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Are we stealing dreams?
Seth Godin, who is an internet/new media/publishing/idea guru, just published a manifesto aimed at starting (or continuing) a conversation about the future of education. Very much in the same vein as Ken Robinson’s famous TED talk on the same subject, Stop Stealing Dreams (what is school for?) is a 30,000 word ebook that is currently available for free. Based on his previous work, it’s probably worth your time.
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2011 and all that
Happy New Year! I for one am sincerely hoping that 2012 will bring good things.
Last year was one of the toughest I have faced, even more than some very hard teenage years. While the emotional suffering wasn’t up there, I can definitely say that physically and mentally 2011 was the hardest year of my life. I am very happy to see the back of it. I have always subscribed to the ‘whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’ philosophy, but after the latter nine months of last year I think there is an alternative interpretation, ie ‘whatever doesn’t kill me makes me very tired and unwilling to do anything’. You may have noticed the distinct lack of blog posts towards the end of the year.
Partly in an effort to put all that behind me, I have a few New Year goals (I hesitate to call them resolutions as that seems to jinx things). One of them is to learn Thai this year, studying by myself using online resources. I’ll report back on my progress throughout the year and hopefully it will give me a new perspective on language learning (I have been lucky enough to learn most of my languages in context, by living there, so this is new). I foresee issues with motivation and consistency, but this is something I have always wanted to do so we’ll see how far I can get in a year.
I’ll be using material from Learn Thai Podcast, in case anyone is interested. They seem pretty good so far (full review later).
Happy New Year
Saw this today and liked the sentiment. Here’s hoping for a very happy 2012 for everyone
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6th grade iPhone app developer -very inspiring
The title above says it all. I would love to see more of my students thinking beyond the education box.
Tip of the hat to Parin.
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The shock of sudden realization…
I was having an imaginary conversation with my boss the other day (something that happens a bit too frequently, perhaps), and had just finished telling him what a ridiculous concept it was to judge the performance, impact, or value of a teacher by the amount of time they spent at work when I had a huge revelation.
That is precisely how I evaluate some of my students!
Particularly for extensive reading, vocabulary study (using online tools such as the Word Engine), and listening, I tend to look at how much time students spent doing an activity, rather than how effectively they did so. The student that spends twenty minutes intensely focused on the task will fare worse than the one who sits there daydreaming for an hour, even though they probably got much more out of it.
In my defense, the main reason for this is that it is fairly difficult to evaluate how effectively someone has, for instance, read something, but it is also down to laziness on my part. Just as it would be ridiculous for my boss to judge my performance solely by how long I spent sitting in my office, I need to start thinking about how to assess my students in a fairer and more accurate way.
Part of it, I suspect, is going to depend on me giving up on being a teacher (look out for a post on this next week!).
How about you? Do you evaluate students based on their presence rather than their engagement?
iPhone 4S in Japan, part 2
Well, I take it all back.
After a couple of weeks of enduring the increasingly frequent delays on my iPhone 3GS with iOS 5, I finally decided to update to the newest model.
Softbank has two fairly nice programs for customers who are updating, so I was happy to stay with them (my wife signed up for an iPhone with AU, and I have not been impressed with their staff training and readiness for the product), namely
1. they will forgive all payments due on a previous iPhone, allowing you to upgrade and just pay for the new phone (you can sell your old one online -a friend got over 12,000 yen for her old 3GS) or
2. if you have already paid off your previous iPhone, they will give you 6,000 yen cashback
The phone arrived in just over a week, and I got it on Thursday evening.
Wow.
The camera, the speed, the… display.
If you are on the fence about the 4GS, do yourself a favour and get one. It’s that good.
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Teaching English to very young children
The other day I was idly watching one of our teachers working with a couple of our students: two sisters, three and one and a half, who have a play style class with a teacher while their mum has a private lesson with another teacher.
I have to admit, I have always been fairly sceptical about teaching very young children in an EFL context. I’m sure it can’t do any harm, but I hadn’t really seen much benefit either. Basically if the parents were happy to pay us to play with their children for 40 minutes a week, and the children enjoyed it, no problem. It wasn’t something we advertised, but we did consider special requests.
However, about halfway through the class I saw something that completely challenged my assumptions.
The two students rarely speak English, beyond ‘hello’ and ‘see you’ at the beginning and end of the class. Their teacher only uses English with them, and they talk to him in Japanese. The ‘class’ consists of playing together with a variety of toys and objects we have in the classroom. The children decide what to play with, and how they want to play, but we manage that by adding or removing toys.
