Social media
Sometimes after a long and difficult class it takes me a while to get its blogs in order, because I'm so burnt out and rushed by the Christmas holiday that I put everything aside, and then it takes enormous effort to reopen the situation. But this time, I had seven very good papers, and had a lot of fun putting together
the class blog for my writing class, ESL 5301. These seven students all took different approaches to studying social media, and together we collected data and they wrote the papers you see in the blog.
Sure, there were some ways in which the study wasn't perfect. In an attempt to put the whole survey on a single piece of paper, both sides, I put the demographic info in one line, thus causing us to lose a few people who simply didn't fill out the whole line. We had a limited number of responses anyway, so it wasn't a truly representative study. But it gave us some insight into people's use of social media and their attitudes toward it. Here are some of the things we found:
YouTube, which was studied in the first paper, is really one of the more interesting social media, in the sense that people use it for a wide variety of things besides purely entertainment. In language learning alone it has become an enormous library of speech samples, studied vigorously by almost all internationals here in the US and used for a variety of purposes including supplementing their class lectures, learning how to fix things, etc. Since our population, including ESL teachers by and large, is mostly oral, but the world population is generally more oral than visual, we tend to overlook language resources that aren't little read-along visual things that assume people learn the language by knowing how things are spelled. YouTube puts the language in their laps. Read that first paper.
Facebook is still king of the social media; people may be more enthusiastic about SnapChat or Instagram, but everyone has FB much like everyone has a phone. Twitter is not dominant, but rather occupies a small but vocal piece of the picture. Read the facts, not that our 158 people accurately represent them.
Hashtags - I was really interested in what I could find out about hashtags. Really there should be a separate study of hashtag linguistics, because people use them for different purposes. On Twitter, it was once said that using a hashtag was shouting out your topic so that, in a crowded room, people could know that you, over in this corner, were talking about that topic. On FB though, there is no point attracting the world's attention; you have only your friends, and don't generally
use it to get more. A second use of hashtags is to represent your out-of-the-side-of-your-mouth attitudes, as in #whyshouldIcare or #fml; these would be more common on FB, since you are talking to your friends, and obviously not using them to attract a wider community. But a third use comes from Instagram, or at least is better represented on Instagram, which I don't use heavily, so it took me a while to get onto this. On Instagram you put your main subject under the photo, and you do try to attract random visitors, so you can put up to thirty hashtags under a photo. And, you separate them from the message itself; that is important. Why? I don't know.
Ice bucket challenge - It's surprising how many people knew about it, but didn't participate. One got the impression that
everyone did it, since it was all over the place on FB. But not everyone did it. And, a surprising number of people thought it was "pointless" or "ridiculous". It brought up a point about how a dramatic event (throwing ice on one's head) can make a strong impression, way beyond the fact that it's an isolated experience.
Backlash in general - A lot of people are upset by social media's takeover of our social experience. One person said to me, "Facebook is the devil." Others said things like "I use it only to message people who I can't reach any other way," or some such comment. People know that they are limiting their own use of the media, but see it overall as a time-sink anyway, and so don't mind knowing that there are a lot of clever things they can do, but just don't do. Most are like me - amazed at the range of possibilities, but only beginning to scratch at the surface of actually
using them.
People don't always report exactly what happens - Sometimes you can measure it, as in, are women more likely than men to post pictures? But you can't trap a man into saying that women are different from men. They seem to be well conditioned to deny differences between men and women unless they are quite obvious, and even then, don't say it unless you have to. The computer can measure such differences, and measure whether things happen the same way people say they do. People are a little off the mark, I think.
Labels: facebook, internet, ttu, twitter, writing, youtube
report from Lubbock
It's been almost two months since I posted here; you might think I'd died, or fallen off a cliff, for as much as I've had to say about professional matters in general. It's true that I post a little on my other blogs, which I'll mention, but most of all, I've just been busy, and as I get older, I get a little more tired, and find it more difficult to go out of my way to point out something interesting.
But it is a new term, and I owe you an update, which I will provide. I teach a new class in writing dissertations and theses, for high-level graduate students. I used my eap2 skills to set up a writing project such that we would study a public issue (in our case Lubbock water crisis) and investigate how people feel about it; it's a fairly straightforward project on the perception of people toward an environmental condition (again, eap2 prepares me well) but the class is developing the project together, though they will write reports individually. If it ends up online (which I'd prefer), I'll keep you informed. Otherwise I'll just tell you what I've learned. In essence I've learned how theses look different in different departments, and use different styles, and carry different expectations depending on what any given department would call "data".
