thomas leverett

2012-01-20T10:05:00.000-08:00

Great picture, I just had to borrow it.

Cheredar, T. (2012, Jan. 19). Can Apple’s new textbook initiative save U.S. education? (infographic) MediaBeat. http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/19/apple-textbooks-education-infographic/. Accessed 1-12.

articles

2012-01-16T19:10:00.000-08:00

Rosenberg, T. (2011, Dec. 9). Everyone speaks text message. New York Times Magazine. Accessed 1-12. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/magazine/everyone-speaks-text-message.html?pagewanted=1&tntemail0=y&_r=4&emc=tnt.

Miller, L. S. (2012, Jan. 8). ESL instruction videos teaching more than English on YouTube. GigaOm. Accessed 1-12. http://gigaom.com/video/esl-instruction-videos-teaching-more-than-english-on-youtube/.

DeSantis, N. (2012, Jan. 6). E-Textbooks Saved Many Students Only $1. Chronicle, Accessed 1-12. http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-study-shows-e-textbooks-saved-many-students-only-1/34793.

Crotty, J. M. (2011, Dec. 21). M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All. Forbes. Accessed 1-12. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2011/12/21/m-i-t-game-changer-free-online-education-for-all/

Bell, K. (2012, Jan. 14). Internet creates a cat-and-mouse game between schools, students. Victoria Advocate. Accessed 1-12. http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2012/jan/14/kb_school_internet_011512_164404/?features&education.

2012-01-09T19:44:00.001-08:00

e pluribus haiku

now available on Kindle

Clayton's article

2012-01-05T06:46:00.000-08:00

Armstrong, C. (2011, Dec. 7). Social network use may influence students’ communication skills. Daily Egyptian. http://dailyegyptian.com/2011/12/07/social-network-use-may-influence-students-communication-skills/. Accessed 1-12.

I was interviewed for this article in November, and it appeared in December. I thought Mr. Armstrong did an excellent job. I am surprised at how ungrammatically I speak, but I have no doubt that he caught it exactly as I said it.

I am still mulling over the premise that the article is based upon. To me, admitting that using chat or informal language can damage your formal language skills is akin to admitting that using any other language can damage formal language skills, and I have no doubt that our brains have room to learn as many languages as we choose to learn and use actively. The main limit in our lives is time, and I have no doubt either that some teens, and even younger people (I have a ten-year-old) are chatting or using other languages to the exclusion of their homework or whatever formal learning we are expecting of them. I have a six-year-old who cheerfully reads every night so that he can continue renting video games and movies; he would much prefer virtually any other media besides formal reading. There is no doubt, however, that he can learn to read. The doubt lies in whether he will.

If we want a world in which people seek to read classic works of good writing, we will have to work on making that something that they see as intrinsically desirable; the last time it was, was when it was the key to learning about other people and cultures. Hmmm.

2011-12-19T10:16:00.000-08:00

Mendoza, N. (2011, Dec. 12). WikiLeaks: A tale of two worlds. AlJazeera. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/201112884026597856.html. Accessed 12-11.

Stoller, P. (2011, Dec. 26). Winter Break. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-stoller/winter-break_b_1170241.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false. Accessed 12-11.

2011-12-16T10:18:00.001-08:00

2011-12-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

What FACEBOOK and GOOGLE are Hiding from world. TED Talk.

"There's an epic struggle going on between our future aspirational selves and our more impulsive selves...the best editing gives us a bit of both, some information vegetables and some information desserts..and the challenge with these algorithmic editors is that because they're looking at what you click on first, it can throw off that balance, and instead of a balanced diet, you can end up being surrounded by information junk food."

"What we're seeing is a passing of the torch, from human gatekeepers to algorithmic ones. And the thing is, the algorithms don't yet have the embedded ethics that the human ones did."

I'm not used to getting my information from YouTube, but this is very interesting.

articles

2011-12-07T18:07:00.000-08:00

Dudeney, G. (2011, Dec. 6). No place in class for digital illiterates. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/dec/06/teaching-digital-literacy. Accessed 12-11.

Global Times (2011, Dec. 6). US study boom fuels testing times. People's Daily Online. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90782/7666830.html. Accessed 12-11.

Puffer, M. (2011, Dec. 3). Overseas students boost Catholic school enrollment. boston.com. http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2011/12/03/overseas_students_boost_catholic_school_enrollment/. Accessed 12-11.

Plybon, E. (2011, Dec. 2). Pencilchat spreads through education community on Twitter. examiner, http://www.examiner.com/educational-technology-in-dallas/pencilchat-spreads-through-education-community-on-twitter. Accessed 12-11.

Siemens, G. (2011, Dec. 9). A few thoughts on China and education. Elearnspace. http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2011/12/09/a-few-thoughts-on-china-and-education/. Accessed 12-11.

Strauss, V. (2011, Dec. 5). When an adult took standardized tests forced on kids.
Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/when-an-adult-took-standardized-tests-forced-on-kids/2011/12/05/gIQApTDuUO_blog.html. Accessed 12-11.

if you get a minute

2011-12-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

Gurka, R. (2011, Dec. 5). Cougars in Southern Illinois? Probably, says retired DNR officer. The Daily Register, Harrisburg. http://www.dailyregister.com/news/x1907399522/Cougars-in-southern-Illinois-Probably-says-retired-DNR-officer?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed. Available 12-11.

Haag, P. (2001, Nov. 18). The Top 10 Relationship Words That Aren't Translatable Into English Big Think. http://bigthink.com/ideas/41152. Available 12-11.

50 Unexplainable black-and-white photos, BuzzFeed

25 incredibly detailed black and white portraits of the homeless, by Lee Jeffries

social media rocks the universe part I

2011-12-05T16:48:00.000-08:00

I think this would take an entire book, which has been written already, probably, a time or two, but I thought I would add my own personal testimony to the general body of knowledge that we consider to be the answer to the question of how social media has changed our lives as we know it. I don't think the answer is simple (relationships are more shallow) or even all bad/all good (you can't have any deep thoughts in 140 characters or less). I think the changes are profound and there's no going back. I think the good is outweighing the bad for the vast majority of people who are finding Facebook in every language and staying on it, and for the much smaller minority of people who are finding Twitter to be a very useful personal part of their daily life & communication. But to get more specific: what changes have the social media caused? Let's get started.

1. The pool of people who I see, relate to and talk to is widely expanded. I now communicate with people I have known all my life, people around the world, old college friends, people I just met once but wanted to stay in touch with, etc. We share pictures, videos, favorite music, daily life experiences, etc. At first I thought it was like running into all my old friends in an enclosed village (like the college was) where you didn't say much but you still got to know what they were interested in, what was on their mind, whether they were leaving town or reading a good book. But now I realize that, with people throwing articles, movies and music into the mix it's a little more like living together, where you actually see or hear the stuff they're interested in. No wonder it draws people in! And it makes the world smaller; I have a much better picture of life in various countries around the world.

2. You still choose your friends, but there is no privacy, and you don't choose your friends' friends, so there is a much wider possibility that virtually everything you write, say or do will get out there where it can be read by anyone including your worst enemies who could pop up at any time. This I think could have a much more profound effect on communication than the 140 character limit, for example. What you say has to fit under "for everyone's eyes" and a lot of people aren't quite used to that, and therefore either avoid the social media or overcontrol themselves (which in turn makes things more bland, I'd assume). The privacy issue has spooked a lot of people, but virtually everyone has to have a (at least one) Facebook account or risk looking like a neanderthal, liking having no phone, or not getting a job because some employer just can't believe you wouldn't have some extensive online presence that he/she could do research on.

3. The effects on the language itself are vast and profound, because now 90% of the writing in our world is informal, whereas 90% of it used to be formal. And there is hundreds of times more of it (writing, I mean). The vast amounts of informal writing speed up the pace of change and set into motion other things which people have only begun to notice. For one thing, all writing is not bound to association with oral language; you can no longer assume that every word (or character) has an oral equivalent. Entire languages could now pop up (if they haven't already) that are entirely written, with no oral correspondence at all. People have become lightning-fast at chat, texting, and finding information.

4. The live, face-to-face social world has become more and more frequently interrupted by the online world, as people find themselves unable to ignore their phones for more than five minutes at a time, and often allow themselves to be drawn into its endless possibilities while they should be driving, or participating in a social event, or eating. People have little electronic appendages which are apparent everywhere they go, attached to their hand, drawing their attention away, speaking to them in some form or another. If there is real news, the vast majority of us know it within seconds. Anyone who goes hours without checking their online world risks being the last person to know something, falling way behind, losing track of entire strings and messages. What we used to know as the 24-hour news cycle is ridiculously obsolete; for most people, it's more like a 24-second news cycle, but the news is all personal and only the blockbuster headlines make it through the clutter. They will, however, let their car stand in a busy street for a minute, while they check.

5. To address the people-are-more-shallow-because communication-is-more-shallow argument, I would say that, yes, young people read serious books less, and do less serious thinking, less critical thinking. They do more pure reading, and more diverse reading, since they read chat languages and adjust to different kinds of grammars, some without punctuation. Their thinking develops along with what they do, and if you text twelve hours a day but only read academic English a half-hour a day or less, text becomes standard and you have to monitor yourself when you write formally. I don't think texting has made people dumber, less able to read, less able to make critical arguments or less able to think critically. I don't think it has ruined what otherwise would be nuanced adult relationships. They still have those relationships and they still have time to change them or enrich them, if they make the time. It's like building construction has moved in next door; it's not that you no longer hear music, or listen to it, it's just that there's so much clutter, it's hard to concentrate. I think people will adjust by making time to do the good things (like listen to music) and limiting the clutter in order to restore balance to their lives. But the clutter has its purpose; it's not pure noise as construction was to the uninvolved.

6. Time, however, is the key to understanding the changes social media have caused. If people are spending four or five hours a day on Facebook and Twitter then there are a lot of things they are not doing that they used to be doing. For the socially awkward the online experience opens up a new world; without it, they'd be home staring dumbly at television, and we've already heard a lot about how television rotted their brains (and it may well have done more damage than FB could ever hope to do). For others of us the assumption is that without Facebook we'd be out at parties or having a social life that would allow us to speak, socialize, and share ideas in such a way that we somehow can't or don't on Facebook; I don't buy it. I think we also would be home watching television, and that, furthermore, we are doing on Facebook what we would be doing at those parties, but it's in writing, with pictures and little embedded video boxes, and we do it on our own time as opposed to having to arrange a venue and a time when everyone can gather. The only difference is that it's saved in its virtual warehouse, forever, where it could conceivably be archived and collected by virtually anyone.

Enough for now...those are the six biggies, with my specialty being #3, but I think there's enough in there to say that life has changed profoundly forever, and there's no going back.

clocktower logo

2011-12-01T19:02:00.000-08:00

I think SIUC should learn a big lesson from the recent fuss about the logos.

To recap, several things happened, and my own version may be a little based on hearsay, but I'll retell the best I can. First, a new chancellor hired a PR company to review our image; that company decided that the clocktower logo had to go; it put in a temporary logo which has only letters and is maroon, blockish and plain (more in tune with history, but somewhat bland) saying that they are working on a better one which will appear soon.

Now this bland logo appeared in the middle of labor strife and was met with derision widely. It seemed that people were very angry that the university could spend thousands on bad PR, at the same time having furloughs for faculty and not budging at all in union negotiations. Without judging the merit of the financial arguments, I was struck by the loyalty people had for the clocktower logo. It wasn't especially popular when it first showed up, though I liked it. Now all of a sudden it was everyone's favorite.

The more I listened to people the more I became convinced that they actually liked that clocktower; they'd become accustomed to it, and they really didn't want to go back to the bland letter-only version. That's because it had an image, and they related to the image. The lesson I derive from this is: bring us another image. If the clocktower isn't acceptable (I heard that it was being interpreted as a church, abroad, which may well be true), then find a better one. In the end, I don't think it was that related to the labor strife, but the comments I heard were all from people who live, breathe and snore Saluki maroon, day in and day out. Those are the people you want to please, in the end.

appomattox, 150 years on

2011-11-10T18:41:00.000-08:00

You may think that I, an SIUC language professional, would surely have something to say about the recent strike that gripped SIUC in the last week, ripping friendships asunder and casting this poor small one-horse town into utter chaos, until last night when it finally ended. Alas, I don't. Our own union settled at 4:30 the morning of the strike, along with two other unions, leaving only the tenure-track faculty to walk out for a week, and since we went back immediately to a busy class schedule, we barely had time to read our own contracts. What I do have to say, though, follows:
-the strike was undeniably bad for everyone, especially SIUC and its students, and I am absolutely grateful that it's over, even if someone couldn't get exactly what they wanted
-the parallels with the Civil War struck me hard, as I went to an encampment/re-enactment over the weekend (and people, namely other schoolkids' parents, where whispering in corners about the "union"), and the image of beautiful shawnee glades and uniforms, stew, muskets, cannons and such stuck in my mind, as well as reflection about what one does when close friends and family are spun out into conflict that tends to swallow everyone up. Of course, ours doesn't involve mass killing, amputation, dysentery, etc. I spent some time looking up John A. Logan (the man) and the life of people in the area who were literally torn both ways as this is a place of distinctly divided loyalties, not only in the north/south question but also in the union/non-union question. As small as the town is, we're forced to live in close proximity for years to come...is that possible?
-as I've said, I know little about the details of the negotiations, and am best not writing about things I don't know well. No matter, plenty has already been said, and it's easily enough found. The picture below I'll leave as a monument to the week, one which would be better off forgotten, or at least mentioned as little as possible.

2011-11-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

strike at SIUC

2011-11-03T18:36:00.000-07:00

Associated Press. Tenured faculty strike at SIU-Carbondale. (2011, Nov. 3). Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-tenured-faculty-strike-at-siu-carbondale-20111103,0,5019450.story. Accessed 11-11.

Freivogel, William H. (2011, Nov. 3). Free speech, Facebook and a public university. St. Louis Beacon. http://www.stlbeacon.org/voices/in-the-news/114017-free-speech-facebook-and-a-public-university. Accessed 11-11.

Chomsky and Twitter

2011-10-24T07:25:00.000-07:00

Jurgenson, N. (2011, Oct. 23). Why Chomsky is wrong about Twitter. Salon. http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/why_chomsky_is_wrong_about_twitter/. Available 10-11.

BrightestYoungThings Interview with Noam Chomsky. (2011, Mar. 9). BrightestYoungThings blog (Interview by Jeff). http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/articles/the-secret-of-noam-a-chomsky-interview.htm. Available 10-11.

FigureGround interview with Noam Chomsky, Dec. 17, 2010 (by Laureano Ralon and Alex Eljatib). Figure/Ground Communication, http://figureground.ca/interviews/noam-chomsky/. Available 10-11.

Summary

In this article the author criticizes Noam Chomsky, a famous linguist and leftwing critic of the media, because Chomsky belittled Twitter and social media.

Because Chomsky has spoken out against the mainstream media, his views on all media are important. In the present political climate, Twitter and social media are being used by young people in the Arab Spring and “occupy” movements, but Chomsky dismisses social media as shallow and not as good as other kinds of communication. The author feels that Chomsky is unfair to people who use social media, and feels that Chomsky doesn’t understand it well.

Reaction

I am interested in this article because I’m interested in how social media influences our communication. Tweeting and writing on Facebook are like talking, and talking didn’t ruin our communication or our social relations, although it is shallower than writing by nature.

I disagree with the author when he points out that because Facebook and Twitter are heavily used by disadvantaged people to gain rights, an attack on them as a form of communication is a disguised power play by privileged people. Their inherent nature as good or bad communication is unrelated to who is using them and what they are using them for. Young people and people who are trying to get democracy or better rights for their country will use any form of communication that suits them, and aligning styles of communication with political movements is probably in the end bad for both. Does this mean that if I use Twitter, I’m a revolutionary? Or, if I write a book, I’m not? I think the forms of communication do affect the way we think, but that’s mostly because of how much time we spend doing each kind, and who we communicate with, or what we do, when we use them.

articles

2011-10-05T08:33:00.000-07:00

Patterson, M. (2011, Apr. 3). The paradox of dyslexia: Slow reading, fast thinking. Yale Scientific Magazine. http://www.yalescientific.org/2011/04/the-paradox-of-dyslexia-slow-reading-fast-thinking/. Available 10-11.

Klass, P. (2011, Oct. 10). Hearing Bilingual: How Babies Sort Out Language. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/health/views/11klass.html?_r=1. Available 10-11.

Fujita, A. (2011, Oct. 12). 10,000 Free Round-Trip Tickets to Japan. ABC News Blogs, Yahoo News. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/10-000-free-round-trip-tickets-japan-134142507.html. Accessed 10-11.

Wolchover, N. (2011, Oct. 14). Early human language like Yoda sounded. CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/14/scitech/main20120454.shtml. Accessed 10-11.

Schulten, K. (2011, Sept. 30). Teachers Teaching Teachers, on Twitter: Q. and A. on ‘Edchats’. New York Times. http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/teachers-teaching-teachers-on-twitter-q-and-a-on-edchats/. Accessed 10-11.

Quinnell, S-L. (2011, Sept. 20). Don't doubt the value of blogging in academic publishing. Higher Education Network, theguardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/sep/20/academy-scared-of-blogging. Accessed 10-11.

Kolowich, S. (2011, Oct. 21). Myths of Online Education. Inside Higher Ed. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/21/educational-technologists-defend-online-education. Accessed 10-11.