The teacher was playing with a doll, making it sit down or walk around. At one point, the older sister asked in Japanese “Why is the doll sitting down?”, to which the teacher replied in English “Her legs are tired.” The students then said in Japanese, without missing a beat and completely naturally “Oh, her legs are tired. I see.”
I almost fell off my chair.
The student didn’t have enough to be able to guess that meaning from the context. The teacher did not use any gestures or indicate the doll’s legs. She clearly understood what he said.
I think I’m going to have to rethink the very young learners thing…
Microsoft’s vision of the future
Saw this just now, and it is pretty cool. I think a lot of this stuff is already feasible, it’s just a case of making all the different bits work together smoothly.
What do you think? How soon before we have this kind of functionality in everyday homes and businesses?
To blog or not to blog…
As well as teaching, I am also interested in minimalism, passive income, and social media. The conventional wisdom in blogging/online communities is that it is necessary to have and actively manage an online presence. Write a blog, be active on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin: all with the ultimate goal of building a tribe and enhancing your credibility. If all goes well, this will lead to fulfillment and opportunities for professional advancement.
However, does this transfer to the ELT world?
My friend John Wiltshier does not have a blog. Instead he spends his time and energy creating textbooks and presenting to teachers.
Paul Nation does not have a blog, but that has hardly stopped him influencing language teachers all over the world.
Tim Murphey does not have a blog, although you can find his website here.
Scott Thornbury does have a blog, although he doesn’t update it very often (on the blogging scale of things, at least). Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto has a hugely successful blog, although she seems to be focusing on guest posts recently.
So what lesson to draw from all of this? Is blogging (regardless of its intrinsic rewards) something that is worth doing? Or is it, as some of my more pragmatic friends put it, a waste of time?
A lot of the time I feel I should shut down the browser and settle down to some ‘serious’ work: some official publications that I can put on my resume. Right now, in Japan at least, your blog or online presence will probably count for nothing when applying for jobs. Even the most cursory ‘kiyo’ (internal university journal) article would trump years of online writing when applying for a university position.
Thinking about the opportunity cost, the few hours a week I spend on this could probably be better employed elsewhere…
So what do you think? Blogging, from a professional point of view, worth it or not?
iPhone 4S in Japan
I almost let all the excitement go by without writing about this. Never fear, this blog does not hesitate to go off on tangents if I find them interesting.
The iPhone 4S was announced a couple of weeks ago, and came out last Friday in Japan. Personally I was disappointed. I’m a big iPhone fan and was expecting more. In this case, I think Apple’s marketing/hype machine actually worked against them.
I decided not to upgrade my 3GS, particularly after installing the new operating system (iOS 5) and having it work fine.
My wife, on the other hand, has a really old AU phone that is about to be discontinued (ie it won’t work on their network any more). She needs to upgrade, and this seemed like a good chance. I was also very curious to see how iPhone works on AU, as opposed to Softbank, my carrier.
My impressions of the iPhone 4S on AU (KDDI) in Japan:
1. AU has not carried the iPhone before, and as of last week their shop staff were undertrained and underprepared. Specifically, AU’s system for migrating address books from their cellphones to the iPhone leaves a lot to be desired, and the staff we were interacting with did not know how to use the software. We’ll probably end up typing all the numbers into gmail then syncing.
2. Voice mail on the AU iPhone is not visual!!! This is a huge negative, in my opinion. One of the iPhone’s greatest features was visual voicemail, where you could interact with each message individually and see details about them on your screen. AU seems to have kept the ‘call the voice mail centre and deal with it via keypad commands’. A horrible idea.
3. The battery life seems short. We burned through 50% in a couple of hours of trying it out (making calls, downloading apps, etc.).
4. It’s basically an iPhone 4 with better parts.
5. No tethering.
6. iPhone on AU is much more expensive than Softbank. Seems like at least an extra thousand yen a month, maybe more.
7. The camera is very nice.
I haven’t really spent enough time with it to comment on the network (Softbank certainly has issues, we’ll see how AU holds up as the wave of new iPhones get registered on their network).
My conclusion:
Having an iPhone is better than not having one, but for me at least, there is no need to upgrade to the 4S. The new iOS is worth getting though.
If you are considering switching to AU from Softbank, make sure you understand their pricing structure, etc. or you may get an unpleasant surprise.
What do you think? Have I made the right decision, or should I take advantage of Softbank’s free upgrade promotion? Comments very much appreciated.