 100 minor mistakes…)

Gail Deslers last blog post..Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free - An accidental conversation

Before I went into teaching, I was a public library advocate in Oakland, CA. One of the main programs we helped support was the adult literacy program run by the library. They did some incredible work. There were a large number of older African Americans who had grown up in the Jim Crow South. Once a year they would share their stories at the program fund raiser. THERE WAS NEVER A DRY EYE IN THE HOUSE. One woman who had to work in the cotton fields of Arkansas and could only attend school when it rained (and she couldn’t work the fields) talked about her missed opportunities, in a speech titled, “No telling what I could have been” where she imagined being the president. Think of that lost potential. It was NOT because she was unable to write, she just hadn’t been taught. I have to think that Mr. Ali’s experience although a generation later and in a more urban area, was probably closer to that experience, than what any of of the commenters on this blog students receive. There was another generation of students who had gone through the school system as it desegregated, and did not get the education that they deserved either. One young gentleman wrote a really wonderful free verse poem in AAVE comparing people on the bus to a deck of cards (some folks are kings, and queens, some are jacks and jokers). One harridan wrote into our newspaper in a fit of peak in defense of “standards” saying he was “bringing down the language” with his writing. Now keep in mind this was probably a contributing member. I used this as an opportunity to “school” folks in the reality of where adult literacy students had to go through, but it really pissed me off. I remember her whenever I run across someone. I think your example of Muhammed Ali is not good for the point you are making (different measures of achievement for different abilities), but it says something about where we don’t want to be with education (people not taught to their full potential, or anywhere close to it).

This (http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/05/01/man_bears) is a better example of your case.

In addition, your argument in being made here:
http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/04/not-getting-to-universal-design.html

and I will touch on this soon, when I blog on what do poor students need.

A. Mercers last blog post..Sometimes it’s better not saying anything at all…