Leverett, T. (2013, Apr. 4).
Remembering the Ghosts of TESOL Past and Renewing Friendships at TESOL 2013.
TESOL Convention Blog.
It turns out my blog post was a little different from the others, reminiscing about conventions, rather than giving practical advice, or telling more about what TESOL is. One challenge would be to study this situation, write truly helpful blogposts, become a regular contributor, and use it to link back to my sleepy outpost. It might not happen, though; I'm pretty busy. I wish them well though. I have the sneaking suspicion that blog posts are about as well and carefully read as, say, IS newsletters used to be. Maybe I should just rephrase that as "as carefully read by me".
Labels: bib, personal, tesol
Grammar technology: For better or worse 2013
Leverett, T. (2013, Mar.).
Grammar technology: For better or worse. Internet Fair Classics, invited presentation. TESOL Convention, Dallas, TX, USA.
This one was a little harder for me logistically, because I'd been in Illinois beforehand and had to come back to Texas in order to do it. Nearby my friend Vance was doing a webcast from that same Classics presentation. Dallas was a nice city; I enjoyed it, unexpectedly.
Reactions from teachers were interesting. One that stuck with me was a woman who wrote off use of grammar technology by students as plagiarism. I didn't want to dispute with her the subtle difference between simply copying someone else's paragraph and calling it yours, and taking some paragraph in native language, yours or someone else's, and crunching it through a machine. In this sense "plagiarism" is redefined as "getting one's English paragraph without actually constructing it in English," but it can be seen as a related form of laziness, unwillingness or inability to do the work.
It is clear to me, though, that it's not always motivated by these things, which are so familiar to teachers especially in places where students don't
want to learn so much as to survive, pass or move on to a better place. I look at it more this way: The technology is there; it's free; why would you
not use it, or at least try it, until you were told loudly and clearly that it was prohibited?
My friend told the story of how students did in fact use both kinds (electronic dictionary, one word at a time, and Google Translate, one sentence at a time), and eventually settled on one-word-at-a-time systems because of their teacher's extreme reaction to GT's garbled variants. Teachers do in fact respond negatively to big vocabulary words that you couldn't possibly have known already, put into complex native-language grammatical patterns that are difficult to decode. If the students slog through and construct sentences in their own English, they'll have better luck with this kind of teacher, though. And this is what would happen, according to her.
I spent a long time talking to a guy who saw it somewhat like I did. You have to keep your eye on this software, and learn what is available to students. You have to know what they can do with it the minute you turn your back. You have to assume that they are going to use it at every possible chance
and that they are genuinely interested in learning the language. You might as well be honest with them about the fact that it's there, that they can use it, that it will affect what they write, and that it will affect their learning, and for example that it will cause their high vocabulary to belie their true ability, and rub some teachers the wrong way. Students, incredibly enough, come away from it all with a sense of what they still need to become fluent, and are even able to talk about this and pass it along to other students.
Labels: bib, grammar, personal, tesol
new media articles
Arana, G. (2013, Jan. 10).
Creaky Voice: Yet Another Example of Young Women's Linguistic Ingenuity.
Atlantic. Creaky Voice: Yet Another Example of Young Women's Linguistic Ingenuity. Accessed 2-13.
Marcotte, A. (2013, Feb. 19).
U R Soooo Going to Tweet Like a Girl Soon :).
XX Factor. U R Soooo Going to Tweet Like a Girl Soon :). Accessed 2-13.
Sadovskaya, A. (2013, Feb. 18).
Texting indecision mitigated by smileys.
Michigan Daily. http://www.michigandaily.com/arts/02anna-sadovskaya-texting-indecisions-mitigated-smileys18. Accessed 2-13.
Doll, J. (2013, Mar.).
Why drag it out? Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/03/dragging-it-out/309220/. Accessed 2-13.
Hamilton, F. (2013, Feb. 1).
New Media destroying the art of writing? Don’t make me LOL.
Varsity. http://www.varsity.co.uk/comment/5515. Accessed 2-13.
Anker, J. (2013, Jan. 24).
Panda, gun, gift: Why emojis are everywhere now.