The other class is a high-level ITA speaking class, but the difference at Texas Tech, from other places, is that we (and the self-made textbook we use) identifies and graphs out discourse features that are crucial in the conveying of meaning and intent, features such as prominence, tone, thought groups, etc. We actually categorize and measure these things so as to give students, many of whom have adequate pronunciation and grammar, more insight into what is really hampering their ability to communicate successfully. It's very interesting and, in my view, somewhat cutting-edge, since other programs don't even really know how to
talk about some of these.
My last assignment is at the Univ. Writing Lab, but it's really my favorite, because I enjoy the people and it's more like working as part of a collective of very smart people who all practice a craft together; this also is a little more like CESL, and a little less like an academic department. Frankly, my office building is a little like Europe, with teachers of Portuguese, Italian, German, French and Spanish but about as much true camaraderie as the EU as well, and you have to give the office staff 24 hours to copy anything, and sometimes I long for the more free-wheeling ESL life.
It was at the writing center, however, where they actually assigned to me
this set of youtube clips which finally stirred me up to post in this blog. It's an interesting set on the problems in writing that ESL students have when encountering and trying to master writing in English. It stirred lots of memories in me, and awakened my passion for ESL writing, which in fact I am teaching, both at the lab and in the dissertation class. In this movie I saw my old friend Deb Healey, and was reassured that my skills, developed over decades, were valuable. I think the movie deserves its own review, which I will provide above, but in the meantime, I just want to say, I'm still here, still kicking, still teaching, basically, and walking home, since somebody lifted my bicycle in May.
I have two projects, both somewhat shelved, because it's so hard to get to the kids' schools, and soccer practice, in the time available to me. And, the walking, even the six blocks that it is, across a ten-lane road, exhausts me, for some reason. My shoes got to the point where nails seem to be sticking up into my foot but I've been to busy to simply buy new ones, or more appropriately, buy ones that are better designed for long walks at night. My two projects are as follows: I'm writing a book on language as a self-organized system, and in general I store my work
here, though I have the book itself elsewhere. Also, I have begun a serious study of text linguistics, which is really the linguistics of texters, as opposed to the linguistics of big books and entire tomes, which some people think it is, and which appears when you google "text linguistics." The fact is, this new field, the study of human communication behavior when phones and computers are mediating it, needs a name, although "computer-mediated communication" is close to acceptable. I struggle with it, because I'm really after text linguistics, yet I can't call it that; the name is taken.
So that's a report from the Hub City. The clouds come over in enormous colorful gusty-looking monsters but it rarely rains. The painters have moved in and sprayed chipped paint all over our yard thus causing us to suspect that our sunflower crop will have lead in it. Finally, the boys are both on soccer teams, thus causing a flurry of cross-town transportation issues not to mention finding matching shin-guards, a ball, filling a water bottle, etc. All for the purposes of activity, which supposedly makes them sleep better, but in fact, it's usually me who falls face-down on the pillow long before they do. I've found that wearing a fine-looking hat on nineteenth street increases my chances of being seen across ten lanes, so I do, and now people look at me oddly but go around me, and I limp across those lanes getting in the bicyclists' way.
Labels: cesl, chat, ita's, linguistics, self-organized systems, toefl, ttu, weblogs, wikipedia, writing, youtube
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
I dove into two new kinds of technology recently, actually three, in a bit of desperation that I am so far behind in some ways, with some things that so many people take for granted. One of these is movies. It's a world of clips; young people have and shoot clips around, and watch a lot of youtubes, and pass them around as if they were a bunch of grapes. But I have a hard time even getting information out of them, let alone making a good one, or using them to teach a language.
So, it's about time, I thought, and maybe I better make one and see how possible it
is to make a good one, before I start laying plans to teach a language through it.
The first kind I tried was facebook movies; I figured that if
every single computer in our lab (now) has a working videocam, then there's no reason we couldn't consider a movie as a mass effort and make one like that. What I was really after was computers around in a circle; people inside; many movies made at once; multiple facebook event kind of thing. That will have to wait though. That would be theatre in the round, which is way over most people's head, even when it's live.
So we settled for written messages put in front of the fb screen, usually my account; altogether we made four or five movies. Often the messages were blurry or, worse yet, hurtful, though done supposedly in the spirit of teasing. They were grammatical. I have no idea if they taught grammar or reinforced it, or both or neither. It was a class I was subbing in; I barely knew the students. They played along, and made lots of facebook movies. You can see two in my profile, if you look.