Volsin, S. (n.d.) An online education in American slang. Washington Post Local photo gallery. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/an-online-education-in-american-slang/2011/09/14/gIQATkeSTK_gallery.html#photo=1. Accessed 10-11.

Global Study Magazine article

2011-09-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

Leverett, T. (2011). To check or not to check. Global Study Magazine, online. http://www.globalstudymagazine.com/site/articles/544/. Available 9-11.

This I think came out in print form, but I'm not sure when. I would like to know! They make a very fine, classy, well laid-out magazine, and I prize them highly. This article in particular deals with a topic that's close to home, but which I omitted in my general report (below), because, frankly, I don't know quite what to do with it.

I was surprised to see it at the top of their list...maybe people are reading it?

my new job

2011-09-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

My new coordination involves coordinating grammar into the curriculum in such a way that students actually use it and learn it as they rise through the levels; this has been a problem even in a curriculum that separates out grammar and teaches it discretely, hoping that this will give us an edge in that regard. It hasn't.

Aha, you might say, maybe separating grammar out was a bad idea. Or even teaching it discretely: that would be pointless, according to Krashen and millions of others who have observed no direct link between discrete grammar teaching and actual acquisition. Sure, they'll learn it for a test for a given class. But they only integrate it at their own pace, when they are ready.

But, before giving up the system of showing them every grammatical form, we thought we should at least try integrating what we teach into the rest of what everyone does. To that end, I am going to call myself the Grammar Awareness Coordinator. A few years back, one of the most famous grammarians in the field coined the term grammaring which was met by derision, at least in this camp (you can find the link if you really try)...if there is such a thing, however, that's what I'm going to be doing.

What about my other jobs?

I'd like to do a little better at the weblog revival in which we actually show the world the best of our work. My students now are doing most of their work on the Newstalk weblog but my core class is set to decorate up the AE2 weblog; meanwhile, I'd like to do a general upkeep, weeding of the garden. Lots of weeds out there, and broken links in particular. Don't advertise history, unless you can produce it. That's my new motto.

Even the main CESL website is mighty thin & hollow, but the university is going to once again upend the whole system and make all old webpages obsolete. They did it also with the logos (this is an ongoing process), so, I have come to the conclusion that if you want to save a logo, or anything good for that matter, quick, take it and put it on your own territory, or at the very least, free territory. This might be unethical in the case of the logos, but actually, I like a number of them, and would actually like to see the history of logos as well as the history of SIUC online production. Unfortunately this is very difficult given their proclivity to upending the status quo and going for "new looks."

Even linguistics removed the old languages that I'd saved but they did it accidentally and readily agreed when I offered to replace them. Once again I'm thinking, I need my own territory. I finally put the job directory and the tesol directory on my own territory, just so I could use them. I might accidentally create my own Tom's ESL playground just so I can have access to stuff I and others always found useful. The ironic thing is, I don't think anyone at SIUC ever really realized whether or if this stuff had any value. Maybe it doesn't, and is just a drain on one's time. I still maintain, though, that what's on the web is what's real. If you're not there, you might as well not have a phone. The world will go on, but what do you have to show for yourself? I'd like to think, we were, at least at one time, on the map.

My new passion is linguistics, but I'm having trouble getting started, for personal reasons (among them: I'm sick...but also, we've had family sick too)...but, this will happen. It's kind of inevitable given that I can hardly keep up with technology in education; it's moved lightning speed beyond me in every direction. I can barely keep up with the moodle in my own classes (I'm going home to do that, today)...but, with linguistics, I have a passion. And I need to get started...what I wrote in 2006 (on language as a self-organized system) is not only unsharable (I can't seem to manage Google docs well enough to make sure you can read it; however, you should be able to find it by going down the template to research & writing and following the links)...but, it's outdated; I have more to say, and want to put it in book form. This is my passion now. A friend asked me recently: what will inspire you? This will. This, and maybe, if I can get my novel finished...

Another year, on its merry way.

back to work

2011-08-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

2011-08-08T12:39:00.000-07:00

vacation report

2011-08-06T10:24:00.001-07:00

OK OK so I didn't do much over vacation, and did even less upon my return; this place, I recognize, has become somewhat of a ghost blog. I am retooling internally for a linguistics project, but really, I have no excuse. I just needed a vacation. We went way up north, to the north shore of Lake Superior; I had a sore shoulder, so could barely skip a rock (even though there were thousands, all colors) but by the end of the vacation I was able to skip as many as I wanted.

Then, upon my return, I was given a stack of old New York Times which I read in reverse order, most recent first, until just yesterday when I got to Betty Ford's obituary. I kind of got stuck on this article:

Loos, T. (2011, June 22). Squeezing essence from a stone. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/arts/design/lee-ufan-squeezes-essence-from-a-stone.html?pagewanted=all. Accessed 8-11.

which describes a guy who basically sees a lot in various rocks; he sees what they do to the space around them. I loved this article and was unable to throw it away. I don't know if I would call myself a devotee of the "Mono-ha" movement but I'm glad I know more about it today than I did before I left.

Break is about the emptiness of stones on the beach, and the fact that, if you pick up a stone and throw it into the water, you may change the arc of its life for what, 300 years? Whereas, if you pick it up and take it to a museum, or bring it home, you change its arc even more. But hey, in the end, a rock is a rock, and this blog is about language. So I'll get back to work, I promise!

toefl

2011-06-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

Things are pretty busy around here, so I've limited my posts and that's good because, being an old guy and all, I have a lot less interesting material these days. But I did get an interesting phone call in that illuminated me on TOEFL developments, and I thought I'd share that since this is where I keep almost everything I know; my office is so clearly a disaster (see below) that I can no longer find anything that is in writing.

When the TOEFL moved from the paper-based through the CBT (1998) and then to the iBT (2005), we were essentially left behind because we were not made an iBT station; we therefore give and teach the paper-based and my knowledge of the iBT is somewhat limited. It turns out that the new structure of the iBT, with its read-listen-write section, and read-listen-speak section, has students in a kind of a tizzy based on the fact that these are graded by human graders worldwide who have subjective analyses of their ability. And this, according to my sources, makes grammar more important than it had been, partly because a surprising number of subjective decisions at least appear to be made on the basis of grammar. Thus it is now a question of how to teach grammar for the iBT, how to teach grammar as a learn-to-integrate-it-on-the-fly skill.

The TOEFL has become more important, not less, and the Saudi mission now demands its students take one regularly and report the scores; this has made them more TOEFL-crazy, not less.

It turns out we were wrong that the Longman paper-based book was about the only one left on the market, but there is in fact very little left on the market, besides on Amazon or the used book market. And the cd's for the Longman are coming out as digital and easier to get, apparently. I also heard about a Canadian computer thing called Can8, where you can record your own voice and compare it to others; apparently with the read-write-speak you want a good lab to record your voice and analyze it carefully, and all TOEFL classes are of course taught in up-to-date computer labs. How would I record voices in ours? I'm not sure but I know there's a way. The world is leaving me in the dust.

As for good iBT materials, there is plenty out there besides the set of Kaplan books we have around here; I heard of a Longman set, well-respected, Barron's 6th edition, and sets that attempt to combine iBT and paper-based. Bruce Rogers is also well respected although it was unclear to me whether that was an iBT set or what. The question now is how much to put on a CD-rom, and whether to make students lug around a phone book all day to study this stuff. The more online, the better, some people say, since the test is all online anyway. Shrink the book, and make it just a guide to the online tests. But make it clear what the test itself looks like, because that's what the students want to know.

google guitar doodle

2011-06-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

I have always maintained that the three best things on the web are Google, Blogger, and Boggle, but since Google actually owns Blogger, I guess it could be said that there are only two.

Nevertheless the innovation of being able to search a vast database like the web with a very clever and continually improved algorithm like Google has, makes it much better than the other searchers; and, furthermore, its simple yet elegant interface has always been my prime example of the law that, in web design, less is more, or that, to put it another way, the less cluttered a place is, the more it's likely somebody can come to feel at home there.

But something happened this last week that reinforced my general admiration for Google and the people who run it. That was the placement of the google guitar doodle as their logo for a day; it was so popular that they left it, then, for another day. I feel that this doodle, now in its own home, was an innovation that will mark a turning point, eventually, in the development of online musical instruments.

To Google itself, it was just a decoration which they solicit and use regularly to mark significant events; in this case, the birthday of Les Paul, inventor of the guitar. They get people to draw these "doodles," and they save them, and many are quite beautiful and a few have clever innovations like the passing of a shadow over the moon (which appeared later in the week), or, in the case of the guitar, an actual instrument that you could play by using the mouse as you would strum a guitar; you could also press keys to hit the strings individually.

As an instrument, it had a sweet sound, kind of like a cello and banjo combined, which caught my ear and made me want to play it more. It was not organized well from a musician's point of view, but it was sweet and had a nice sound and various chords on various parts of the instrument. I got hooked on it but didn't have time, really, to develop my skills. Nevertheless the world, in particular the people with time on their hands, immediately set to work and created the Star Spangled Banner and a number of other songs, some using the guitar doodle as melody, bass and harmony. Some were quite clever and well done. Google was impressed at the community of music-lovers that it had collected over one innovation, and put the doodle on a separate site where people like me could continue playing with it.

Now the reason I document this is simple. It occurred to me that computer instruments like this are a new kind of instrument. This is not the same really as the moog synthesizer, a kind of modern electronic keyboard that came out in the sixties and supposedly revolutionized rock. This to me had more to do with the combination of mouse sweepover technology with the possibilities of sound creation. What I mean is that as computer has become more sophisticated, with the development of mouse-over technology, the possibilities of making music with different sound qualities and characteristics has really expanded. People aren't really aware of it yet (the guitar doodle is really quite primitive), but when the computer is used to its full potential it will be a new world for those of us who believe that online gives us much more freedom to manipulate time, use of hands, use of petals and like sound-quality adjustors, etc. It's a new world, and I credit Google with at least showing us a window of it.

I know people hate Google for a number of reasons: copying and owning every book in existence, changing the economy to a "giveaway/put online ads on the side" economy which runs everyone broke; ruthless search efficiency, etc. OK OK but I'm not here to argue that stuff. To me Google in the name of blogger has provided me a free pedestal for many years, a place to put pictures and my yapping and my autobiography not to mention my novel as of yet unwritten, and a host of other things. CESL took its web out from under me, and my free photo service folded overnight, but blogger remains true, as does Google, and remains free even to this day. Here's one old-timer who still opens up the web, with everything connected to each other and Google connected to everything, and still considers it a miracle, every single time.

one hot day at SIUC

2011-06-08T13:06:00.000-07:00

article here...

articles

2011-06-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

Dreifus, C. (2011, May 30). The Bilingual Advantage. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html?_r=3&hp. Accessed 6-11.

O'Dea, C. (2011, May 31). No more pencils, no more books: Technology-driven education in NJ schools. http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/11/0530/2255/. NJ Spotlight, accessed 6-11.

Johnson, B. and Maxson McElroy, T. (2011, June). The changing role of the teacher in the 21st century. teachers net gazette 8, 6.http://teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/dr-brad-johnson-tammy-maxson-mcelroy/changing-role-of-the-teacher/. Accessed 6-11.

on the siu campus

2011-06-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

112 update

2011-04-24T19:28:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that my posts are fewer and further between, and there are lots of good reasons for that, not the least of which is teaching 20 hours, furloughs, busy schedule at home, etc. Just not enough time in the day, not enough time on the computer that has my work on it.

But this doesn't mean I've been slouching with my classes. We have been studying intelligence, so I gave groups of students (in two classes) topics that they could choose from and was grateful when they chose topics I liked: a group in each class chose multiliteracies (21st century skills), and another group chose gifted education. Two groups also did educational toys and videos; and one did men vs. women (in IQ).

If you open the links that lie beneath these group titles, you will find students' reading reaction journals which, unfortunately, are sometimes put in the wrong weblogs. Each weblog should ultimately be a collection of articles and links pertaining to that subject, though unfortunately things don't always work out as I'd planned. It has however allowed me to read a bit on the topics.

I was interested in multiliteracies partly because a friend has written extensively on it yet I still wasn't clear exactly what other literacies there were besides the traditional two (reading and writing). Even now, and after reading a number of articles including his (Vance Stevens'), I'm not clear on how to define the different literacies one would surely need as we go into the 21st century. My students went out and actually asked young SIUC students what kind of computer skills we should be teaching our young people; if getting information from the computer and using it involve so much more than just reading and writing, exactly what else is valuable? It seems that evaluating web content is extremely important, and involves a different set of skills than, say, knowing where in a library to find a book; but, those skills, as far as I can tell, are mostly centered around reading itself. Multitasking is an interesting skill, as it's taken a hit in the mainstream media; but, is it really more necessary now than it used to be? Only because we make it so. The young are proud to say they can text and drive, no problem; they can facebook and write a paper, too, all in an hour. We on the other end are pretty sure that both their driving and their paper-writing are not as 100% as they were, say, pre-texting. But they still value multitasking at the driver's license center and studies show it to be one of the (possibly fluid-analytic?) skills that decline with age...as if there is something elemental, and important, involved.

In the area of gifted education I've had a bug under my ear ever since I found out that much of the original research done on it was flawed; in other words, we should not sit around and wait for education schools to tell us what labeling our children in the public schools would do, either to their education, or to them. I suspect that nobody every really thought it out thoroughly, and somehow I'm not surprised. The articles my students turned up showed it was a hot topic in both the USA and Canada; the very first, in Canada, had something like 550 comments on it, mostly negative, though parents freely admit they would always accept a gifted education program for their child (as I have, several times), if offered.

The writing on both topics is interesting, and still coming in; I don't mean to neglect the other two groups either, as they have interesting topics too. Each weblog ultimately will house the story of how they went out, spoke to SIUC students about the topic, and got data about how people felt....should be interesting.

another fotopic disaster

2011-04-24T19:25:00.001-07:00

Time to admit defeat...another photography disaster. This time all my pop art, lost in an unexplainable shutdown of a small British hosting site; it closed down, and gave no explanation, and offered no recompense for people, even if they were paying for premium services. The amateur photography world gets lost in a cloud of "I-told-you-so" backup stories, but my entire backup is pretty much the fact that most of my photography is in some form or another still on my own computers. Ah, well, rebuilding time again.

us out of libya

2011-04-04T19:34:00.000-07:00

I realize this is a language blog and not necessarily the best place for this, but I don't hear anyone saying anything about this "war" and I don't hear any of the things I'm about to say, so somebody needs to say it.

The fact that the US is together with European powers and Canada makes everyone feel confident or complacent but still doesn't help me. Do we have a reason for siding with one tribe or another? Our reason is that Ghaddafi kills people for no reason? We don't like him? We like the other tribe better? Do we even know the name of that other tribe?

I realize that probably someone is studying the situation, and figuring out the name of that tribe, as I write. But it's too late. We've committed millions of dollars, billions, and human lives, to a situation where lots of people have lots at stake totally unrelated to us and we don't know a thing about it, even now. So we want the oil. We should make it a state and just steal the oil, but I guess that wouldn't be polite, would it? So we play these tribes against each other, hoping to side with whichever one can help us with the oil, and, wait, we don't even know the tribes' names?

We moveth too fast. Let's at least figure out if we have any friends in the area.

TESOL report

2011-03-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Leverett, T. (2011). Grammar technology: for better or worse. Internet Fair Classics, TESOL 2011, New Orleans LA USA, March.

I only had one presentation at TESOL this year, and it was repeated from last year, but improved a little, and I learned a lot. I left in a hurry, unable to have talked to my own colleagues, who actually teach more writing than I do these days, and was surprised, when I did finally talk to them (at the convention) that a group of them were seriously considering giving up the computer lab altogether (we can teach writing without the computers: if the distraction of the computer interferes so totally with the writing process, why should we tolerate it?)....the essence of their complaint is that students get caught up in individual words and sentences, often going from the computer they are working on to their phone and back, or to Google translate, translating from native language words, then chunks, then whatever will fit into a machine; they then lose sight of more global issues like development, essay structure, etc. The students' idea is that high quality involves grammatical perfection and if this must be sought constantly, then so be it; they will do what it takes.

My colleagues on the tech side of the equation were equally adamant: writing with computer gives us more writing, more revising, better writing, better revising; the research has been clear over the years. Furthermore writing with pen or pencil puts other issues such as handwriting in our laps which we don't really want, and finally, the obvious observation that since all writing is done by computers these days, it is silly to set up what is essentially a false or unrealistic writing environment in which their product will be unlike any other thing they will ever write.

But by far the most interesting observation is that whatever distractions computers provide, computers can also remove the distractions, or at the very least minimize them, so that if you want to concentrate on paragraph-level or essay-level production, you simply remove the ability to go back and forth (clicking on words, checking the internet, using a cell phone or PDA, etc.). For example, alphasmart.com makes keyboard drafting tools, common in elementary school and places where online access is limited but many keyboards are necessary anyway; they can be bought cheaply and even restored easily (this colleague does this regularly); and, students can then, with a simple keyboard, write first, upload later.

I hadn't really thought of this, having been more caught up in the grammatical aspect of what students do with the technology. My main questions: How does the technology affect their writing? How does it affect their learning? and How does it affect the language?? - I got some interesting responses to. Many had opinions about Word's grammar-check - one said that Word 2010 was worse than Word 2003 (I would like to know how, but that's a question for later...), and there was plenty of support for my main suppositions: that grammar technology snuck up on us, like Spell-check; that it was designed for native speakers and thus not always doing exactly what our students need; that students' using it at every level has its consequences that teachers must be aware of and deal with; that knowing what will be more difficult for our students (as a result of technology's influence), and what will be easier, or no longer as important, will be crucial for the future of our profession.

