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How hot are we?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 30 Aug 2010, 12:33

'By looking at written words, and especially those that have been highly valued, we can take the temperature of the society in which they were produced.' Hitchings (2009:124)

Many new words are coined working and existing online.

If they guage the temperature of society then who are we to:

  • google
  • e-stalk
  • e-learn
  • ping
  • podcast
  • twit and twitter

e-mail(my British born and raised 12 year old son calls the 'post,' calls 'letters through the door,' 'Mail.'

Who am I to correct him.

As Hitchings points out, all words assimilated into American become words used by us Brits and English eventually.

The very fact that more people speak English on the Indian sub-content than in/on or around the British Isles implies that the English language is secondary to culture and nation-hood.

It amuses me to learn that'gotten'is of these isles 200 years ago, so not an Americanism, but olde English in every day use. Alongside words such as 'trash.'

Indeed, reading Hitchings, alongside some Norman Davies (The Isles) you come to wonder for how long an English  language was set, culturally or by national or cultural boundaries.

The more I understand about how these 'Isles'were populated the less I feel we have had a settled language, let alone a 'people.'

We are everything and everyone who settles in these islands; I welcome them. As South Africa falters perhaps this mutli-lingual, mixed-race, compost heap of folk should adopt the 'Rainbow Nation' tag?

As Hitchings point out, in a study of London primary schools they found that 300 different languages are spoken. A dear friend is the Head Teacher of school where she can run off the 27 languages spoken in a single class of Year 5s.

A good thing. A positive thing. To embrace, to celebrate and engage.

 REFERENCE

The Secret Life of Words. How English Became English. Henry Hitchings. 2008

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E-words

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 27 Aug 2010, 07:08

A word, or new use for a word, should, because of its context, not only slip into usage unnoticed but ought also to be immediately comprehensible.

I like 'e-learning.'

When I began studying Open and Distance Learning in 2001 'online learning' and 'web-based learning' covered the topic - inadequately it would appear. We ditched 'iLearning' as pertaining to nothing more than 'interactive' and therefore missing all things WWW, all things Web and Internet. iLearning could be done off-line which somehow diminished it.

All of this is as much an off-line experience as an online one.

This is what the Internet 'affords' we can trawl for chunks of information and take it all 'off-line' if we wish. At times I don't know or care to know if I am online or not, receiving messages or not, on, in or under this 'digital ocean,' or on the beach, catching this binary fret.

There are no paramteres, no boundaries ... information is chunked and diced and hung out to dry or digitise, to flourish or flounder.

Can consciousness be defined? Bagged? It is no different whether express in print or online.

So why e-learning but not e-consciousness?

They're of the mind and the mind defies being differentiated by platform.

o-Learning. With Socrates, it is oral.

p-Learning. With Caxton, in print.

tv-Learning. With the OU, in the middle of the night.

e-Learning. Anywhere on the Internet.

Though if it is like e-mail that it is little more than electronic ping-pong with gobbets of data.

iLearning. Interactive or personalised to the 'id,' with 'me' in mind?

iou-Learning. Interactive or 'Internet Open Universtity' Learning.


‘Part of the difficulty of understanding and implementing e-learning is that there is no one unique description for ‘e-learning; terms and conflicting definitions abound – ICT, learning technologies and e-learning are all terms that have been described to cover aspects of this area.’

Conole et al; (2007:72)

How does 'e-learning' or 'e-tivity' translate? Do other languages adopt these terms as 'loan words?' Or do the have their own words for these things? What are they?

REFERENCE

Conole, G; White, S and Oliver, M in Conole and Oliver (eds)  Contemporary perspectives in E-Learning Research. (2007)

 

 

 

 

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E-J

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We know about DJs broadcasting on radio, so how about an e-J doing likewise online?

 

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TMA03, Reflective Writing and e-learning (or not).

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 16 Mar 2014, 06:14

I understood from the heading for TMA03 in H807 that 'it is permissible to use an extract from a very long message.' I therefore deleted the 900+ additional words that on two occasions occurred in a forum message.

At one stage I had in an earlier draft all messages including the Tutor's introduction, my full response and even a previous pertinent message from another contributor. This for 'context' and making marking easier might have been better than all the html links that I added PER MESSAGE. I checked these anchors/links and there was a graphic in the Blog message too - clearly something in the uploading/submission process fangled these up.
 
The links/titling were absolutely as clear as anyone could wish them to be. A message per page.

My understanding of what makes 'reflective' writing is perfectly valid. It is open ended, not prescriptive - it is after all my mind that is coming up with these ideas, which is the entire point of it, to develop my personal understanding. I am trying to enhance my way of thinking, not adopt someonelse's.

In relation to my continued dislike of the term 'e-learning,' it isn't difficult to refer to plenty of current articles, including JISC that agree that the term is not universally agreed or accepted. Salmon referring to 'e-lapsed' time for an 'E-tivity' is palpably ridiculous. Academic os this ludicrous desire to 'coin a word or phrase and a cliched attitude regarding e-learning that anything with 'e' attached gains the 'e-' branded values. Balderdash.
 
'The first decade of the 21st century is already on the wane and we stand at an interesting point as regards the use of technology to support and enhance learning and teaching. The fact that we still refer to much of this enhancement as e.learning (and still disagree about what the term actually means) signals that the relationship between technology and learning is not as yet an entirely comfortable one.' JISC 2007 (Introduction)

The lesson I have learnt is that it is vital to meet face-to-face, even to speak to someone through. Elluminate or on the phone where all kinds of important cues and nuances to understanding come into play: tone of voice, pauses, choice of words ... and then facial expressions and body language when face-to-face. As occurred at an ASA workshop the other week, I simply couldn't get my head around what the tutor was trying to say about Some aspect of Nutrition,I eventually left it, but a fellow student could see by my expression that I was just fed up of asking the same question and getting a numpty response that made no sense - this student made a far better job of explaining to me the point the tutor could not.
 
Two decades of sailing and I could tie and adequate Bolen knot with a struggle having been shown how to do it a hundred times - only when an instructor used the term 'it's a gripping knot' did I understand WHY the knot worked and WHY it was important. My father didn't permit the word 'why?' His favourite line was 'don't ask why, ask how high.' Whatever that means!?
 
I must know why.
 
My quest is to discover why. Why is my nemis. Get me asking questions and I become driven to find answers, my asnwers.

If I keep asking 'why?' regarding the ECA, it will be because I haven't had this 'Bolen knot' moment - I genuinely thought with TMA03, as occurred on about the 7th draft of TMA02, that this moment had occurred.
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