HLN. http://www.hlntv.com/article/2013/01/24/emojis-taking-over-why-now-iphone-ios. Accessed 2-13.
Labels: bib, chat, internet, twitter, writing
Rosen, C. (2013, Jan. 30).
Hearts All Atwitter, if Only on Twitter.
New America Foundation. http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2013/hearts_all_atwitter_if_only_on_twitter_78416. Accessed 2-13.
Coniff, K. (2013, Jan. 30).
France Bids Adieu to the Word ‘Hashtag’.
Time. http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/30/france-bids-adieu-to-the-word-hashtag/. Accessed 2-13.
UCLB Union. (2013, Jan. 20).
Hashtag overload. www.lbunion.com/feature/448-hashtag-overload.html. Accessed 2-13.
Herman, A. (2013, Jan. 28).
In defense of the hashtag.
Flavorwire. http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2Vm1El/www.flavorwire.com/366727/in-defense-of-the-hashtag.
Labels: bib, twitter
articles uncovered by research
Tomasello, M. (2008, May 25).
How are humans unique? New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25wwln-essay-t.html?8br&_r=0. Accessed 12-12.
Ashby, W. R. (1962).
Principles of the self-organizing system (pdf). In: Principles of Self-Organization, 255–278. Retrieved from http://csis.pace.edu/~marchese/CS396x/Computing/Ashby.pdf. Accessed 12-12.
Krugman, P. (1995).
The Self-organizing economy. Blackwell Publishers. Amazon Books.
Shalizi, C. (1997).
Turtles up the *. Review of
Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams, by Mitchell Resnick. http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/turtles-termites-traffic-jams/. Accessed 12-12.
Shalizi, C. (2010).
Self-Organization. Notebooks, Hosted but not endorsed by Center for Study of Complex Systems. http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/self-organization.html. Accessed 12-12.
Labels: bib, self-organized systems
correction revisited
Leverett, T. (2009, Mar.).
Red ink and the OK Corral, written for
Error correction frontier: The good, the bad and the ugly (Discussion, Writing IS,TESOL 2009, Denver CO USA). Available https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1JCPRiIt2yBGSGCMdwDTbaalPipTvGw1fw3JD52L7DYk
Leverett, T. (2009).
Red ink and the mud-wrestler’s grasp. Available: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1zpEfLQpYIdR2b682ggi0D9DUUTq5OZR6VLc6thAt2xw.
These two, when I went looking for them, were hard to find. I'd written them, and put them on SIU's web; when SIU took down its web, I put them on Google docs, but I went to find them the other day and Google made me log in. That, and the fact that even typing one title into Google elicited
nothing, and now I'm pretty sure they're too hard to find.
One thing I think that happens is that Google gets tired of dead links and gets a little too aggressive about wiping them out. So that, since these titles were associated with dead links,
all links with these titles were suspect and pretty soon there are
no links to the articles themselves. But the other question involves google-docs itself. Do you really have to log in to read them? If so I can see how the free web now has
no links. And I'd like to correct it, for what it's worth. The idea was for people to
be able to read them. Not that they do.
This brings me to the topic itself. It is a running argument in my present workplace. We have heard the standard line (Truscott's) that making grammatical correction is not going to improve their English as much as just purely reading more. Many of us believe that it is an important step in the process, whether you see improvement directly (the day after) or not; we know from watching people learn, whether they have learned anything or not, whether we've wasted our time, whether they needed to hear it or not. One thing I find interesting is that in a lab setting you get to watch individual people better and because you know them, you actually see if things did in fact work. You learn better ways of saying things, better ways of handling situations. I'm enjoying that; it's interesting. It is, by nature, a different crowd, and therefore a different question from the one dealt with in the articles above. But similar logic applies: We have to decide what's the best use of our time. And it's an open question, still.
Labels: bib, grammar, sla
motivation
Leverett, T. (2012).
Review of Motivation and Second Language Acquisition: The Socio-Educational Model, by R. C. Gardner,
TESL-EJ (TESL Electronic
Journal), 16, 2, Sept.