On that note I pointed out to several people that I was surprised that writing teachers weren't beating down my door trying to better manage the technology they are already seeing people use constantly. In fact some people did go quite a ways out of their way to find me and get my advice (my handouts are available at the link above) and in general it was a productive session, well worth an eight-hour drive down through the bootheel, and the entire state of Mississippi.

tesol convention

2011-03-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

Going to New Orleans?

First, go to the Saluki Reunion, 3-5 FR, Mulates, 210 Julia St.

Second, consider some of these:

TESOL Blog: to keep you informed
http://blog.tesol.org/
(hope you don't have to be a member to read it)

Frenchman St.-a place for music
http://blog.tesol.org/tesol-convention-blog/frenchman-street-for-live-music-in-the-marigny
Marigny

pittsburghese

2011-02-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

Peterson, R. (2011, Feb. 13). Is yunz is or is yinz ain't from Pittsburgh? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11044/1124805-109.stm. Accessed 2-11.

Both some old friends of mine, and my brother, sent me this article, which ironically was written by a guy here in Carbondale; surely, if he's from Pittsburgh, and he's been here in town so long, I must know him. It's well-known that I have strong feelings about this dialect and would be interested in any article about it, and I am also interested in the pursuit of pronouns like "yunz" (or "yins" or "you'ns" as the case may be) just as a matter of principle.

The article brings up a number of points, not all of which I entirely agree with. One is the suggestion that routine shortening of expressions is a Pittsburgh-dialect thing: a lot of this shortening, I would say, is quite common everywhere. Who doesn't use "wanna" or shorten "ing" words to "in" words (going to -> goin' to, snowing -> snowin', losing -> losin')? The first step, it seems to me, is to separate out what is truly Pittsburghese from what is just general laziness of the mouth which we are all guilty of.

Now an argument is to be made that Pittsburghers will shorten some things in some ways that are not common to other areas or other people; ok, I accept that. So, maybe "slippery -> slipp'y" is common to the Pittsburgh dialect but not to others (one example of this would be that Iowans often would say "probably -> pro'ly" in such a way that I always thought was uniquely Iowan). It would make sense that certain shortened forms would be commonly enough heard to be just taken, after a while, as part of the local dialect. And, that they wouldn't be shortened that way in other places. One common example of this is in cases where certain towns or cities put a word in the language much more often in one area than in another (so that, when there is a town of Slippery Rock, people have many more occasions to use the word, and so are more likely to shorten it). We here in southern Illinois have some unusual town names and can attest to this.

I agree with him that the correct pronunciation of "yunz" is closer to "yunz" than "yinz" but a better way of saying this would be that it's the vowels that make Pittsburghese a thoroughly unique dialect, and the vowels are almost impossible to do justice to in English orthographic script. "Yunz" is in fact the most salient of Pittsburghese words, so it's good to hear that people are using it again, and calling themselves "yunzers," etc. although there is a measure of pretentiousness in that. Pittsburgh is the only large city in a large mountain area (that includes smaller cities like Knoxville, Charlestown WV, maybe Roanoke VA & a few others) but it's a fairly extensive area with a truly unique accent. An old story from Kentucky holds that a man is in a doctor's office, stalled temporarily holding a jar with his wife's urine; when asked if it is urine, he says, "no, it's ma wife's"...this story points out that such pronouns as "his'n", her'n", your'n", our'n" and even "their'n" were all possible if not common in the mountains for quite some time (I'm not sure of this, but would like to know more); ironically the only true survivor is "thine". I'd also like to know to what extent these pronouns could be plural (the writer says, one could hear "yunzes"; it reminds me a little of the arguments around "y'all", "all-of-y'all", etc.)

The one assertion that fascinates me is the idea that a dialect, in this case Pittsburghese, could have more shortening, or be more clipped, merely because so many of its speakers work hard labor in the hot mills day in and day out. OK, here's the question: to what extent does one's environment really affect one's speaking patterns? I will buy the general idea that people in the south, say, speak more slowly than people on the east coast, possibly because of the long, hot, sultry summers make the general pace of life slower. Maybe I'll buy it. But some southern vowels are shorter (I -> ah) than their northern counterparts. Iowans shorten some things that Pittsburghers don't. Wouldn't these changes run throughout the dialect? In other words, if southerners had uniformly slower speech/more drawn-out vowels due to their environment, wouldn't that show up in all the vowels? Just askin'.

So, in conclusion, I don't really have a complaint with Dr. Peterson's article, except that he may have attributed some things to Pittsburghese that really are better characterized as routine, conversational, everyone-ese. I was disappointed that there was no mention of "gum bands," (known in the rest of the world as "rubber bands", which to me always represented the essence of the dialect; to this day, I insist, to my kids' bemusement, that there is no such thing as "rubber bands." But to me, way out in the hinterlands as I am, there is no hanging on to the curious vowels; I can no longer replicate those accurately, even when I want to. I'll stick my neck out here and say, these vowels are highly unique and unusual; they are common to a whole mountain region and therefore not attributable to a work-in-the-mills environment; and, that in general, most dialectal variation is just the way things are (what people, in groups, choose to do together) rather than attributable to specific environmental conditions. There is nothing specifically steel-mill about "Souseside" dialect, though hearing it sure brings associations with it, so you can practically feel the slag, under your feet, when people use it.

2011-02-03T21:31:00.000-08:00

2011-02-03T21:29:00.000-08:00

2011-01-24T09:27:00.000-08:00

welcome back salukis

2011-01-24T08:56:00.000-08:00

thank you for your cupertino

2011-01-17T17:08:00.000-08:00

OK so it started with that first article: Mr. Zimmer says that Cupertinos, which are wrong words offered by your spell-checker, have been around for a while, are increasing due to the frequency of mobile devices, and have the capacity to be very interesting. It also comes out in digging up the history, that the name Cupertino, though a city in California that is ironically the home of Apple, has been the name for these (I have called them spell-check absurdities) since long ago, when in Europe, early spell-checks did not have the unhyphenated cooperation and could only change it to Cupertino...read it and weep.

The series of articles brings up a number of points, besides his, which I generally agree with. I in fact have been studying this phenomenon for a while with a couple of added twists: that spell-check was not made for international learners, and in fact has trouble with their irregular data; that spell-check and grammar-check influence not only their writing but also their learning, that there is such a thing as a grammar cupertino (you read it here first)...and finally that the changing world of correction algorithms will influence the world for years to come but will probably help our students last, since their errors are so uncommon yet at the same time systematic and egregious.

Let's take the last one first. Granted, their algorithms are more sophisticated than they used to be: that's why it's hard for us to believe, today, that a computer could mistake Cupertino for cooperation. One of the best examples is when it changes definately to defiantly because the algorithm says, reverse the letters first, before you assume that they got the wrong vowel. But that algorithm can be changed if, 99% of the time, they got the wrong vowel. And their data shows that that is in fact what is happening. I won't go into why what our students type in is so different from what your average American poor-speller types in. Therein, however, lies the rub.

Here's a grammar cupertino. Student types in "We like each others." Grammar-check checks with its loads of data, and comes back and says, 99% of times when each other has an -s, it has an apostrophe. Student changes it, on advice, to "We like each other's"...We now have a grammatical structure that is legitimate (in its own right) - but absolutely in the wrong place, and not what the student means. It creates an error the teacher has no idea how to deal with (What does he mean? Where did the apostrophe come from?) - and one that would never have been generated naturally by other means.

Why do I refuse to capitalize cupertino? Well, if I ever go to the city, I'll capitalize it. But I think, if we're talking about words, and it's a word, we're better off if we just bring it down to my level right from the start. I'd never heard the word until this weekend, but I was delighted to find it, because, as I've said, it's up my alley in terms of what I study. Which reminds me, a whole vacation I spent restoring my own work - dozens of articles, some of them antiquated; nonetheless, if you're interested, read 'em & weep. The newest, Negotiate with the elephant, is on this very topic; I just wrote it, what, maybe Tuesday. My wife suspected that it was about living with someone who wouldn't lose weight, but I disabused her of that misperception.

Zimmer, B (2011, Jan. 13). Auto (in)correct. New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/magazine/16FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=1. Accessed 1-11.

Zimmer, B. (2006, Oct. 2). The Cupertino effect strikes again. Language Log. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003629.html. Accessed 1-11.

Zimmer, B. (2007). When Spellcheckers Attack: Perils of the Cupertino effect. OUPblog (Oxford University Press): From A to Zimmer. http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/spellchecker/. Accessed 1-11.

more on Tunisia

2011-01-15T17:25:00.000-08:00

Lynch, M. (2011, Jan. 15). Tunisia and the new Arab media space. Abu Aardvark's Middle East blog. http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/15/tunisia_and_the_new_arab_media_space.

Zuckerman, E. (2011, Jan. 14). The First Twitter Revolution? Foreign Policy. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/14/the_first_twitter_revolution

dialects of araby

2011-01-15T16:38:00.000-08:00

The world watches Tunisia because people are gathering in front of the presidential palace; the president leaves; it's a revolution, and it appears to have been spawned or at least encouraged by Facebook, Twitter and the social media. But there are some key differences between what's happening in Tunisia and what happened in Iran a summer or two back. One: the government won in Iran, leading everyone to deny that they were ever on Twitter, ever fomented anything, ever had anything to do with the social media. Two: very few of us understood Farsi, so we saw people in the street but had very little idea what they were saying. Of course, we don't understand Tunisian Arabic either, though some know French...well, you get the idea; we're trying to figure out what's going on; we're bystanders.

Now I do know a little about Araby, also known as ASCII Arabic, Chat Arabic, or the Arabic Chat Alphabet (see below). Our Saudi students often write their chat in entirely English letters and numbers (I often called it 3/5/7 chat, though it has more than three numbers in it), regardless of the fact that they would be at computers where everyone had Arabic script on both sides, without question. Long after all computers could switch over to Arabic script, on Facebook, in computer labs and elsewhere, some young Saudis and Arabic speakers preferred to use Araby....even on Facebook, even in the more permanent media.

So now here comes the interesting part. One watches the Tunisians reply on Facebook and comment about the overthrow of their government. Their Araby is clearly different from Saudi-dialect Araby; it's thoroughly mixed with French, and influenced by French. It's a chat dialect, and it raises a lot of questions to me as I try to interpret chat dialects. I've interviewed students about Araby, but I believe I've misplaced my notes; I'm not sure I can recall them. Here are some of the interesting questions I've been mulling over:

There is an obvious element of choice, when to use it, when to use standard Arabic, or (in the case of Tunisians), when to simply use French or another common language. How is this choice made? Why are so many still choosing Araby?

How different is Tunisian Araby really from other dialects of Araby? Something I read stated that Araby was started really, and was extremely popular, in Lebanon and Jordan. But I'm curious: does it exist in the entire Arabic world? And in what populations is it most popular? Its obvious association with the west would make me believe that, as people have told me: it's the young; it's the westward-leaning; it's hip and modern, and, yes, the older generation doesn't understand it.

Palfreyman says at one point that the Ascii Arabic dialects are considered the best windows into local dialects of Arabic, which are generally written in standard Arabic only, and thus not really represented as they are spoken. Would it be possible that Araby gives the writer a better shot at writing as he/she speaks (given, of course, that both speakers know all letters/numbers, and are willing to use it)?

As I stick my nose in Tunisians' business I'll be watching for these answers and will try to put it in writing. I can say one thing: messages are coming into some Facebook sites rapidly, several a minute. The messages themselves, intended for the widest possible audience, are rarely in Araby; the comments often are. I haven't been on Twitter much; I'll try to report on that too. Stay tuned.

Leverett, T. (2008). Asciized chat, thomas leverett weblog. http://tomleveretts.blogspot.com/2008/10/asciiized-chat.html.

Palfreyman, D. and al Khalil, M. (2003, Nov.). "A Funky Language for Teenzz to Use": Representing Gulf Arabic in Instant Messaging. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 9 (1). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue1/palfreyman.html. Accessed 10-08.

Arabic chat alphabet, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet

3arabi, Arabic chat to English translator. http://3arabi.site.co.il/

Grammar technology survey

2011-01-06T16:58:00.000-08:00

Teachers! Learners! I need you both! I need your honest opinion about the kinds of grammar technology that are part of our everyday world. These include:
electronic bilingual dictionaries
Spell-check, which is part of Word, built in to most programs
Grammar-check, which is also part of Word, but easier to ignore, since the lines are green, instead of red;
Online grammar-check helpers, such as Microsoft's ESL Assistant, offered to students for free;
Online language translators, which take entire bodies of text and translate them, word for word

Learners - have you been learning for long? I need your honest opinions. Thanks for helping! If you'd like to see the results, write!

Click here to take Grammar technology/Learners survey

Teachers - bear with me, this is my first survey, but I need your opinions. Thanks for helping! If you'd like to see the results, write!

Click here to take Grammar technology/Teacher's survey

publications

2011-01-03T08:38:00.000-08:00

These have now appeared online:

Leverett, T. (2010, June). Add me: Facebook and the international student. Global Study Magazine, 6, 1, pp. 66=69. Available online: http://www.globalstudymagazine.com/site/articles/507/.

Leverett, T. (2009, Sept.). Zoom in, zoom out. Global Study Magazine, 5, 3. Available online: http://www.globalstudymagazine.com/site/articles/507/.

There is a very recent one that I'm still looking for; it hasn't been published yet, that I know of.

articles

2011-01-01T08:26:00.000-08:00

Bounds, G. (2010,) How handwriting trains the brain, Wall Street Journal Online. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704631504575531932754922518.html. Accessed 1-11.

Neary, L. (2010, Dec. 15). Kids books make the leap off the page and online. NPR. http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132057619/kids-books-make-the-leap-off-the-page-and-online. Accessed 1-11.

Social networking 'damaging schoolwork', say teachers. (2010, Nov. 10). BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11797511. Accessed 1-11.

Hoffman, J. (2010, Dec. 4). As Bullies Go Digital, Parents Play Catch-Up. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/us/05bully.html?_r=2&ref=facebook_inc. Accessed 1-11.

congrats to 2010 grads

2010-12-30T08:39:00.000-08:00

Once again I have congratulated former CESL students and teachers who graduated from SIUC. It is good to see friends and students graduate, but a problem with the process is that I'm not always sure if I missed someone, or included someone accidentally.

If I have missed you or included you accidentally, please contact me here. My apologies in advance!

I am considering giving away this duty; people in the office can do it better, and have more time. If this is possible, this will be my last time. I can still change or delete previous posts, though.

Thanks and again, congratulations!

2010-12-09T11:10:00.000-08:00

2010-11-29T11:23:00.001-08:00

2010-11-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

2010-11-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

2010-11-08T09:49:00.000-08:00

2010-10-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

trends in online education

2010-10-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

A group of friends of mine, the webheads, are international online educators. Every week they use Adobe Connect or Elluminate to create an online learning environment and discuss one topic or the other, in the process becoming more familiar with online learning environments, where groups of educators can hear each other, see each other, share a chat venue on the side, use a mutual whiteboard feature, or even use the centrally-shared middle section to surf the web together and see what is out there.

Now many of these people are online educators anyway, and if you are in the business of havign online classes with people thousands of miles away, this is what you do, and you get used to it, I'm sure. The trend I'd like to address involves people like me, who don't use this stuff in their everyday classes, but nevertheless find that these online venues offer an attractive feature: the ability to really relate to anyone regardless of geography. If I really become used to the idea that I or my students could talk to anyone at any time, then I would steadily match my students up with experts in any number of fields and hold class discussions. Wouldn't I?

The other trend is going in the opposite direction. Educators at my state university are being pressured to put more and more of their course materials online. If you run a class in, say, sociology, why not just make the material available online, so that the class could be pitched and sold to 260 million or more people who could then enroll at our university without necessarily bothering to move to our town...it makes a certain amount of sense, financially, especially in a place where the dorms and the smallness of the town were not high selling points of the university in general. But the faculty here as elsewhere is showing resistance. For one thing, it may seem like they are being asked to provide something for nothing, although maybe the university is thinking of paying them for it, I'm not sure. for another, a new set of skills is clearly required: not only using and finding ways to communicate online, but also passing and grading papers online, managing tools like Elluminate and Adobe Connect, etc. Teachers have a universal instinct to not use anything in their class that they haven't themselves first mastered. And that instinct is kicking in.

The interesting thing is that the trends, though opposite, will actually converge. Some mainstream teachers will master the tools and lead others down the path to using them. Universities will stop trying to get something for nothing and will employ those people who use the tools successfully to lead the way with others. A final trend that we see, that I haven't mentioned, is that the reputation of online education as somewhat fly-by-night, cheaper than thou, will probably slowly but surely move to the mainstream also. I think we academics hear about degrees from University of Phoenix or some such place that we just saw advertised on an online site, and a kind of prejudice kicks in. I'm not sure if this is shared worldwide, nationwide, or just regionally; my guess is that it's a fairly widespread prejudice. My question is whether this prejudice is lifting or easing up over time, so that, essentially, all education could be moved online and thus free parents of the odious prospect of sending their children off to some alcohol-drenched dorm at the ripe age of 18, when their judgment does not match their enthusiasm for socializing. Of course, it's kind of a rite of passage in our culture, to leave home, move to a dorm, find a new town and area to live in. But it's an increasingly expensive rite of passage, and technology has made the thousands-per-month outlay unnecessary for people who are basically looking at four years of dependence, or at the very least being unable to work full time or truly support themselves. A more reasonable balance between being able to work and being able to slowly increase one's education and qualifications would be and ideal way to fix a system where basically, things have been unbalanced for a little too long.

