Old school meets new skool?
Posted by: ashleytan on: September 20, 2008
It’s not every day that you see a 102-year-old man in a YouTube video.
And he has a point. English language can seem dumb at times.
The fact of the matter is that English language is evolving and we might have to accept some horrible spelling in the not-too-distant future. Consider this Wired article How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand.
We can somehow accept the fact that something as fundamental as the language we communicate with will change with the times. We also recognise that technology evolves faster than we can respond in terms of legislation and best practices.
In the face of change, it is human to resist it, but I think that there is thoughtful resistance and stubborn resistance. Those who are thoughtfully resistant know how to weigh the pros and cons of technology; those who are stubborn simply cling to old ways regardless.
Teaching and learning must also change, but not thoughtlessly or for the sake of change. It must change to embrace helpful technologies and to address the needs of our learners. I hope that by requiring my 70 preservice teachers to maintain their own blogs, I have started a process of critical and creative reflection.
Make that reflekshun.
Oh, getting back to the spritely old man, I should point out that he was using technology (flip cards) to make his point visually and more impactful. Simple, but effective. That is one secret to any technology integration!
5 Responses to "Old school meets new skool?"
2 | ashleytan
September 21, 2008 at 8:12 pm
@Vincent: I’d be interested to know what the responses of those teachers were! 
3 | Vincent Tang Chee Wai
September 23, 2008 at 10:59 pm
The general response of other pre-service teachers at NIE (who are not in your ICT class) is that “it’s cool” to have game-based learning in schools. Their first reaction was disbelief… then I said, it’s true… it’s in MxL here at NIE.
4 | ashleytan
September 23, 2008 at 11:11 pm
@Vincent: Do note that one of my colleagues might offer an elective on game design next semester.
I also intend to share my educational gaming sessions with my colleagues. Perhaps a few more might adopt these ideas and offer them to their classes at well. And not just in the MxL because games can be played anywhere!
5 | Laremy
October 4, 2008 at 6:25 pm
(As a preamble, I agree with the idea of evolution and change, so my comment will run along tangential lines.)
I know many people have made the same argument as Ed Rondthaler has, but my challenge to them would be: do you know the history of the English language?
In truth, we did use to pronounce the words as they were spelt; ‘come’ wasn’t always produced as ‘cum’ but ‘ko-ma’ (with the ‘a’ pronounced as how you would pronounce the ‘a’ in ‘a boy’).
More info over here; but there is actually enough info on the how, what and why the English language changed for an entire module to be taught on it.
September 21, 2008 at 7:03 pm
I have shared my newly acquired knowledge and experiences from this ICT course with in-service and other pre-service teachers (who are not in your class).
I shared with my uncle who has been teaching for the past 30 over years. I updated him with knowledge on new technology and encouraged him to implement blog and wiki in school. His first worry was his students would write foul language in the wiki.
In response, I suggested he start with a class blog first whereby he has more editing control.