Blogging - Gutenberg style.

Almost inevitably, there has been a backlash against blogging podcasting and the whole web 2.0 phenomenon. I guess the unbounded enthusiasm and wild claims for the technology demanded a degree of cynical re-evaluation. However, the fact that ordinary people with a minimum of technical expertise can now publish will have a tremendous effect on the way ideas are transmitted, adopted and adapted.

There will be resistance to such changes as social structures that have been around for decades or longer will gradually disappear or change beyond recognition. We can see this already in the world of print media where newspapers are already facing stiff competition (if not terminal, decline).

I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the last time such a huge sea change in communications hit the planet.

Time: Late in the fifteen century.
Place: A monastery in northern Italy

Monk A: I don't what's going on in the world. I mean ever since that guy, Gottenbach, Gutenberg, started up that print thingy the whole publishing business has gone down the tubes.

Monk B: I know, I know. I mean have you seen these new books? Cheap, nasty tomes, with no art or brains. I mean they push them out like sausages, without a thought to how they look.

Monk A: Yeah, I mean we spill blood producing a work worthy of the name and some guy comes along and knocks off these dodgy copies which sell for a fraction of the price.

Monk B: An have you seen what they're bringing out these days? I mean there we are reproducing Aristotle, St Augustus and Plato and what do they print? Books on farming!!! Pig husbandry!!! I even saw one on cooking.

I mean what is the world coming to?

Monk A: Any old idiot with a quill and an idea can just publish nowadays.

Getting your students to read

iPod, do you?, originally uploaded by Carlos Noboro.

I thought I'd talk again about a teaching idea that has really been a major help to my students. It combines the two great traits of any good idea; it's easy and it's quick. As most language art teachers know one of best routes to proficiency in a language, be it a foreign one or your own is extensive reading.

The problem is that for many students the idea of reading literature, on top of all the other stuff they have to do sounds more like punishment than anything else. Over the years I've pleaded, begged, threatened, demanded and any number of other verbs my students to read outside the curriculum, often to no effect. However, last year I hit upon a method that gets my students to read more. Instead of asking them to read, say a chapter (WHATTTTT, ARE YOU KIDDING????) I simply say I want them to do 20 minutes per week extra work. Hardly, a huge sacrifice, even for my over stretched, time - famished teenage students.

Basically, the idea is that the students listen to an audio book whilst following it in printed form. In this way, even a chapter can be done in less than half an hour. Also, it can be done anywhere, if you have an mp3 player or mobile phone with mp3 capability the you can listen on the bus, in bed, lounged out in front of the TV etc. Also for foreign language students the ability to see what is being said as well as listen to it makes the whole task much easier.

The audio books can be downloaded from any number of sources. For those of you interested in the likes of Dickens, Austin, Wilde and the like, go to Librivox or Gutenberg.

For those of you with more modern tastes then a quick visit to TorrentSpy and the like via BitComet is more likely to get you what you want.

Just remember to make sure you are downloading the full, unabridged version.

Teaching with Flickr

I came across this project tody while over at the BBC's radio 4 site. The basica idea is to to take photos of your journey home on foot from work. I thought that this could be turned into an intereting projecy for my learners.

Lesson plan