I don't know my point here: whether I still advocate that all teachers learn to use Elluminate and Adobe connect (your grandchildren's classrooms, as one article pointed out); whether it is the solution to SIUC's ongoing recruitment/retention debate; whether it is the solution to society's growing impatience with the alcohol-drenched 18-year-old rite of passage; or finally, whether it is just huge megatrends, going somewhere like tanker ships in a crowded bay, with nobody in charge and no likely outcome until years to come when the dust will presumably settle on a new configuration, for public education or at least college education. Numbers and statistics will show what people are doing and where they are going for their educations; I no longer collect these statistics. Nevertheless, the writing is on the wall (the whiteboard) so to speak.

Those who stand idly on the banks of change, will ultimately be swept off with the rest, when the river rises around them, and they see that resisting the trends will take too much work, kind of like refusing to have a phone, or a cell phone. It may become too hard to buck the trend.

article collection

2010-10-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

immigration

Miller Llana, S. (2010, Oct. 9). Global doors slam shut on immigrants. Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2010/1009/Global-doors-slam-shut-on-immigrants. Accessed 10-10.

accents

McClone, M. & Breckinridge, B. Why the brain doubts a foreign accent. Scientific American. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-brain-doubts-accent&sc=emailfriend. Accessed 10-10.

using moodle

2010-10-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

Phelps, W. (2010, Oct.) Using Moodle. CESL Colloquium, Language Media Center, So. Illinois University.

Since I am the organizer of the CESL Colloquium, I post this to show that it happened, but more importantly, in order to save my own notes for future reference. A lot is going on in this area, and much of what was said could be explored further or better explained. These are merely my presentation notes.

Moodle is a CMS (classroom management system) or a VLE (virtual learning environment) and is a huge database that must be downloaded onto your server before it's of any use. It is like Blackboard, which costs universities upwards of $100,000 per year but which is plagued with problems, to the extent that teachers who rely on it are begging to know more about Moodle, which is free, and open source. Our university uses Blackboard and actually pays people to explain it & teach teachers how to use it. CESL however uses Moodle since our students are not technically university students, thus are locked out of Blackboard. Full professors even in our own hallway ask me about Moodle and want to know how it can be accessed.

Moodle was originally a PhD dissertation project of a guy, Martin Dougiamas, who was working on WebCT at the time. The first version, 1.0, appeared in 1999; now they are at 1.9.9 + and working on 2.0 which may come out in December or soon after. There is a consortium of people who work on it. It was described as "like a Ponzi scheme only everyone shares information instead of money, and it's easier to get to the top of it."
If you innovate or write code that people approve of, it gets integrated into Moodle; an example is the code that allows us to do attendance. This was an interesting sidelight, by the way; most of us teachers consider complex attendance numbering (ok, we give 2 pts/class hour, but we sometimes have 2.5 hours a day) the bane of our existence. But it is a challenge to Moodle programmers, and someone in Russia had figured it out (but, unfortunately, explained it in Russian)...Moodle is available in 88 different languages (better than BB, not as good as Wikipedia)...50,000 people or groups are using it in 210 countries. One TA here at SIUC was impressed by it in her short time at CESL, so downloaded it onto her own server, and continued to use it in her teaching elsewhere.

The presentation went over what it does; how to get answers; how to figure out how to use it; how to use its forums; how to upload links, movies, papers, assignments, etc.; how to use functions that it has such as Chat, Choice, Database, Forum, Glossary, Lesson, Quiz, SCORM/AICC, Survey, and Wiki; how and where you can download it (must have MYSQL and PhP) and even the hosts (BlueHost and JustHost) one might use to get one's own web server. Finally we also got to see Bill's own domain and his family's favorite youtube, Hey ya, by Obadiah Parker.

cahokia

2010-09-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

It started out with me showing these two YouTubes in my class:

Cahokia - Mound builders - 500 Nations
and
KETC - Living St. Louis - Cahokia Archaeologists

A couple of details in them stuck in my craw; in the first, it was the suggestion that legends told by the Caddo, a tribe in Louisiana, would be related to the mound builder culture, and that their leader, a sun god, gave a string of commands that sounded like the ten commandments to the people of Cahokia. In the second, it was the fact that only 1% had actually been uncovered; that they had only been working on it for about 50 years, and that one could, in the shadow of interstates we know well, dig the earth oneself and find relics to connect to this culture.

So I spent some time over the weekend finding more:

Ancient Cahokia: Metropolitan life on the Mississippi, Washington Post
Mound 72: UMW Archaeological Laboratory
Status and gender differences in diet at Mound 72; JAA
Sacrificial virgins of the Mississippi, Salon Magazine
The Kassly Birdman Tablet

There were a number of things here that I couldn't believe. There is plenty written about the Cahokia culture, which flourished at about 1000-1100 but was around much longer; it did apparently have a strong leader, and there were, apparently, human sacrifices. They had contact with peoples as far away as the Rockies, the Gulf, Canada, the Carolinas, and the Great Lakes; they traded for shells and metals that they used ornamentally and for other purposes. Their city, now part of East St. Louis, was the largest in the Americas for over a thousand years, but was unconnected, as far as we know, to great empires in Mexico and South America.

Our unit was on artifacts, so we began talking about the actual things that were found there and nearby. One was the "Birdman tablet" which was found near Valmeyer IL around 2000 and given to a museum. The Bird man became a symbol of Cahokia as it was noticed that it played a role in their theology; while the bird man was good and represented order, light and good, the serpent was bad and represented the earth, chaos and the weeds that join the two. They alledgedly had a dualistic religion and the sun god, presumably, was tight with the bird man figure; they were aligned.

Back when I was in high school I got mad when our history class started with the arrival of Columbus and more or less floated right above the thousands of years of history that preceded it. When I questioned the teacher I found out what they knew: very little. These people still don't really have a name (Cahokia is a misnomer, belonging to a Kaskaskia tribe that came along later), and at the time I was in school, they were just making their first digs. But, when DeSoto came up from the Gulf, the Mississippians who remained (Cahokia was already covered with grass) turned back the Spanish, and other Native Americans came up and down the Mississippi for hundreds of years after their disappearance (they disappeared for unknown reasons between 1200 and 1300) until the first French started coming down the river, and even then didn't see the mounds. St. Louis was known as "Mound City" for years, but how many of these mounds have been studied systematically? How many other "bird man tablets" are out there? There's no way of knowing.

The web is full of speculation about where they came from, how they were connected to other world people, etc. It also has facts about what they've found, in Mound 72 and elsewhere, and some people have gone to lengths to document what they could see, generally by going to the historic center with a camera. It's not like anyone is hiding any of this stuff. But a major US city has been built around their empire, and in the process covered almost everything. In one story a man was building his swimming pool in a tract house in the 40s, and dug right into the main plaza of Cahokia. In another they moved the various interstates to accommodate what they knew, but still built a major intersection, 70 & 255, right over an important part; one archaeologist actually saw a bulldozer encounter one of the prize finds, a woman/serpent combination. You encounter the archaeologists and anthropologists, sometimes disagreeing with the methods of others, decrying the general lack of interest of the people of the area in the civilizations of years past.

A friend here lives down by the river which is known locally as "the bottoms"; in my reading, the area around Cahokia is knows as "the American Bottom." She says arrowheads are quite common in her family's farming experience, and appear every time it rains hard; in addition, there are a number of mounds that people simply farm around, not wanting to disturb an obvious grave area. This brings up a central problem of archaeology, to me: how do you justify rummaging through somebody's grave, even if they are over a thousand years old? Yet, if you don't, how do you learn everything you want to learn?

The second question of archaeology is this: they seem to assume that humans got more complex, more hierarchical, with time, as if egalitarian were the way of the primitive, back-to-nature tribes of the distant past, but only with European conquest did we get social classes, government, and progress. This is nonsense. Some of these things, government, cities, taxes, hierarchy, bureaucracy, etc. seem to be as old as humans themselves. One of the running theories about the decline of Cahokia is that egalitarian prairie life simply became more attractive to people, and they left; if so, it shows that people always will vote with their feet, and any culture will only last as long as it can maintain its attractive appearance. The question remains: what things about people's existence in these cultures are subject to what we know as progress? After all, we now look at human sacrifice as abhorrent, primitive, and barbaric. Yet the state of Virginia just executed a woman, and we still fight wars in which we bomb villages and whole encampments of Taliban, or whoever. I'm not claiming that our wars are the same as the sacrifice of young women in Mound 72; I'm not even sure we know what that was all about. But, another thousand years, somebody might look at Tamms (small-town home of Illinois' "Super-Max") and its highway sign (A Nice Place to Live), along with other archaeological finds from the local cemetery, and wonder, what kind of civilization was this, anyway?

2010-09-20T09:48:00.000-07:00

go salukis!

2010-09-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

texting

2010-09-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

Not to point out the obvious, but a lot has been happening on the texting front lately. First, the fact that it's a huge hazard on the road has distracted people from the other aspects of the situation. A wretched accident in town the other day was presumed to be caused by a texter, and it may well be true that a good 20-30% of traffic in a town like this (where 70-80% of drivers are between 18 and 25) are distracted, either by calling or texting; this leads to an enormous amount of bad driving, and it frustrates the remaining minority who do pay attention. But that's not what concerns me; it's obvious, to me, that this is a problem; my only question is, when will technology be able to prevent texting while driving (or reserve it for emergencies, when it is most useful)?

Second, and this to me is more interesting: obviously people are texting more than they're writing. Obviously abbreviations like b/c, s/one, @ and b4 are slipping into more standard venues of ordinary English (for example, teachers writing on blackboards, or people writing memos or notes to each other); this is because, when you write b/c a million times a week, and because only a thousand, and you're in a neutral, or nonjudgmental enviornment where either could be acceptable, you'll tend toward what you come to consider the default...and chat becomes the default in this case. So the language changes slowly but surely.

In addition texting has these emoticons - :P , :-) , ;-) , too numerous to mention, and these have a life of their own and are even quite different from culture to culture; perhaps more amazing is that cultures with their own languages often share these, so that for example, Korean chat and English chat have certain emoticons in common, though there could be shades of meaning-difference from culture to culture. My point is that there is a world of research to be done in sub-languages, language development, etc. and some very interesting generalizations could arise as a result of watching what people do and come up with in a situation where virtually anything goes. It's true, they tend to start with the grammar at least of a common language; they shorten whenever possible and whenever the person at the other end can understand easily; it's true that they make assumptions about the universality of emoticons and such, assumptions that are probably often false; it's true also that, as texting moves from simply a medium for isolated phone encounters, between people who already know each other well, to a generalized medium used by many, among many, for many purposes, it takes on a more generalized character where a large number of symbols and abbreviations are mutually understood.

This may be more apparent in a town that for all intents and purposes has a large university but virtually nothing else; our 18-25 population is almost 90%, or seems that way; people everywhere seem to be texting, while they walk, while they stand around, while they are in line at the post office. Another language develops in our midst. It seems to be a constant preoccupation, as if real-life f2f talking no longer does the trick.

105 arrives

2010-09-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

It's a busy time; I'll be the first to say, I'm letting this poor blog rust a little in the fall dew. A lot of personal issues keep me occupied; at work, I'm the new grammar coordinator (see below) which brings an enormous material-shuffling responsibility which I'm not quite caught up on. For a variety of reasons I'm way behind on everything, but I thought I'd comment on the aspects of the world that I see rushing by like rocks in a river that one is rafting on.

Google docs - my first apology is for not putting my writing on google docs better, more clearly, more cleanly; I need a lesson, and haven't had time to get it. I'm a fan of google (this blog remains, years after others have faded or become unavailable)...and I've found no better place to put things. But I haven't had time.

Facebook - CESL Facebook continues to be quite a sleepy spot, with few new pictures and an occasional ungrammatical post. As some students post great pictures on their own sites, I don't even link to them or point them out. Why should I? Would this really help CESL? Or are we better off having a sleepy, but decent, spot?

In the larger picture, Facebook now has a "Places" option and once again makes you part of it whether you're aware of it or not, and you have to be well aware of all the privacy controls on the inside of your account, to change anything. With this "places" option any of your friends can know exactly where you are (and why, again, would I want this?)...and this of course assumes that all our friends have secure accounts, which are not subject to the kind of tampering that makes one of my friends, already, try to sell me some kind of spam junk. No, I'm sure all my friends are ok, and so are theirs, and theirs, although I'm also aware that quite a few accounts have been broken into. But, again, why would I want all these people to know where I am, all the time?

Grammar as a discrete topic - We remain one of a minority of programs which teach grammar as separate from writing, speaking, etc. Our students remain grammar-challenged at the top, whether that be because they were grammar-challenged to begin with, because a discrete class doesn't help them (and even hurts them???)...or because whatever we've been doing, we haven't been doing well. I intend to find out and advocate for the best solution (furthermore, I'm interested in your opinion). I have the chance to put into practice several fundamental aspects of my philosophy: 1) grammar is more about applying principles when making sentences, than about filling in the proper form in a blank; 2) grammar is not rocket science; if the vast majority of American children can understand and learn it, adults can too; 3) when adults learn a complete system, questions about the big picture are inevitable, but answering these questions is basically a distraction from the problem at hand, which is stated in #1; and, finally, 4) every class must keep the big picture in mind, even while rushing through minor grammar points, pressuring the students, getting them to learn single isolated patterns; the big question is, are they taking everything they have learned, and using it successfully? I say, if we haven't applied these principles successfully, then we haven't tested out whether a discrete grammar class can help a program. And I intend to try.

Self-organized system theory - I've done virtually nothing about this, being too busy. Too bad. It's a theory dying to be spelled out. And it may have to wait until I retire!

Google Wave - Came and went, without me even trying it. Too bad! If I had designed it, it would have had more pop art in it, I suppose.

Nings - seem to be out of the picture. Again, I barely knew what they were. My yahoo e-mail address was cancelled, because I didn't log on enough. Free things are taken away, faster than you can sign up for them. My new philosophy is: simplify! Either that, or log on regularly, just as a matter of course.

TESOL 2011 - Love New Orleans, love TESOL, might miss them both. Sorry! I did make proposals. But I always do, and my faith in their innovative character is running a little low.

Weblogs - I still use them. But there is so little interest from the rest of the faculty that I barely keep them current. I am having trouble, in fact, keeping them presentable, when students more often post on the wrong ones than the right ones; when students confuse it with the moodle, etc. To me there is still great benefit in making work public. The light and the air hit it. People see it and read it. It becomes part of the scenery; it shows what we do, what we read and what we write. I'm proud of that. But I apparently am a voice in the wilderness here. And even with the advent of mass spamming (which plagues the blogspot system), it's still worth it.

Moodle - a great system here has spared me from whining and moaning about Blackboard and its monopolistic byzantine system. Instead, full professors are whining and moaning about Blackboard, and we are using a system called Moodle which is working well, downloaded for free. It's kind of like the way the university switched over from a private e-mail server that cost tens of thousands, to g-mail, which was free, and wondered for years how that was even possible. But it was, and they did it. This system also is plagued with some spamming; people need to figure out how to get these porn junkies off of the interstate. But in every other way, it seems to be a huge, and wonderful, innovation in the world of education. It's a system, a meeting place, a glass window showing everyone everything. Both enlightening, and dangerous.

death by stoning, ground zero

2010-08-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

By far the high point of the term (104) at least as far as weblogging is concerned was a comment produced by Mesfer's article report justifying Iran's right to follow its own laws without regard to pressure from the rest of us. At first I was surprised at myself, that I had read what he had written and merely corrected the grammar, without worrying that he would put it online and draw such a comment. He was, after all, saying that it's ok to stone a woman publicly; how callous I am, that I could read that, and basically say nothing. The commenter (Lovely and Talented) at least pointed out the obvious objection that the rest of the world might have to this situation.

In the situation I'm in, I've become so war-weary from the cultural battleground's missiles, that I often let this go by, and simply let my students face the music themselves; after all, they knew this was a public forum, and that anyone could respond; they know they are in the west, and that what they write can and will be read. I'm proud of that. I don't need to protect them from that.

My idea about Ground Zero is this: This is an important place, and always will be. This entire neighborhood should be opened up, and religious organizations should be encouraged to build here: all religious organizations. Make it a world center religious marketplace; make it a tourist venue. Our pride and our identity is that we are better than the narrow ideology that made this site famous originally.

I don't mean to confuse the issue; the Iranian government, though it may have supported terrorism in some cases, is not the same as the nineteen guys who actually blew up the World Trade Center and were responsible for the deaths of thousands. Nor are either the same as the people who plan the Ground Zero mosque, or my well-meaning student, who just feels that the west should stop telling Muslim countries how to run their countries. The mosque controversy has struck a nerve not because people feel they are the same, or because they don't care. It has struck a nerve because they feel instinctively that it is now sacred ground, and that we should move carefully with every step.

And this is why the mayor of New York has a huge problem. On the one hand, he cannot deny the Mosque funders, and still maintain that we are a free country, open to all religions and faiths. But he can annex land, declare it part of a national sanctuary, systematically negotiate to annex all land nearby, open it to all religions, the highest bidders first, charge annual rent to maintain city-run, open-to-all-faiths religious tourist facilities, and create a world-famous area that would draw millions. Actually, New York draws millions anyway; it does this because it is, by itself, a diverse collection of cultures and beliefs all placed in close proximity.