Second, a real movie. This happened yesterday. I borrowed a CESL movie camera, new, and challenged my students; I put ideas in their hands. We were covering facial communiation, and the claim was made that faces communicate in universal ways, and communicate ten distinct emotions, which we wrote out. Then we produced the faces; finally, we challenged others to come and do the same. We shot lots of faces, and downloaded the movie for splicing & editing. I have no idea how it will come out.
Finally, in the world of audio files, I made an audacity file of eight students reading Big Fish stories; they read into a mic and it was stored at the LMC computer. It turns out that it would have been easier to upload their stories onto Voxopop; but, I didn't even know the difference, and had to find out. In their audacity form, they are difficult to deal with, but manageable. Voxopop, though, turned out to be quite a find. I learned a lot here; I plan to do some more of it.
It was all new to me; there was no way to get around it. I had to just jump in, get the classes to understand it was the first time, and give them credit for trying. Even if it comes to nothing, it was an important experience and helped me learn considerably.
More later....
Labels: cesl, facebook, internet, plagiarism, youtube
vision YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9oThis is a great YouTube- I recommend it for anyone who is in a large American university.
Labels: facebook, internet, youtube
making movies & learning English
Ironically, while I was at my computer at TESOL, presumably showing my blogs to passersby and distributing my handouts, I was actually receiving inspiration from an old friend and Illinoisan- she uses
i-caught; she sends her students out making movies; and she was very interested in our
youtubes, which are now buried and forgotten deep in the midst of the 50 billion youtubes out there. More about this later. Her best one, done by students around Chicago, was called "Thinksgiving" but I can no longer find it. She used "Your three words"- for short productions- though the Thinksgiving one was a bit longer. Her students were featured on this national display- very impressive.
Labels: tesol, youtube
YouTube survey, continued
I had to put "FINISHED" on
the survey results on the NewsTalk weblog, because I know that students want to write their assignments as soon as possible, and the counting is painfully slow. Many questions: 1-11, 14-20, and some on the back, are done or almost totally done, but lots more still aren't done, and it takes about an hour to finish two questions/20-50 remaining surveys; the hours just aren't there.
We seemed to have skipped Q 29 altogether; I'll try to get that up there a.s.a.p. Also, the comments, written out on some of the 281 surveys, are very interesting; I'd like to get them typed and put up. This may take another week, though.
As I stated
earlier, I don't find a big difference when I complete the counting; the last 30 surveys usually fall very close to equal in percentage as the first 250 or so. One notable exception is questions 28 and 31, which are the same on the survey; tabulators finished about the same number of responses (232 for Q28, 245 for Q31)- but the percentages fall quite differently for each. I'm curious to know if, when finished counting, we will find that people answered both questions the same. It is interesting that the questions between them, 29 and 30, might lead a reader
against government control, and actually change an answer or two. We'll find out.
Good luck! I'll keep working at this end...
Labels: youtube
YouTube movie
So our class actually
made a movie, to put up on YouTube, and it will supposedly be put up there as soon as possible. At this point I have to trust NewsTalk students, particularly Abdulkarim, who assures me that it will happen. I believe it will. But I looked, and haven't seen it yet. I
did notice that: the other CESL (Univ. of Ariz.) has some student-made movies; we certainly aren't the first to use a good best-homemade-video site. It's all new to me, though!
I enjoyed being the lead actor in a major TOEFL drama; it was about five minutes long; it featured a showdown between me and Raed over a cell-phone that went off during a TOEFL exam listening section. It was very interesting and fun. It was hard to keep a straight face.
I look forward to seeing it on YouTube, and voting for it, repeatedly (Illinois tradition)...
And getting my friends to do the same!
Labels: youtube
youtube survey update
It is now past midnight Friday night, and believe it or not, I'm still pulling together what I can of the
Newstalk YouTube survey. I actually enjoy this work, and would like to have as much of it up for people to use as I can. But I'm not sure when I'll get back to the office this weekend, and, when I do, if I'll have time, even then, to work on it. So I can probably say that
this is the version you're stuck with for a little while.
Counting is done for many of the questions; any that have close to the 281 total that we teachers have in our hands, most certainly got every sheet counted, though clearly counting methods varied a little. I can tell you that counting the last twenty or thirty or so surveys for each question did not really make much of a difference for the ones that we did finish. Take any stack of twenty out of a group of 281, and the percentages will fall about the same as the rest.
The one thing I regret is that I haven't typed out the comments. Those are interesting, but will take some time. I did get the comments on #25; those are interesting too. Read them!
One thing that I notice is that the post-url for each survey (one posted May 1, and one posted tonight) is
the same...I don't know if this will complicate things. If I am able to make another post, it will be called "FINAL YouTube survey post"...and that will have a different URL, I hope!