This is an interesting review because this researcher is clearly tired of the general public's misuse or misunderstanding of what he calls "motivation". Motivation to him is not a reason to do things, but rather, only the juice you can successfully convert that reason into. So that, if have a good reason to study English for example, but you
don't enjoy your classes, you cannot truly be called motivated, since you haven't converted your reason to a useful kind of energy.
Now this language of "converting" is entirely mine, but Gardner's point remains: motivation has to be measurable, and measurable in terms of what you do and feel in the activities that you are "motivated" to do, and just having a reason isn't worth much, since everyone has a reason. For example, everyone has a good reason to exercise, but only a few of us actually do it. So the reason isn't a "motivation." The "motivation" is measurable in that if I really want it, I will do it, report getting something out of it, and enjoy it.
Ah but you can't change the words people use, or what they mean by them, unless you have an extensive campaign or unless, by chance, thousands of people read your book and act according to your wishes. Well, this is a good start, maybe.
Labels: bib, learning theory, motivation, personal
Leverett, T. (2012).
Koutsoudas' first principle. Unpublished document.
Leverett, T. (2012).
Symbols and the language learner. Unpublished document.
OK OK, with these last ones (these two and another, earlier this month), I'll have to admit: I'm cleaning out my files. They are no longer in order. If there was a book forthcoming, its order is under question.
I will say this, though: I will store this stuff at the "On Language" blog; that site in general stores my notes and thoughts on this topic; I'm not done yet, though at the moment I am moving to Lubbock, TX and have to take a break from organizing and serious writing.
The second, though it's marked 2012, was written on the old Word; I'm not sure
when I wrote it. Let's just say, this blog is the most permanent place to store stuff like this, computers come & go, but the blog stays, with its sleepy organization by month. These, I guess, will remain as July 2012.
Labels: bib, self-organized systems
Leverett, T. (2012).
Saussure and the Oral-writing relationship. Google docs. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b7ibffTbB-gDGmJJnCUtclUZrjFE71T1lqL9XmQysLw/edit
Labels: bib
Atkinson, Dwight (2011, Mar. 2). Adaptive intelligence and a sociocognitive approach to second language acquisition. Linguistics Luncheon, Student Center, Southern Illinois University.
I mention this first because it's amazing to some degree that there is still a Linguistics Luncheon; that the tradition continues; that we have a respected second language acquisitionist here; that many people attended. I won't dwell on this but I think it's good to have a record
somewhere that linguistics is still alive at SIUC.
Then, as for what he said, I'll review. There was a cognitive revolution. It was anti-behaviorist. It considered mind as number one, and its proponents became interested in the idea of mind as computer. The sociocognitive approach combines social and cognitive approaches, and rejects the idea that cognitive processes are locked away in an isolated prison of the mind. We are adaptive by nature, good at frisbee but bad at math (abstract math, anyway). We have an extremely complex environment for several reasons; we learn as we adapt and the two are bound together. There is the
inseparability principle and the
alignment principle in which we have many tools of alignment including eye gaze, gesture, facial expression, etc.; language fits into this alignment process and has to be seen as part of it.
There was an active question-answer session, the first question being about our present alignment toward online communication and how this would alter our view of language and language learning. Dr. Atkinson brought up the chat-bots who carry on entire but disjointed conversations with each other and how that alters our view of "conversation" and "alignment." There were more but my cell phone rang, and I was called away on a personal situation. But thank you Dr. Atkinson! I hope I haven't too seriously misrepresented what you said; I realize that my notes are somewhat simplistic. It can be recaptured in more formal form, as necessary.
Labels: bib, chomsky, linguistics, siuc, sla
articles
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.
Labels: bib, chat, endangered languages, internet, youtube
more articles
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.
Labels: bib, internet
Chomsky and Twitter
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.
Labels: bib, chat, chomsky, twitter
vacation report
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!
Labels: bib, personal, pop art
articles
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.
Labels: bib, languages, learning theory
TESOL report
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.
Labels: bib, cesl, personal, tesol, writing
dialects of araby
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/
Labels: araby, bib, chat, languages, twitter, wikipedia
publications
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.
Labels: bib, facebook, personal
articles
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.
Labels: bib, chat, facebook
publication
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.
Labels: bib, facebook, personal