Whenever cultures come together, there is conflict; I speak from experience. New York City is living proof that this conflict can actually make us stronger and better. We cannot back down from accepting the diversity that makes the fabric of our city and our nation. Instead, we should embrace it, implant it in our heart, and then invite the world to walk in our streets.

2010-07-30T11:48:00.001-07:00

picnic

2010-07-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

2010-07-29T12:21:00.001-07:00

Ladies' Night
Benefit for a Dog Park
Murphysboro Activity Center
(old Elks Club)
1401 Walnut St. Murphysboro
6-9 Tonight

Yours truly (Parsley & Sagebrush Band)
providing musical entertainment

2010-07-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

what's shaking

2010-07-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

The complete and utter silence of this blog may be a disappointment if by any chance you have been relying on me to keep you up on educational technology, happenings at CESL, Facebook and its use by universities, etc. Most likely you have other sources, though, so I'm not losing sleep over this. The fact is, I've been taken up by personal problems and reorganization issues; on top of that, it's been very hot here and that tends to slow me down a bit. This blog will just have to be a bit sleepier; that's all. But here's a little of what really is going on behind the scenes:

reorganization: as you can see from the two links below, even replacing what used to be on the cesl web is complicated, depending on whether you publish a web page or a document, and since it's a large organizational problem, I thought I'd study it before I decide where to put volumes of my work. The time hasn't been there. Photos are an even larger issue. Most are going somewhere, but in an organized fashion? In a place where I can find them? I'm working on it.

language as a self-organized system: sorry to say, as you see below, I've only made part of my work (already 6-7 years old) available to daylight, and even that is not organized or truly accessible. I'm working on it.

The essence of the work is this: If language is a system that organizes itself, then it, like any similar system, has critical points at which its own dynamic changes by itself. Some of these critical points are perceptual. For example, when you decide that a certain word is a "default" word rather than a "specific situation" word, then you begin to use it in default situations and it has a firmer hold in a language. These points exist in people's conscious choice mechanisms; however, they can be measured, studied, and analyzed. The study of language change should ultimately account for this process. My writing will hopefully lay it out and define the terms.

making class movies: we made one about Facebook; it wasn't great, but I've kept the spirit going. I am not a world-class movie maker. I let the students run the editing machine, anyway. I could work on/improve upon this movie, but once again, time is an issue.

online materials: it occurred to me, while talking with webheads the other day, that it may be decades before I actually get some of my esl/efl materials online. I actually crank them out by the dozens, in daily production frenzies, and am quite good at the esl/intermediate genre which is difficult to manage. My collection is scattered on my desk and needs to be online where people can be using it. Once again it is a matter of organization which I have no time for. If I were tlev.com, I could have an online esl factory; perhaps I should team up with webhead friends or put-online-type people who could simply make a place for this stuff. Why have I not done it yet? Not sure.

student weblogs: falling into disrepair, as we rely more on moodle; I need to keep student names on them, keep them from becoming too bulky or too long; keep good pictures coming. help!

writing on self-organized systems

2010-07-06T07:54:00.000-07:00

Leverett, T. (2006). Principles of self-organized systems. Available https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=19qycnSQfOgxurzHtI4f_3AL0-2BpMHYFUhimUQAthAc&hl=en#.

Leverett, T. (2006). Principles of language and language
change. Available http://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1w-K6VnsbixP_oMwc4GhY0stIx5nDO8wRoO3bY94TJyA.

Is this really available? I hope so. I'm new to Google docs, using them, putting them on the web, sharing them, etc., but I hope to make old writing about self-organized systems available, and this is how I've chosen to try it. One by one, I'll put them here.

traffic as a second language

2010-07-05T21:16:00.000-07:00

My latest interest is something I've written about before but never explored entirely. My thesis is that language is a self-organized system, one in which the perceptions of the users play a key role: the "rules" which appear to govern everyone's behavior are actually a part of that perception, and play a role, but not a major role. In this respect language is a lot like traffic, and therefore I've been looking into traffic psychology. To this end I'd like to introduce a fascinating study I've found, but I'm not quite sure yet how it relates to language, so first I'll write a little about traffic and language: how are they similar? how different?

Both are everyday actions involving a large variety of choices; in both cases the choices are governed primarily by perception of how others are behaving. In both cases we are trying to get from one point to another: communicating meaning is ensuring that what we mean is in fact delivered to another spot. Many of our decisions are gambles, based on previous experience, and our theory about how something will be interpreted or received.

Here are the differences: in traffic, risk can be fatal; in language, the greatest risk is misinterpretation (of course, misinterpretation can be fatal, but generally it's not, and this is why traffic risk is studied far more carefully than language risk). Second, in traffic, each operator operates a car, which weighs tons, and has behavior patterns of its own, including the possibility of malfunction; in language, we deal primarily with our mouths, although a whole branch of language is communicated through the written word in venues such as this. The vowels that we make with our mouths change over time and occupy space in the mouth relative to each other, but there is no corollary to this in the world of traffic, except maybe cars occupying large spaces such as parking lots that are unmarked, yet still maintain a kind of order that allows for each member's ability to move. Finally, in the world of traffic there is an actual set of laws, which determines what is legal and what is not, whereas, in grammar, for example, we have good models, like the NY Times, but we don't really have laws, as such, or if we do, nobody knows where to find them (even we, the community of teachers best prepared to find something that resembles a law...would be hard pressed to agree on a single set).

So here's the reference:

Wilde, Gerald J.S. (1994). Target Risk: Dealing with the danger of death, disease and damage in everyday decisions. Accessed June 2010 from http://psyc.queensu.ca/target/index.html#contents.

I read part of this one night when, actually, I was preoccupied by something else; nevertheless, I got a number of things from it which stuck with me, and then, later, I had trouble finding it. So now I've gone back, found it, and documented a few interesting facts. Here they are.

First, our day-to-day decisions are based on the concept of "risk homeostasis," which not everyone agrees with, but which is laid out pretty clearly here and elsewhere. It's a kind of balance; we want to get the most possible, or the farthest, or the fastest, not without risk, but with as little as possible, so we seek the balancing point beyond which the risk becomes too much; below this, however, the risk is quite low but life is too boring.

Second, our most common perceptions about cause and effect are often misguided; for example, we believe that the more traffic stops the police make, the less accidents there will be. A famous Nashville study, reported here, discounts that; but, my wife the sociologist agrees. Deterrence theory doesn't wash, she says, because the people who commit crimes are not really thinking of the likelihood of getting caught. Mr. Wilde would agree with part of that: that though accidents are caused by risky behavior, and risky behavior is influenced by the possibility of being caught, that is only one, and a very small one, factor in the choice one makes.

The experiences of Iceland and Sweden in changing lanes was a story that stuck with me, for some reason. Everyone assumed the accidents would skyrocket on the day each country changed the lanes they would drive on; this happened in late sixties, by the way, when each country decided to "drive on the right." In fact accident rates went way down, because everyone was very alert; even the pedestrians got a break during this short period. But after a while, "driving on the right" became normal, and people began to focus on other things. Eventually, the accident rate came back to where it had been, more or less.

There's more to this than meets the eye. It's about how a system is composed of the perceptions of its individual operators, and those perceptions determine the amount of risk, etc., that is going to determine the statistics and the way things play out. The system has self-correcting tendencies, but the system can also be changed for good in certain ways, never to be able to return to what it was. The idea that our behavior is "controlled" by a law or by fixed rules even, is an illusion; it might be influenced by the law, or at least by our perception of the law, but isn't controlled by it. Finally, our behavior is specific to each interaction; thus, we can be more careful in some environments than others, or, given some facts, we might alter our behavior from one place to another. Linguists have noticed "register," or formal language vs. informal, and used it to point out that people are basically the same way. But the system is made up of the sum total of everything everyone does, so we have to find a way to express, or calculate, the different kinds of behaviors (and changes in them) that people show as they go about their daily lives.

This, more or less, is what I'm after.

alarming developments on facebook

2010-06-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

Actually, they may not even be new, but I found them alarming nevertheless. I have recently got in touch with another round of lost friends on Facebook; these were lost (to me) for over thirty years, so it was really good to reconnect, and I as much as anyone appreciate having these people, from way back, still be in my life, or in my life again.

But while trolling around, and while chatting with my sister, who is a semi-famous musician, I found two pages, well three, really, though one is not on Facebook- that disturbed me greatly. I'm sure Facebook's intent was not malicious here; actually, I'm not even totally sure Facebook was behind them. But I'm pretty sure they were, and I'm pretty sure that when people truly understand what is going on, they will be as alarmed as I am.

The first was called "Hiking" and was one of those pages you click "Like" on and become one of hundreds of people who "like" "hiking". Nine of my friends were already on there! A picture of someone strolling at the top graced the page. Information about hiking made the page more attractive. What's not to like?

Further down the page was a twitter-like section where every status that included the word "hiking" appeared; these rolled in at the rate of about one a minute. In one, a woman said that she enjoyed hiking so much she was off alcohol for a day or two. In another, some people said they were in the deepest mountains for a week.

These posts were aggregated because they all contained the word "hiking" as Twitter would aggregate anything that anyone wanted to put in a single place, like #iranrevolution. The hashtag innovation made it possible for people to "collect" information about a single topic and I'm sure that's what Facebook had in mind. Innocent, useful, innovative, right? NO.

I'm sure the first woman was NOT AWARE that the entire world could now see her status; she may have been thinking that only her friends, or her network, could see it. That's what I thought too. I've cast a fairly wide net for "friends" but I'm satisfied with each status, that that 400 are the ones who will read it, and not many others; I'm a little aggravated that "aggregators" are out there snatching up stuff that contains single words. The second group of people may now be miffed that having an address in a city can be a big mistake, when someone somewhere knows you are in the mountains for a week. Big mistake! Or maybe, the mistake is putting anything on Facebook!

Another site that disturbed me was the Univision telecasting of the World Cup; here, I was watching Paraguay and Slovakia (?) or some such game, and Facebook provided a running commentary-window for people who chose to use their status to say something to the effect of, Go Paraguay! Most people were doing this, and the window became a kind of chat, compiled out of various statuses. But one guy was using it to argue, in capital letters, that the holocaust was a hoax, and he took on all comers; naturally he got some people pretty riled up. A running argument played out in the chat window as Paraguayan strikers tried to organize their offense.

Finally, while chatting with my sister, we noticed that a page had been set up with her name to be a Wikipedia-style collection of all information pertaining to her, about her, related to her, etc. Because its spiders trapped her name in all forms, it got all comments she made to family, doting on her nieces and nephews, snide comments she'd made on my photos, etc. It simply picked up these comments, and deposited them on this particular page, as if they were public all along. They weren't. When I comment on her photo, I'm aware that all her friends will see it, and I'm ok with that. But I'm not necessarily ok with the world seeing it, particularly guys like that one who was lurking around Univision. There are some creeps out there. There are people who will use this stuff to make mischief.

Consider some scenarios, which believe me have already played out on Twitter. Someone gets extra mileage out of a raunchy post just for putting certain words in it; those words just suddenly APPEAR in raunchy posts; some sites become repositories of raunch; our posts sit in there with others, just because we used some word; people like her have to watch that sites that carry their names keep a level of civility. It's already too much! The technology has made hyper-surveillance a reality in all phases of our lives (even making pages, automatically, with a person's name on it- thus making this page appear to be hers, or at least, about her; creating a kind of virtual echo, or chamber repeating and expanding everything she has said, or anything anyone has said to her or about her, and similarly to everyone or anyone who is deemed to be "famous"....

ach, it's scary. When I told her, she gave up, and went to bed. Delete it in the morning.

2010-06-26T15:10:00.000-07:00

publication

2010-06-26T08:51:00.000-07:00

Leverett, T. (2010, June). Add me! Facebook and the international student. Global Study Magazine 6, 1. pp. 66-69, London.

I have to say a couple of things about this one, besides the usual: it's not online yet, but I'll tell you.

First, it's an incredibly well-made magazine, completely full of good articles; some of these are written by myself and old friends of mine who are excellent writers and essentially getting good practice and exposure here. In this very issue is an article, "The teacher who mistook her student for a split infinitive," which is about the age-old teaching dilemma of not seeing the whole essay but only focusing on the parts; also, "Travel is broadening," about the age-old dilemma of gaining weight abroad; I highly recommend these, and they are only the ones I read first, because I know the authors.

The magazine is full of good articles, yet it's hard to find here; still few people I know are aware of it outside of our own circle. Do they sell it at newsstands? Anywhere else? I'm not sure about the magazine circulation business; this one, in particular, seems to have a European flavor on the cover, yet the articles are written by at least some Americans, and I wouldn't expect them to push it so much in the US when the US is a prime destination, not exit point, for its customers. Yet I'm still a little fuzzy on who is actually reading these and where they're finding it. I'm hoping it does well because it's so well made. We get ads for SIUC/CESL in it; I'm not sure which students we could get, who might see this ad and follow up.

Second, then, is a comment I have about the title; in the US, we would say, "Friend me," yet I somehow didn't catch this before it went to print, and I'm not sure if I would have changed it, if I had. This dilemma would be related to the question above. I find it slightly objectionable to "friend" people- I mean, to use "friend" as a verb, not really to do the action; but, in the same way, you "add" numbers, not people, don't you?

Enough said. If you don't believe me, about the quality of the articles, go to its web home and browse around. Many of mine are deep back in there; I'd like to collect them on a single site, but haven't. I'm proud of them, as a collection, yet, because I write about stuff like Facebook, it becomes obsolete, almost the minute I write it. So, I'd like to think of myself as an archivist of history. I'm here, at this moment, in 2010; I write what I see, and, if that can serve as any kind of record, it may, at least until I, or someone else, delete it.

from out and around

2010-06-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

history

Chenow, R. (2010, June 26). The Feuding Fathers. Wall Street Journal online. Accessed 6-10 ttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704911704575326891123551892.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.

usa rocks!

2010-06-19T22:25:00.000-07:00

My students generally have a soft spot for the USA soccer team, underdog that it is, drawing (tying) traditional power England and then tying Slovenia also; this is actually a good showing for us and keeps us in the race to enter the second round of the World Cup, which is still a week or so away. Time has been flying by, and I occasionally get a glimpse at a piece of a game, as I did the USA-Slovenia match; maybe about five minutes, before I taught, with the USA at that point losing 2-1. So I haven't seen enough of the entire tournament to make qualified commentary, except to say, with family crises drawing out in infinite agony, and schoolwork up to my ears, the need for escapism through soccer is greater than ever, and I find myself pouncing on each game in spirit, even though, at seven or nine in the morning, i can't watch them, ever. in spirit, part of me is in south africa; it's an international event, and the world shares in fascination, every tiny detail.

Some of the expected great powers are still doing well: Argentina, Brazil, and Netherlands, to name a few; nobody expected Spain, France or Germany to lose this early, but none of them are really out of it yet, as I guess you are if you have lost two (Cameroon, Nigeria, and a few others). My friend says you generally need a win and a draw to advance, but for teams with only draws (like the USA), our hope lies in the chance that our last match will be a win - and this may be more likely against Algeria, than for our rivals, England, who must now beat a very tough Slovenia. Slovenia can play for the draw, as they already have a win; I'm not sure how this changes things.

One day I peek around the corner from the coffee shop, where the wide-screen shows the world cup right at the bowling part of the student center; there are about eight or nine Brazilians, all dressed in yellow, with a vuvuzela, and also a guitar and some other kind of instrument; they are singing in Portuguese, and cheering on their team, which includes a guy named Kaka; one side of me had never actually believed that this guy was real, though some student had at one point explained that he was the best soccer player at the moment; even as he spoke he was met with harsh argument. I had never seen such a display of national passion for the sport before this; it was impressive; but even in that match, I could afford no more than about ten or fifteen minutes of my time to actually watch; I'm just too busy.

So the day of the USA-Slovenia match, there was nobody there, except a single student-center worker, who had somehow become drawn in to the drama, and was checking in regularly between his various chores around the building. As I walked back up to the class I was to teach, I tried to forget the match (which was going against us anyway) and put my mind into the class which I taught as usual, in cold, unemotional detachment; but, at the end, a student, knowing where I stood and eager to inform me of what they learned immediately, perhaps through a blackberry, said, "Mr. Leverett! You equalized!" I was dumbfounded; he repeated, and I still didn't get it. Finally after some explanation I figured out that it was USA that had dramatically caught up; and, in fact there was more to the drama that I didn't even pick up until later; inevitably, some things are lost in translation, or unable to be communicated effectively, in the hallway, between classes. There are, in fact, other Americans around, who are paying attention (my fellow male teachers, actually, are my best examples)- but, I was sorry that there was no little cheering section there at the student center, as there would be, say, in any little barber shop or restaurant in all of Mexico, during the France match. All's the pity. Go USA!

pass the vuvuzela

2010-06-12T07:36:00.000-07:00

As a fan of college basketball teams like the Salukis and Hawkeyes who rarely make it past the first round of the NCAA's, I am used to the idea that "who do you like best?" and "who do you think will win?" are two separate questions. For some of my students, however, they are indistinguishable. The idea is to pick a good team, one that has a chance, and stick with it all the way to the end. In that spirit I've picked Argentina, though I think they'll have their hardest time today; but, remember, I'm also going for USA, who also may have a rough day (god forbid) and of course I'm a longstanding fan of the African teams, and was especially impressed by South Africa itself.