FINDINGS that I notice right away:
1. It doesn't matter who you are, almost everyone has a cell phone (Q 16)- a stubborn 8% of us (myself included) don't- and that 8% runs through all categories, male, female, old, young...
2. Three quarters of us are walking around with cameras (Q 17)
in our cell phones, although us older folks are less likely to be doing that. I've noticed that in my class alone; almost everyone was capable, in theory, of making that YouTube movie. Almost everyone
has a camera, on any given day.
3. Still a minority of people (15%, Q 19) actively use YouTube, by putting stuff up there regularly. But 15% is a lot of people.
4. Watch the MOD figures in Q3. These are the people who are going to YouTube
more than once a day. I find that interesting. Maybe it's like a portal for them. America's funniest home videos as a place to check in, like your answering machine. It's close to 10%, and especially high for people who are 23-30. Those are actually the heaviest users of YouTube in general, I think...we old people may be aware of it, but are much slower to
use it...and the youngest people are too pressed for money or time, maybe, to really take full advantage of it.
I may have more to say as time goes on- I hope you do too! Comments are welcome, both here and on the posts.
Labels: youtube
odds & ends
It's a busy time, and I've barely had time to report on what I've been doing, much less what everyone else is doing. So, here is a little from here and there.
TESOLTESOL? I forgot to give an overview of what I saw. TESOL is at healthy numbers again, over 9,000. Seattle was rainy but nice. Weblogs were big; so was plagiarism; so were all things dealing with an influx of Saudis in American intensive English programs. There were more k-12 teachers there than I remember in the past. Next year's TESOL will be in New York City; will not start until Wed. night; will go through late Sat. (to better serve the NYC metro area's thousands of ESL teachers, no doubt, and maximize use of NYC's convention facilities)...
SIUC.EDUI'm looking forward to a new
SIUC web page (system). I don't know what precipitated this change, nor do I have a clue what to expect. We at CESL have an important issue with regard to the SIUC web page. Can an international, with limited English, find what he/she is looking for, with straightforward navigation clues and roadsigns? Can they make sense of what they find when they get there? Does the system give them a welcome, friendly feeling even when they don't know what a page is about? Does SIUC
feel like a place that is international in character, friendly to internationals?
TOM 2.0In the web world, people have started referring to 2.0 as a metaphor for the future. My hometown, Cleveland, has a "Cleveland 2.0" website that envisions what Cleveland should be like in the future. So, I'm embarking on my own campaign. Look for CESL 2.0, SIUC 2.0, and Carbondale 2.0 soon.
APA in REAL TIMEMy new research interest- what people who present things online should do about APA style guidelines. APA has always made these hard to find. I am the impatient, democratic type- don't want to buy an expensive manual that is definitely out of date, and don't want to chase APA as it continues to hide its own rules. Several questions: Why should ESL/EFL writers be obliged to use APA for anything other than a teaching lesson anyway (since ESL is not sociology, psychology or any of the other academic fields that require APA)? How would the world respond to an online style guideline that was similar to APA, but always available, clearly written, and updated according to the needs of the online community? Finally, do writing teachers believe in the tyranny of holding obscure and hard-to-find style guidelines against their students, or do they do this, just because they feel it's their job? I put quite a bit of stuff online, and honestly, don't know the answers.
CLASS TO BEAT ALL CLASSESThis was a TOEFL (optional) class Tue. at 4, a week ago. In a class with a wall of windows and about 25 chairs, 32 people showed up at the beginning, and a steady flow of students brought chairs in from one side, one at a time, putting them wherever they could, and filling up the room, up over 36, 37, 38, most of whom had never seen weather as we know it. On the window side, the sky turned light, then very dark, then lightning cracked, thunder, rain, downpour, water slamming against the windows, then finally a siren and I threw up my hands and led everyone downstairs to find safe harbor. But it didn't end there. A lecture on tornados in the museum auditorium, perhaps given by a geology/weather student; an interpretive tornado dance; a woman dancer appearing on the weather map shining on the screen in the auditorium, at the same time. Beat that. Better than your average writing class.
BLUE STICKERwas stolen off of my '68 Ford truck today. I guess someone saw that truck and said, this guy's got a sense of humor. I did file a police report though. What can you do? I've got to get another one.
YOUTUBEis the topic of our
Newstalk class. Should be good. Lots of issues in the news with YouTube.
My students said something interesting the other day: "Around here, you can experience all four seasons in one day!" This was after it had snowed, in early April. I think we locals were able to relate to that.
Labels: creative, personal, siuc, youtube