That said, I have a number of observations based on what I've already seen. I saw a bit of the Mexico-South Africa match at the Student Center bowling place; a lone Mexican family was watching with me. The woman was nursing a baby who was literally getting World Cup with her mother's milk. Mexican fans, of whom there are many in this town, were disappointed at the result, no doubt, but Mexico was in a tough position, playing the hosts and all (here I'll point out that all the commentary you hear is British, so you would say, Mexico were..., or, as they said, "Mexico are trying to be the pah-ty peu-pah he-ah"...

So it was gracious of Mexico to grant a tie to the hosts, to put them in good spirits, ride them through the week, and allow the world to hear these wild horns that must be exported a.s.a.p. along with some of the language, and, to be sure, Miriam Makeba, though she's dead. The France-Uruguay match, however, left me with a different feeling. First, a 0-0 draw is an impotent kind of result; they both came out losers in my book. My colleague told me I could watch it streaming-live on Univision (in Spanish) which I did, but justin.tv offered other streaming options; I did vocabulary exercises and schoolwork anyway, and it was just as well, nothing happened. I lose big on the office pool; I'm not used to picking draws; it leaves me wondering how many there will actually be. My colleague says, generally you need a win and a draw to advance (it was news to me that you got 3 pts. for a win, not 2)...shows what a novice I am, I guess.

Speaking of novices, I have one more comment. Nobody seems to deem it necessary to distinguish which team is white, and which is blue, as if the entire world already recognizes the French stars just by their face. Here's one guy who doesn't. Both France and Uruguay looked very racially mixed; the white team had red, white and blue stripes; I was at a loss to figure out which was which. The names on their uniforms were illegible and didn't sound French or Spanish; besides using culturist assumptions that French teams will have French-sounding names doesn't strike me as cool. So give us a break! Give us a hand here. I know this from showing baseball to internationals...although a local here would take half a second to recognize Cardinal-red, it wouldn't mean thing to an outsider...

targeted marketing

2010-06-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

With all this brouhaha about Facebook and its selling of your personal information, several things have occurred to me. I'd like to make a radical proposal: targeted marketing not only doesn't work; it backfires. This should be put in perspective though.

My own story is well-known (to readers of this blog & students): I saw an ad that said that if I was 56, I could have an iPad. I wondered how they knew I was 56 (I had listed my birthdate) and how they knew I was interested in iPads (more devious on their part, but the information was clearly out there). I tried to change my birthdate so I could see marketing directed at 110-year-olds; Facebook wouldn't let me. I object to advertisements that appear with my favorite bands, so I don't tell them my favorite bands. The whole thing offends me.

So I realize, I'm not alone. It offends everyone. They list the Beatles as a band they "like" and all of a sudden the Beatles appear in their sidebar selling them birth control. It's like meeting a salesman who already knows what kind of cereal you eat: come back another day, ok? I don't even like telemarketers, especially when they mispronounce my name. I'm known to say, "he's dead" when they ask for Mr. LeVerritt.

The ironic thing is that the marketers themselves were so eager to jump on the concept. It's well known in telemarketing and other fields that calls to people who have already expressed interest in a topic are always better than what's known as "cold calls." So where's the line? Most of our preferences, our "likes"- we willingly wear on our sleeves. Why do people now have to take these bands and books OUT of their Facebook page, or learn the cavernous mechanisms of its privacy policy...it's like, all of a sudden, we have something to hide, that it didn't occur to us had any value whatsoever, before.

Reminds me of something I read while in New Mexico, maybe last spring. Called Google's Orwell Moment, it has been reprinted here, I believe, but got me to thinking about this very problem. Google made the outlandish assumption that people in your e-mail inbox were your "network" or even your "allies." Wrong- they just send you e-mails. Same with Facebook. Why do you assume I want the whole world to know what I "like"? Why do you even assume I want the whole world to know who's in my inbox, or, that they are all allies with each other? Although, I admit, every time I pressed "like"- I assumed I was on Main Street, all along. Main street, with a videocam, lots of tape, and somebody with infinite patience, to dig through all the data.

To get back to the marketers: to be blunt, you're going to have to learn the polite social habit of knowing all this information, but pretending you don't. You're going to have to make ads appear like they're directed at everyone, when they're not. You're going to have to go back to the tried & true raise-their-awareness techniques, and stop poking everyone in the sensitive personal places. Maybe 1984 has come and gone, but don't keep reminding me: I want to maintain some shred of dignity. And I'm still mad about my age; I'm considering counting backward, from now on.

bartram's flower

2010-06-11T08:16:00.001-07:00

Bartram's Flower

A play by Young Friends of Southern Illinois Quaker Meeting
Gaia House, Interfaith Center
Sun. June 13 11:30 AM
all welcome

office pool (world cup)

2010-06-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

OK so Bill, one of our teachers, printed up a pool for basically gambling on the World Cup. It's not really gambling, because no money is involved, though maybe he'll get a prize of some kind for the winner, which in any case can't be a teacher. And, to tell you the truth, none of my students would take my advice anyway, since I'm an American, and have absolutely no instincts for how to, say, predict a draw, or know when a team like Serbia has an edge. None. My advice is virtually worthless.

The pool is actually complex and lots of students don't really understand it. In any given group, say group C, you have to predict whether each game (Group C has six in the first round) will be won or drawn, and, if won, won by whom. Then, you rank in order 6 to 1, whic outcome you are most sure of. If you are bloody sure the USA will beat England, then you might give that outcome a 6, and relegate to 1 some draw that you really aren't so sure of, like maybe USA and Algeria.

I say all this tongue in cheek because, a) my brother lives in England, which is heavily favoUred against the USA actually, but if the USA has any grudge match, or someone they might LOVE to beat, it could be England, and b) most of my students who really know this stuff are Saudi and seem to be pulling for Algeria although smart money seems to be saying that the USA can beat them.

So I filled out my form with whatever predictions I had; I might share them, but then found out that it wasn't due until TH, which would give me some time to actually learn a little more, before I hand in my most educated guess. Here's a little of what I've learned so far:

They call Group G the "Group of Death" because Brazil can kill anyone, but both Portugal and Cote d'Ivoire are highly respected, really good, and North Korea is acting like it can beat anybody, and some people believe them. But Cote d'Ivoire just lost a star. This kind of gives a tilt toward Portugal, but I have a natural inclination toward the Cote; I'm kind of stuck here. And by the way, they want to be called Cote d'Ivoire....is that so hard? I think it's bloody anglocentric to insist on giving them our own name.

They call group D "deep" and difficult to call...I'm still getting to the bottom of this; there are lots of groups where I'm just now finding out the FIFA rankings, or what you could call received wisdom about what might happen. The wild card for me is when to predict a draw. How often does this really happen? My experience says, maybe 20% of games tops. But that's more than a guy like me is likely to predict; I'm not likely to give a six to any "D" prediction since in my own little win/lose world draws are highly unlikely. Yet I also don't know what the scorer does with the 6 I just gave to my other prediction: do I get 60 for getting it right? or 6? If I predict a draw correctly, and then give it a 6, I should get double, then the whole thing times 6, or maybe to the sixth power. Seriously, I have no idea how it's scored. All I know is, I have to rethink this Mexico-South Africa game.

My Japanese student says, don't bet on Japan. My African student says Ghana, Nigeria and the Cote will make it to round 2, but not Cameroon or South Africa. Honduras and New Zealand appear to be nobodies in the public estimation, but I met a guy on a plane out of O'Hare one time that would dispute at least half of that assertion, back when Honduras was playing the USA in the qualifying rounds and at least half the plane was wearing Honduran coloUrs. I tend to favor the teams up and down the Americas, and I guess the USA and Honduras worked together to boot poor Costa Rica out of there, but there's still Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and of course Brazil, and, my student from Chile is wearing a sly smile these days; I think he's pretty sure his team is going to round 2. I'm with him; I'm betting on Chile, but other teams, like Slovenia, Slovakia, Denmark, Greece: how does one figure out whether these teams will win or draw? Your guess is as good as mine...or, more likely, better than mine.

world cup returneth

2010-06-02T11:36:00.000-07:00

As a kind of welcome relief from day-to-day seriousness of language learning, vocabulary-building, reading skills, etc., it's good to once in a while embrace the pure enthusiasm of a world of soccer fans, caught up in the big tournament, due to start in South Africa in about ten days. It's an odd thing, but my computer doesn't let me copy & paste site where I go to "matches" and inspect the schedule. Here is a little background.

Because I teach ESL and speak to my students a lot, I can, if possible, know more about who is likely to win, because I can always ask the right questions (if I learn them), and, over the course of twenty or so years, I've gotten better at it. I am still quite a novice, by international standards of course, being an American and instinctively reaching out a hand whenever a ball comes my way. But, slowly, I've come to love the World Cup, and I've also come to notice its steadily growing popularity among Americans. Nowadays, you can find Americans talking about it, and trying to learn who is likely to win in any given group.

From the schedule, we can learn several interesting things: first, North Korea (group G) is probably the most surprising entry; Americans will have to learn the difference between Slovenia and Slovakia; matches are being played in towns such as Nelspruit, Polokwane and Manguang, places I should have heard of, but haven't; the USA is in group C so plays as its first opponents England, Slovenia, and Algeria; South Africa starts with the first game (match?) on the 11th but then matches move steadily, two at a time, down the groups so that as soon as A is done, B is playing (two); then C, then D etc. until it starts again at the top. This is how it's always been done, apparently; I'm just getting used to it.

Again, I have students who are excited about certain teams for whatever reason, and many, having adopted the USA as their residence, are pulling for us. The Saudi students like Algeria, which is the closest you can get to the Gulf, apparently; Korean and Japanese students are represented; I have a Chilean student; I have friends or relatives in or from many of the other countries, including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Honduras, Italy, Germany, Ghana, England and Australia. I tend to like the African teams, though (even though Ghana beat us last year) and remember the first year Cameroon made it in there, and how excited that made the African students. It's exciting; I hope my kids can see some of it, though I never have time for even baseball, so I'm not sure how I'll pull that off. One person abroad said: try justin.tv- I can't imagine how; apparently its a site, these days, where you watch some things. Don't tell anyone I told you though. If I have time, I'll check it out myself.

quit facebook, stop eating dairy

2010-05-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

No, I probably won't. Monday is quit facebook day, but according to this article, 24,000 may quit, but over 400,000,000 won't. Count me among the 400,000,000. I'm even mad at the ones who are quitting, because I've come to love having these people in my life in some way or another, as if I saw them in the hallway each day and said "how's it going?" and let them show me pictures of the new pool out back once in a while. They leave, I'll miss them.

Now about the privacy thing- I only vaguely understand it. Yes, I find myself, because of being friends with A, looking at B's pictures in which B tagged A. B didn't necessarily want me seeing those pictures. A is like me, one of those bridge characters, who counts among our friends fundamentalists and anarchists, Palestinians and Jews, gays and gay-boycotters, democrats and republicans. People who look for trouble could sweep through my site and find all kinds of it. But I've assumed nothing is private, right from the start. And some of it, yes, I probably wouldn't want the world to know. I could certainly not blame others who feel that way.

Actually the only people I really object to knowing all this stuff is the advertisers. They know I'm 56, so they keep telling me that if I'm 56, I've just won an iPad. They also know I'd rather have an iPad than, say, a Ferrari, because if it were the other way around, they'd be telling me that if I were 56, I'd just won a Ferrari. So, the other day I got tired of this and went into Facebook, and changed my birth year from 1954 to 1900. OK guys, I'm 110. Now sell me an iPad.

Lo and behold, Facebook didn't buy it; they wouldn't let me change my birth year. They had a keen nose for fraud, I guess. I was slightly disturbed by my own lack of control over my birthdate. I assume that if I'd lowered it two, or maybe three years, they'd have let me do it?

Here's to say, I feel strongly both ways. I love and hate Facebook. I resent their intrusion on my privacy; I love intruding on everyone else's. I've gone places I'd only have dreamed of; I sense, often, that too many people know too much about me. I live in this world. My secrets ride the rough current at the top of the falls. And I've lost the paddle.

up alton way

2010-05-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

I was up in Alton in early May, and forgot to write something important about my experience. It was rainy, and we got lost; it was green, and warm, and the waters rose. But here was my experience: I heard "youse" coming from three different people, some more than once. It appeared to be a simple plural, as "y'all" is used: "Would youse like to sit over here?" I am not sure exactly of the contexts I heard it in; I would love to go back, but it has now been almost three weeks since it happened, and I simply don't remember that clearly.

What surprised me was that I had thought of this as an entirely local (NY, NJ, Bronx, Philly maybe) expression that didn't travel well and certainly got very little currency outside of its limited area. So what was up with this?

I was aware that this area was settled by people from Maine (unlike here, where many of the original settlers are from mountain areas; thus, you are more likely to hear "you'ns") - could this be related? Good question. More research is obviously required.

Linguistics luncheon, 4-28-10

2010-04-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

Webster, A. (2010, April 28). Urinating donkeys, abalone shells, and Disney: On unintentional punning and interlingual punning among Navajos. Linguistics Luncheon, Illinois Room, Student Center.

Dr. Webster had come to my class two days earlier to talk about kinship systems, and I was very interested in the Navajo anyway. His talk was about the social roles of interlingual puns, and I realized that I live in a world of interlingual puns, where people, upon learning English, are often finding words that sound similar to words in their own language, thus enjoying a little interlingual ambiguity or the ability to jump back and forth from one mind to another.

Though he admitted that the title was mostly to draw an audience, and that he had unexpectedly drawn more than at a conference where his title was perhaps duller, he did give an explanation for the urinating donkeys, abalone shells, and Disney. The donkey was related to television: telii alizhgo in Navajo is "urinating donkey." This was often related to the drinking of beer, he pointed out, though I missed the specific reference or how they were related. A priest apparently continually addressed children as abalone shells, and the name of Canyon de Chelly (or Chinle) in Navajo often sounds like "Disney" thus causing Navajos to make subtle remarks about what has happened to one of their favorite places.

Both in my class and in the lecture he told the story told by Robert Young, of J.H. Beedle recording "Holahei" as the Navajo word for "God." Apparently when he asked Navajos about God, giving his western view of a single guy who controls everything, the Navajo said, "I don't know" (Hola) and then later added an emphatic (Hei) to say, "I really don't know!" This became recorded as the Navajo word for "God" and stood for twenty years or so, until it was straightened out later. A joke involving the word "Hola" has an anglo linguist explaining that Navajo is such a hard language that it's almost impossible to learn. At one point he asks a Navajo sitting nearby, "What does "Hola" mean?" to which the Navajo responds, "I don't know." The linguist now says, "See? Even the Navajo don't know what these words mean!"

There was much in this lecture that I could repeat but I'm saving things I thought I could use later. One is that the expression shikaa ch'elinood (with stress accents on the vowels that I cannot replicate) sounds like Chicago Illinois and means literally "it soared over me (like a snake)". People were known to shout out "Chicago Illinois" at various points of a lecture, apparently; this would be something to keep in mind for later, I'm sure.

He made a point about the endangered nature of Navajo that I thought was very important. It was that it is very hard for older Navajos to get their children to learn Navajo, and part of the reason is that they have much higher expectations of their children, than, say, they would have of an anglo anthropologist. The lecture brought up lots of miscommunications between missionaries, anthropologists, tourists, and the various people who have poked their heads into the Navajo world, but the damage done by putting Navajo children in boarding schools was a crippling blow, not that it untaught anyone the language, but that it forced them to be reminded, every time they hear it, of an unpleasant history. Much the same as Yiddish, a crippling blow is dealt by the mere circumstances of what the language comes to represent; what a tragedy for a rich and wonderful language. The Navajo are a nation of 300,000; their reservation is the size of West Virginia; they are the largest and most prosperous of all First Nations; but they are having trouble keeping their language alive.

Two more stories. One involves the Navajo kids in school, pledging allegiance to the flag, and saying "with liberty, ajetsin for all (and a leg bone)- reminding us of all the various interpretations given to rote forced chants over the years. Another involves the Navajo poet who says, "Every time I speak Navajo it's an act of resistance"....yes, but resistance to what? To the inevitable decrease of the language, I'm sure. But also to the cruel fate, that the circumstances, more than anything else, have tricked the Navajo into not using it.

iowa

2010-04-16T13:23:00.001-07:00

In New Mexico over spring break, I was rifling through some old papers in my parents' genealogy file. My great grandfather had been a historian, in Council Bluffs, IA, and had collected a number of papers that had been thrown in with the genealogy information. These papers had to do with Iowa history, and also the history of a certain fight that actually occurred, apparently, in Oregon. But that's another story, or a few more, maybe.

The letter that is copied below is one of those papers. It is from the Smithsonian National Museum, (International Exchanges, Bureau of American Ethnology, National Zoological Park, Astrophysical Observatory), specifically Charles Walcott, Secretary, though I can't make out Mr. Walcott's signature exactly, and may be wrong about the first name. It is dated April 11, 1903, though once again, the day has been altered and may not have been 11 originally. The letter is written to the Hon. Walter I. Smith, House of Representatives, Washington D.C. The letter is as follows:

My dear Mr. Smith:

Recalling your reference, during the meeting of the Committee of Appropriations some days since, to the meaning of the name Iowa, Mr. Holmes has taken up the matter with one of the specialists of the Bureau, and I now beg leave to submit his statement, which I trust you will find of interest as bearing on the origin of the name of your State, from the most authoritative source possible:

Some variation of this word was applied to the Iowa Indians by nearly all their neighbors, whether of Algonquian or Siouan affinity. The Santee Sioux call them Ayuhba, or Iyuhba*, which Rev. S. R. Riggs, for years a missionary among these people and one of our very best authorities regarding their language, translates "sleepy ones". This statement was first made in the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, containing Riggs' Dakota Grammar and Dictionary, published in 1852, Vol. IV, p. 378, and was repeated in his Dictionary published as Volume VII of the contributions to North American Ethnology in the Powell Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, p. 60, 1890. According to the unanimous testimony of history and tradition, the Iowa once lived in southern Minnesota, in immediate contact with the Sioux, and therefore this name might very well have originated with this latter people. The fact that it has a meaning in that language, while no interpretation has so far been obtained from any other, is evidence in the same direction.

This interpretation by Riuggs is not a mere guess, the term being readily analyzable. nba as nba-ya - "to make sleepy"; nba-ye-dan** (Teton Sioux, nba-ye-la), "softly, gently, mildly". yu- is a causative verbal prefix of very general signification and usage, often interpreted simple "to be". a- is an adverbial or prepositional prefix signifying properly "along with", but since it conveys the sense of "accompaniment" it frequently, as in this case, forms plurals. The i- of the form Iyunba would be another adverbial or prepositional prefix which sometimes signifies "with" and would therefore have an analogous force. That a- in the original prefix seems to be indicated, however, by the preponderance of early spellings containing it.

It now remains to be shown how "Ayuhba"* could pass into "Iowa", which is at first sight quite a distinct word. The disappearance of the b is readily accounted for by one familiar with the Dakota language. There the sound represented by b is not well developed, but hesitates between b, p, and w, is often heard as w by careless listeners, and is w (or nearer that sound than any other), in the Teton or western dialect of the Dakota or Sioux tongue. The sign h* stands for that represented by the German ch. This is wanting in French and English, the two languages through which the word has come to us, and it is well known that in similar situations it is apt to be dropped entirely when pronounced by persons whose languages do not contain it. We should thus have instead of Ayuhba or Ayuhwa, Ayuwa. Now the sound of a and y brounght together as ay is almost identical with English long I, which could easily be substituted for it, leaving us Iuwa. The substitution of o for u is, of course, simple, and it may be added that many Indian languages employ u and o in the same situation indifferently, while even in those which differentiate the two it is usually for the uninitiated to distinguish the two sounds.

In cases like this it is always difficult to be absolutely certain, but on circumstantial grounds the evidence is very strong. That the Iowa should be called "sleepy ones" by the Sioux, who were usually hostile to them, is quite likely, but for us it carried no more stigma than the term by which the Iowa tribe knew themselves. This was, as nearly as we can express it in English, Pahoche, or Pahutse, and without much doubt means "Dusty noses", although Major Stephen H. Long, owing to a confusion of similar sounds, rendered it "Gray snow". The use of this name is based on a tradition, and very likely the same was true of Ayuhba

Very truly yours,

Charles Walcott,
Secretary

(my notes/TL)
*single dot over the h. there also appears an accent mark, upper right to lower left, over the u
**here, I see a carat under a raised n. also, the a appears, in both words, with an accent mark, again upper right to lower left, over it. I am referring to the a of hba

East brain, west brain

2010-04-10T20:10:00.000-07:00

Begley, S. (2010, Feb.) East brain, west brain: How different cultures shape the brain. Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/233778. Accessed 4-10.

I actually found this article in a magazine, while staying with my parents, and read it there. It's profound and disturbing at the same time. Profound because I've always claimed the power of culture and language to shape the brain; also, the power of what we do to determine how we organize (see post below). I can't, at the moment, remind you of what I've already written about it; it's not available. But language is best seen as a large traffic jam, in which people's perceptions of the world are dictated mostly by how they see it, namely, the bumpers immediately in front of them. We do watch, organize, become more efficient, etc.; we also lose sight of that which we don't see regularly. There's more to this than meets the eye; stay posted!

more evidence

2010-04-10T19:57:00.001-07:00

that texting is winning the battle. I have pointed out, in the past, that people use their cell phones more for texting than for calling. This trend has increased, though I have no statistics to bear it out. My present evidence is entirely anecdotal.

1. A friend of mine, in roughly the same generation, seen recently trying to text and walk at the same time, explaining that her children only text but that they needed to communicate nonetheless; I was jealous, in the sense that I still don't even know how to use my cell phone to text.

2. A relative, having unlimited texting on a plan, got a bill at the end of the month with 11,000 texts on it. An ordinary California teenager, not trying to set records or anything, just using what was available.

OK so these are entirely anecdotal. I'm beginning to lose touch with the media, but I can say this much: we should respond to this trend. By "we" I mean, primarily, linguists, academics, those who study human communication and culture. It's a profound change, and it will have many implications.

First, what people do and use is what establishes the records and patterns for the future. The business of life is being done by text. It is still English but with an entirely different way of spelling and appearance; it's an informal register. It may be seen as vile by some, but it's just a tool, like any other language. And it's winning.

Second, its patterns have a lot to teach us. How do people establish words? Where do the emoticons come from? How do we know what is accepted or in use nationwide or in many different environments? Lots is happening here, and I'm sure linguists and other academics are at least watching. But if nobody is documenting, a lot of information will be lost in the "formative years"...

Third, the shift over to writing throws a whole system into a different balance. The traditional relationship of writing to speaking will not continue to be the same; this has profound implications for the way we understand language and understand the oral language to be "first"...it is still first, in some ways; we especially in the older generation are more likely to consider language to be "something to help us talk to each other"....hopelessly outdated, maybe.

Boston

2010-03-31T09:16:00.000-07:00

these are pictures from Nina

This is a restaurant where an old fish market used to be....where we ate on Sat.!

TESOL Presentations

2010-03-31T08:55:00.000-07:00

Leverett, T. (2010, March). Making sure they know from Wikipedia. Teaching Tip, Writing IS, TESOL Convention 2010, Boston MA. Presentation homepage: http://tomsources.blogspot.com/2010/03/making-sure-they-know-from-wikipedia_22.html.

Leverett, T. (2010, March). Grammar technology for better or worse. Internet Fair Classics, and Internet Fair, Electronic Village, TESOL Convention 2010, Boston MA. Homepage for presentation: http://mypage.siu.edu/leverett/fbow.html.

For the Wikipedia presentation, I'm really feeling like I have to get more organized than I am; I have done a number of things (which you can access by clicking on Wikipedia below), but since it was mostly directed at this exercise, the wider base of resources I have threatens to be scattered and not focused here. Two things happened that brought home how important Wikipedia is to the ESL education business. One: I met a guy from Tajikistan who had written, himself, thousands of entries translating Wikipedia into Tajik, and representing Tajikistan on the Wikipedia base. Wikipedia had been careful to cultivate him as a resource and translator, web designer and template manager for the Tajik version. Second, people's comments indicated that Wikipedia played a crucial role in places where its translations and "watered-down English" version of things were the only resource available to ESL teachers trying to communicate with, for example, Bengali children in US schools.

The grammar presentation featured me fumbling a little to set up ESL Assistant, which requires software loaded onto a computer, and also saying quite frankly that I don't recommend that teachers put all their students on this technology, particularly if they are at a lower level, but that, as someone said, it's quite clear that they will be on it anyway. The research is quite frankly scaring me; the stuff they are told by the machines is in some cases quite odd. But in a sense I'm on my own home turf here; I've been studying how to explain grammar to ESL students for over 30 years, and I'm not surprised that a Microsoft computer geek can't quite meet my standard. If we were to work together, then, you never know. But that hasn't happened yet.

I'll have pictures soon, promise.

2010-03-05T08:24:00.000-08:00

Documenting Wikipedia

2010-03-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

Martin, N. (2007, Sept.) Wikipedia clamps down on 'unreliable' editors. Telegraph, UK. http://tinyurl.com/y8za68a. Accessed 3-10.

"Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia compiled by computer users, is to stop people from editing entries after a series of questionable updates cast a shadow over its accuracy and reliability." para. 1

"Employees of the CIA have been found altering the biographical information on former presidents including Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon." para. 7

Seven per cent of all internet users now visit the site every day. (para. 13)

“The changes could help transform the encyclopaedia from a rough guide into a trusted authority. But they might also erode the very freedoms that encourage people to contribute to the encyclopaedia in the first place,” said Jim Giles, from the New Scientist magazine. (para. 14)

The changes would also alter the ethos surrounding Wikipedia where everyone should be free to contribute to the creation of the encyclopedia. (para. 15)

Seelye, K. (2005, Dec. 4). Snared in the web of a Wikipedia liar. New York Times, Week in Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04seelye.html. Accessed 3-10.

Story of the false information posted about John Seigenthaler Sr.

Bryant, T. (2007, Aug. 21). Checking the reliability of Wikipedia. Academic Commons, blog.

Links to Wired article, others.

Meredith, L. (2010, Feb. 17). Information anarchy: Don't believe everything you read. LiveScience. http://www.livescience.com/technology/wikipedia-information-anarchy-100217.html. Accessed 3-10.

Robertson, N. (2010, Mar. 3). Wikipedia's decline and the 7 types of human motivation. Enterprise irregulars. http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/14301/wikipedia’s-decline-and-the-7-types-of-human-motivation/. Accessed 3-10.

Using Facebook

2010-02-24T08:14:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true, I've been running the CESL Facebook account. That means I get in there every once in a while and announce whatever activity we're having. If I have time, I make it into an "event" and invite everyone; doing so often means that a few more people will attend it. Some are people from the community who simply want to stay informed about CESL and what it does. So yes, this seems like a worthwhile use of my time, not that I haven't offered to share it.

The question around Facebook is really this: Should an organization like CESL exploit it to its full advantage, getting out there as much as possible, attracting fans, using it to store pictures, etc.? Or, should we take the opposite approach (as a recent CoLA Council decided), shunning it, avoiding it, its viruses, its phishers and its social nature like the plague? Obviously I have taken a middle-ground approach. My stand is that of course we need a page (as we need a phone number, for example); of course we need to maintain it (as we should our web site also); and, of course we want to at least appear to be a happening place with an interesting social life...which means that, if we encounter good pictures of people having fun, we should put them there.

Having said that, I can now say that any problem that the SIUC web system is now having with its photographs, and its responsibility for what happens on its web system, will ultimately move over and apply to whatever any organization here does with Facebook, Twitter, or the social media. It seems like a good venue now; it seems like it's where all the young people are, and it is. But it's a place that makes its own rules, and an organization that really wants to use it will have to play by those rules, which might change.

I always figured that if people found us and joined, fine, they could put up with whatever phishers came to them through us. If we solicited their membership, however, we would become responsible for whatever happened to them through our site. If we solicit their pictures, similarly, we become responsible for whatever happens to those pictures through our site. No thanks to soliciting, was my response. I've become quite conservative in my ambitions for the site, based on reading I've done pertaining to organizations and Facebook. I'd point you to those readings, but the bibliography that had them was recently removed from CESL's website. Click on Facebook below, though, and you'll find some of them.

New CESL web site

2010-02-24T07:50:00.000-08:00

One can't watch fifteen years, and over 300 pages of CESL web resources go under without at least commenting. There were many reasons for the new, simplified look of the CESL main web, which I will get to below, but mostly I want to say that although I recognize the reasons and can't argue with them, I feel sorry that an era of CESL's putting resources out to the public is now apparently over.

Here are some of the reasons the web site is now smaller, slicker, and less ambitious. Its 300 pages once included student work display (old CESL Todays), TESOL presentations by faculty (mostly me), teacher links and resources, student links and resources, and directories meant to help the ESL/EFL community in general. These pages were widely linked to from all over the world and contributed to CESL's good standing in Google, which rates highly the generous well-connected nature of a benevolent organization. But the directories were hard to maintain; they took precious faculty time; their links easily got outdated and sometimes the outside places they linked to were bought out from under whoever started them. Thus our links became like an unweeded garden with snakes everywhere. Also, SIUC has become increasingly sensitive about all pictures on the SIUC web system: are they marked? Do we own them? Are the rights clear? Are they Alt-tagged properly? There was no way we could go back and find the authors of all those photos; it wasn't possible. We had hundreds of pages of photos that were for all intents and purposes given to CESL, but completely unmarked. Finally, SIUC constantly changed its requirements; it would force us to put a template on our pages, but then make those templates unsightly; it had marketing requirements and space restrictions, but these often changed. A strategy to use the actual SIUC space as little as possible actually makes sense in the big picture, as long as we can move the other functions elsewhere in a reasonable amount of time.

The days when CESL could make a directory that people in the field could use and appreciate are apparently over. Although Google searches involving tesol organizations, plagiarism/esl, facebook/esl, twitter/esl, second life/esl, chat/esl, and esl program marketers all call up CESL pages in their first page (and this, presumably, was good for CESL), these are now dead links, and may not be returned to life; if they are, visitors will be forwarded to some site which is willing and able to hold the resources. Students looking for writing, reading, listening, grammar, and speaking links will be directed to the weblogs where these can be held without the restrictions of the SIUC system; people looking for past published student work (some of which won awards, or was used in other venues) may or may not be able to find what they are looking for. The era of resources was a good one, and made us famous, in our own way; I'm not sorry we did it, only sorry that it seems to be over.

Using Voxopop

2010-02-12T08:39:00.000-08:00

LMC, Tuesday Feb. 16, 12:00-1:00
Thom Thibeault and Tom Leverett

Voxopop is a voice-recording tool, easy to use; we will also show and discuss VoiceThreads and other new toys that teachers can and should use. Why be stuck with old cassette recorders? Find out what's happening and take advantage of it.

I should mention that this is part of CESL Colloquium, a regular attempt to educate language teachers about language teaching issues. Want to present? Contact me; I'd love to make it possible.

i wish i could write about

2010-02-12T08:29:00.000-08:00

Times are busy here, so I've neglected this blog a little. My computer time at night is limited; in the day, it's all I can do to prepare and make sure my classes have productive things to do. So, some of these are being neglected. In some cases, I'm thinking about them but not writing about them. In other cases, I'm just wishing I could even think about them.

CESL web reorganization is coming. CESL's web will be cleaner; no more dead links or holes. CESL is going out of the directory business. More on this later.

Voxopop and voice tools...come to the workshop (above) and see what's the latest, if you like using computer tools to record voice. The presentation will cover VoiceThreads also.

CESL Moodle...I'm slow to learn this, having gotten a little behind, by teaching extra classes and having family situations. But it's a new way to put everything on the web, yet hopefully save a modicum of privacy for those students who don't want their grades out there like so much dirty laundry.

Elluminate...more and more, my webheads friends, rather than merely chatting, get into this virtual room where they can chat, tour the web, draw on the board, talk and be heard, and pass the mike around. I found an article that called this "your grandchildren's classroom" and felt that it was probably right. SIUC just saved $3 billion by changing the lightbulbs...they could probably save another $200 billion by just putting people in electronic rooms. So why wouldn't they? Not until someone else does it first, I guess.

Movies...I'm making some, but I'm not good at it yet. I'll keep you posted.

TESOL...gosh, I wish I had something to report.

My current Newstalk class, which watches movies that interest me very much, sometimes, including one on the iPad, and another on Super Bowl commercials. I'll link you to these as soon as possible.

More later; I've got to fly. The Lunar New Year falls on Valentine's Day this year; I have a son turning 18; another graduating from university; a daughter having a baby, and aging parents from whom I would like to learn about the Leverett line, quick, before I'm off to Boston to see the old gravestone of the guy I was named after.

Howard Zinn

2010-01-29T07:30:00.000-08:00

Giroux, H. (2010, Jan. 28). Howard Zinn: A public intellectual who mattered. truthout. http://www.truthout.org/howard-zinn-a-public-intellectual-who-mattered56463.

I actually took a class from Howard Zinn. I was 18, and arrived at Boston University surprised at the fact that it was possible. So, I signed up and went. It was a large Political Science lecture class. I don't remember much about the material; it's possible that I dropped it, or didn't attend very regularly; it was 37 years ago. I vaguely remember trying to go to his office hours, but I didn't have any reason, besides meeting him personally, and when there was a line of about fifteen students waiting, I backed off.

Such is life. I have to read the article a little better; it's not too late to notice, who he was, and what he actually said.

TESOL 2010

2010-01-06T07:33:00.000-08:00

During the break, I'm trying to get ready for Boston and the TESOL Convention at the end of March. First, I have this:

Making sure they know from Wikipedia
Teaching Tips (20 min.), #168065
Second Language Writing IS
7:30 AM Room Otis at the Westin

Summary

Writing teachers can give high-level writers better awareness of the practical implications of using Wikipedia as a reference, with an exercise that highlights academics' reaction to it.

Description

High-level writing students are often aware of the value of Wikipedia as a resource, and may even be in the habit of using it regularly, as many American students are. Like American students, however, they are often only vaguely aware of why academics might object to its use as a reference or trusted authority. In fact the whole problem of evaluating online sources looms as huge for students entering academic classes, and teachers must constantly find new ways to remind students of the disastrous consequences of failing to evaluate, or evaluating poorly, the sources they choose for their research. This writing exercise introduces and highlights this problem by making Wikipedia itself the topic of inquiry, encouraging students to see both sides of the debate over its value, and expecting them to take sides on the question, in the form of an essay that uses quotes about its merits and defects as a resource. When the exercise is over, students are better at not only documenting the sources they use, but also evaluating them before the process starts.

The other two, which are essentially the same, appear here.

as the world churns

2010-01-06T07:05:00.000-08:00

Schonfeld, E. (2010, Jan. 2). 10 Technologies that will rock 2010. Seeking Alpha. http://seekingalpha.com/article/180565-10-technologies-that-will-rock-2010?source=article_sb_popular. Accessed 1-10.

Leggio, J. (2009, May 22). Nine worst social media fails of 2009...thus far. ZDNet. http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=1204&tag=nl.e539. Accessed 1-10.

Kleinman, Z. (2009, Dec. 3). Children who use technology are 'better writers'. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8392653.stm. Accessed 1-10.

Kirkpatrick, M. (2009, Dec. 2). Identity wars: Google and Yahoo! bow to Facebook and Twitter. ReadWriteWeb. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/identity_wars_google_yahoo_bow_to_facebook_twitter.php. Accessed 1-10.

more coming, and I'll organize it too!

EVO 2010

2010-01-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

from the CALL-IS:

Announcing the Electronic Village Online 2010

The CALL Interest Section of the international TESOL professional association is pleased to offer the opportunity to participate in the Electronic Village Online (EVO) 2010 sessions. This is a professional development project and virtual extension of the TESOL 2010 Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. The intended audience for this project includes both TESOL 2010 participants and those who can participate only virtually.

You do not need to be a TESOL member to participate in a free, six-week, wholly online session of the EVO, Jan 11 - Feb 21, 2010.

Please visit our Announcement Web page to select one among the various offerings:
http://evosessions.pbworks.com/Call_for_Participation2010

while i was busy

2009-12-18T07:00:00.000-08:00

Vascellaro, J. (2009, Dec. 18). Groups file Facebook Complaint. Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704238104574602262735234366.html. Available 12-09.

Kleinman, Z. (2009, Dec. 3). Children who use technology are 'better writers'. BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8392653.stm. Available 12-09.

Australia's cyber-predator threat. (2009, Dec. 18). Stuff.co.nz. http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/3176693/Australias-cyber-predator-threat. Available 12-09.

Diaz, S. (2009, Dec. 14). Google, Facebook in URL shortening: pioneers should keep innovating. ZDNet. http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=28492&tag=nl.e539. Available 12-09.

Bennett, D. (2009, Dec. 13). FreeHarvardEducation.com: Does anyone own what universities teach?, boston.com. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/13/freeharvardeducationcom/. Accessed 12-09.

Whittaker, Z. (2009, Dec. 10). Facebook will never get privacy right. ZDNet. http://blogs.zdnet.com/igeneration/?p=3588&tag=nl.e539. Accessed 12-09.

Un-Facebook yourself. (2009, Dec. 14). Wired.
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Un-Facebook_Yourself. Accessed 12-09.

interview on technology and communication, 12-17-09

2009-12-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

The following are my responses to questions provided by a reporter from a high school newspaper in Lake Zurich, IL. I assume her article will appear in that paper. I don't want to beat her to the punch, but the well-written questions provoked a number of ideas which I wanted to save; when that happens, I save them here. Sorry! Good interview; I hope it's useful to someone, and particularly to young people in northern Illinois.

What is technology's overall impact on communication?

Technology has given us more media to use to communicate, and made instant communication worldwide possible, common and routine. This will have a stunning impact on world events, but we haven't seen the total effect of it yet; it's all too new.

It is not quite accurate to say that we are communicating more poorly because of things like texting which seem to be denigrating the quality of written English. We are communicating more, and we are getting used to new media which may make misunderstandings more common, until we develop sophistication with the systems. For example, it's easy for people to get angry at e-mails they read, but slowly people are learning to write more nuanced e-mails, and use emoticons effectively, so that that happens less or is less severe.

How does technology impact the importance of face-to-face communication?

In many ways people use technology to avoid face-to-face communication. They have proven to prefer texting to actually calling, and many times they will admit it's easier to leave a message, and just avoid the direct exchange. This doesn't make face-to-face communication less important, though, it just makes it less necessary. For example, in education, everyone is afraid of the arrival of online education. But online technology offers the ability to see people, miles away, at every minute, so we haven't lost all that much in terms of important personal contact. As we get more used to this though, we'll find that face-to-face communication is more enhanced, more important. Think of what happens when you meet people who have been your Facebook friends for a while, but who you haven't seen. Your relationship is better; you know each other better; and, seeing them face-to-face, you can tell that these relationships are different from the way they used to be.

How does technology change our verbal communication?

I think oral communication will become more like written is today; for example, we'll have a world-standard English, and the importance of dialects will change. This started with television, by the way; before that, each geographical place had its own unique sound. Now, television English rules, in the US anyway. And soon, this will be more global. There will only be a few languages, and each of them will have a standard form, and everyone will know the standard form of at least one of them.

Do you think technology has made communication more casual?

Technology has made the casual use of writing much more common. In my generation, writing was far more formal, more serious. What was written, was always true, and thought out. Now, there's chat, and texting, and Facebook, and all this informal and immediate writing. And this writing is far more casual.

Is emotion hard to convey through technology? If so, how?

E-mails are misinterpreted, as I've said. We have to become more adept at conveying subtle emotions in the new informal writing situations. Emoticons (like smiley face :-) or tongue out :P ) help us but are frequently misinterpreted. LOL has a million meanings and is also misinterpreted. Some of this misinterpretation is because people are new to chat and have to get used to a new language. So, in a way, it's like you just learned French, and someone asked you if emotion is hard to convey in it. Yes, because emotion is subtle, and even in speech, we go around and around, trying to be discreet & indirect.

Do you think it is hard to express our emotions in a healthy way through modern technology?

Oh, yes. People have to learn to think carefully before they fire off an e-mail response, or put a four-letter word into Facebook. They have to remember that just because it seems casual, it is of course permanent and easily recreated, especially by enemies and potential employers. People often associate chat rooms with the more vulgar or seedier aspects of life- sex with strangers, scammers, phishers, etc. and that's because those are the people who found them first. But chat, twitter and instant messaging are tools that have proven to be extremely useful to everyone, and healthy people will use them in healthy ways; in addition, everyone else will learn to be healthier, especially when they notice the permanence of what they say and do, which is really much more pronounced than it was, say, in the telephone era.

How do you think technology has made it more difficult to create/foster lasting relationships?

I think it has made it easier. I deal with international students who now can Skype their parents every day if they want; that means they can see them, and talk to them as they see them, whenever they want. Facebook has made it so that if you have a friend at the age of five, you can stay in their life forever. This allows us to make and keep friends free of the geographical restriction of having to be in the same area, stay in the same area, or visit regularly, which becomes harder and more expensive when you have children.

I think there are a lot of shallow things about the new technology; for example, I find it hard to express how I really feel on Facebook or Twitter, to 300 "followers." Technology in that way encourages a kind of ongoing, shallow connection, and everybody wants to tell you what they had for breakfast; spammers are all over our e-mail and will hit you every time you turn around. But this doesn't hurt my ability to have more meaningful relationships with the people I love; on the contrary, the technology makes those better, as long as I can use it well and carefully. My parents have found Skype and our whole family, which is spread from England to New Mexico, is much closer as a result. We see each other all the time. We don't value meeting each other any less, just because we can see each other on Skype; we're using Skype to plan a reunion, and it's better and easier. The last time I went abroad, phone calls were 8 or 9 dollars a minute. Now they're free, and we can see each other. I am in closer contact with classmates from high school, college, and graduate school, and am better friends with them as a result.

By the way you hear about these internet romances where people meet each other on Twitter, Facebook or e-mail boards, etc. and then, much later, meet face-to-face, get married, etc. I don't think these relationships have any worse chances than any others. My guess is that they have about the same 50/50 chance of success as any other marriage. They sure started and bloomed in a different way, though. You can't discount the differences in the way we communicate as being not important; they are important. They do change relationships. They have lasting impacts on culture and the way we do things. But it's not all bad; it's clearly both bad and good, and if it weren't at least partly useful, we wouldn't even bother with it.

I think that there is some concern in the schools that some kids are using texting or, worse, video games, at the expense of developing meaningful relationships. This concern is justified, and, if it is possible for these kids to avoid communicating entirely, they might. In my day this more often happened to avid readers, but it was a concern for even them. If you become awkward socially, it affects you all your life. I have encountered 100-words-per-minute chatters who are so free with the foul language that, when faced with a formal essay, they are more or less paralyzed by their realization that they are like a fish out of water. In this sense, the availability of other media has deprived them of the practice they need talking and writing. The same was said of television, by the way, and was true to some degree. We are influenced by what we see and what we come to consider normal, and if this excludes normal face-to-face communication and relationship building, that's a problem for everyone. But you can't blame it on the diversions, unless those diversions are allowed to totally replace normal social development.

By the way, there were more than a few people who thought the advent of the telephone would be the downfall of civilized society as we knew it. There was serious opposition all over the place to the idea of talking to people without seeing them. This was only 80 years ago or so, so I'm sure you could find people who could talk about it. Lots has changed in 80 years, including a divorce rate that went up to 50%. But is that the phone's fault? I don't think so. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens next!

fame

2009-12-08T14:29:00.001-08:00

I didn't tell you this, but I'm a fiddler too- this is from a recent performance at the Alternative Gift Fair. I've collected pop art from the original photo here. A little excursion into the self-indulgent world of stardom! But a picture is definitely good for a blog, every once in a while.

published article

2009-12-08T14:24:00.000-08:00

Leverett, T. (2009, Sept.). Zoom in, zoom out. Global Study Magazine 5, 3, London, pp. 38-39.

I will let you know when this is available online.

grammar-checkers cont'd

2009-12-01T10:42:00.000-08:00

I have widened the scope of the grammar-checker project, and have become very interested in several aspects of the grammar-checker problem, namely:

1. What influence does constant interaction with a green-line producing program (or even the red-lining spell-check) have on human perception of a second language? How does it affect learning? Clearly it helps their learning in some ways and hinders it in others. I can tell you that what I've learned so far is more or less here although fresh developments at the SIUC web emporium have rendered almost all our sites impractical at least for the time being. You have to tolerate bizarre templates to get to the content. Other things I have written on the topic are at c, b, and a.
2. If computer grammar programs can so quickly and relentlessly influence human behavior, why don't we just harness them to create perfect language learners?
3. What are the results of the work people have been doing to improve these programs? I'm just moving into this territory, btw; can't answer this one at all, yet. But, as concordancers get involved, the equation is definitely more interesting.
4. What is the most appropriate response on the part of teachers?
a. Recommend the best of the programs, show students how to access them and even expect or demand that students use them (this btw is what many people do about spell-check)
b. Ban them entirely from computer labs, and expect students to disable them on all computers used for class papers; give tests on computers with disabled grammar-check, or better yet, in pen and paper;
c. Assume that the default grammar-check on most Word programs are what our students are and will use most of the time, and work with them on their use of this or what we know of this; teach them, for example, to interpret the grammar-check's "Fragment" message properly. If students ask, show them the preferred settings (if we have a mutually agreed-upon choice)
d. Ignore them entirely. Pretend they don't exist.
e. March fearlessly into the future. Before they invented books, people used to memorize entire sagas, what would today be 600-page books. Humans have lost that ability. But who cares? Why do you need to remember anything you can look up in Google?

OpenSIUC

2009-11-22T20:28:00.000-08:00

I went to a Forum on Thursday (Nov. 19), partly because two nice young people stopped by my office personally in Faner and invited me. I was interested in this topic anyway, though, and though I can't say I've totally sorted it out, I can at least give some background and point out a few interesting facts.

openSIUC is an online repository of scholarly work; it is supported by SIUC and its administration, the best I can figure, because it increases visibility of the faculty, and expands the impact of its work. It is part of a movement to open up access to information that has been spurred on by dynamic changes in the way information is accessed in general. The traditional journals in many fields are being pressured; because they are not online, their information, and their citations, are in effect hidden.

I missed David Shulenburger's speech, but I can guess that it was somewhat like this one in which he encourages faculty to open up and give the taxpayers what they paid for: the fruits of their labor. Many other faculty readily agree. They not only see the benefit of having everyone access their work right away, but also don't see the point in hiding what is in effect a search for truth anyway. So why wouldn't we just go entirely Open Access, as some other universities have done (or tried? I'm not sure)?

The obvious losers in this picture are the traditional journals, which have apparently been overcharging libraries (the figure of $2000/yr. came up), although that situation is complicated, since journals are often bundled, and the recession means people are losing left and right. But time is a factor too: even though it traditionally took two years for an article to be published entirely, electronic transfer has moved that up; still, as my friend SM said, people are expected to post conference papers these days; also, people want their work to be seen by as many as can, as soon as possible; this encourages idea exchange and saves time. To the question of what will happen to peer review, one answer was that this speeds up the process, but doesn't replace the process.

I have certainly noticed in the fields I'm most interested in that there have been lots of new online academic journals; they jockey for position, based on what they can publish; there is therefore a variety spanning from reputable to less reputable; they as a class are getting all the citations, because people are at their computers and just grab what they can find, often, especially when finding the original or the best source isn't of utmost importance. I myself rely almost entirely on online sources, mostly because I don't have time to walk over to the library, and do most of my writing at night, when I can't.

Wait a minute, say the traditionalists. Free is not a business plan (true)- the traditional journals will go out of business (maybe), as newspapers already have. There is no blind peer review, if things are online already (true- but some say there is no blind peer review anyway)...and finally, in some fields, so much of what is online is low-quality, free, pedestrian, etc. The "good" journals are the traditional ones...Yes, but, in my eyes at least, a wide variety is opening out, and since places like openSIUC put academic weight behind "online" and "free", more and more really good things are "online" and "free". It is now possible to do fairly good and pretty thorough research on many topics online, and this trend is generally increasing, not decreasing. I'm not saying anything profound here, just noticing which way the wind is blowing. An e-Print archive (http://arxiv.org) is part of this trend, apparently. Entire textbooks are online in most fields; this could eliminate the huge overpricing/monopoly/constant renewal problem we've faced for years with the textbook industry.

It's an interesting world, and it's apparently not sitting still.

another term flies

2009-11-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

As I sit here, we are heading into a Thanksgiving break, and then, another Christmas break, which is really quite long, and gives us a little time to breathe, as teachers who really only have this one season. But I also would like to reflect a little on trends in the field, and what is happening around me.

First, I am lucky, I'm sure, to still be working in a rapidly contracting world, where jobs in particular are flying, and everyone, it seems, is looking for new and clever ways to make a living. I'm surprised more of them don't end up in places like China, Brazil, or Ireland, where they still have an economy and they hire bright people to do cool things. I frankly don't know what will happen to esl/efl around the world; the crashing dollar has traditionally been good for our field, but a complete lack of jobs elsewhere in the country might not be so great.

Second, the rapid gain of technology in all fields is of course both a curse and a blessing. Who has really integrated it successfully? The divide between the online teaching world, and the brick-and-mortar traditionalists, is getting wider, coming to blows even. Teachers are threatened by those who are willing to "do it online" for cheaper, and from any corner of the world, like Phoenix, or 'Smith University.' I actually am not so quick to criticize the quality of online instruction, or quick to ridicule the traditional teachers' fears; both are valid, and there is no way to reconcile them, really. Any talk about a "New Academy" (I've copied the link below a few posts) is a little early; nobody's changing, or if they do, it's over their dead bodies, pretty much. Administrations see the future and try to push teachers into "online development". Teachers see the future and dig in their heels, doing what they've always done. And I'm speaking even for myself, a leader in the technology-integration area. When I'm out of time, and the chips are down, I do what I've always done. It's "teaching" as I know it, and, I'm always short of time.

The static web, and the blogs, for that matter, have the look and feel of foreclosed houses. I've become impatient with my own inability to get around and fix all the broken links, update wherever possible, keep things shiny and useful. The world moves onto Facebook and Twitter, and we, left behind in our old pictures and ancient design, have nothing to say, except, "we've been here forever." The blogs feel so much like "old media" that I have trouble presenting them to students as "fresh;" they, for their part, don't seem to mind, but I have less time to ask them, and we have trouble just getting their skills up to the point where they can really use English with each other, and they of course are seeing things a lot more in terms of tests, and particularly the TOEFL, which they need to pass yesterday if not sooner.

This talk about the "New Academy" being all more collaborative, also, doesn't sit well with me. I like collaboration; I'm all for it, and feel that when we work together we get the best of all our skills combined. But, I find it hard to set up and maintain. I think there are thousands of wikis out there that are, basically, blogs with 1 1/2 users; actually, there is lots of real collaboration out there too, but I'm not sure a single busy teacher like me really has access to ways to make it work in our favor. My own way of storing information, literally on blogs and static webpages, is hopelessly outmoded, but I haven't had time to explore diigo or even exploit twitter for all it's worth. The collective wisdom is rich and many-layered; but, the free moments of a teacher under pressure are so scarce, it's all I can do to produce my students' grades.

The program has a new Moodle; this is good; we were not doing well in getting Blackboard or getting our students to have access to it. The Moodle is interesting. I, however, have been too busy; I scarcely know it. I'm interested though. If my students can have instant access to all their grades, everything that's happening, everything I know or have to say, why shouldn't I give it to them? I do, after all, teach them English first, teach them how to make sense of this world, second. Sense, that is, as I know it, best foot forward, showing them our world. Our rapidly changing world. Have a good break; I hope you get some rest.

Barone, C. (2009). The New Academy. EduCause. http://www.educause.edu/Resources/EducatingtheNetGeneration/TheNewAcademy/6068. Accessed 10-09.

thomas leverett

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