Thanks to Alec Couros, I found this video titled Cultural Differences by National Geographic. I think it is an incredible example of how “real” cultural differences can be. It could be a wonderful introduction for someone who has never experienced another country, culture and people to “at least” become AWARE that their own culture might be perceived VERY different (even incomprehensible) by someone else. Even if you take only 5 minutes of your time to watch the first segment that shows a group of “Lost Boys from Sudan” and their flight to the USA and their first days/weeks in the country, it will be worth your time!

As promised here is the follow up video to the trailer from my previous post Bringing a 1:1 iPad Program to China. I am back in the US now and am trying to sort through and make connections to my experiences from the past 2 weeks.

Taking videos and pictures while we were traveling in China… has helped me tremendously in reflecting on these experiences. Choosing the right images (from over 1000 files between Mike and my Flickr account) and then editing the movie was an integral part of my learning experience.

1:1 iPad Initiative in Wuhan, China from langwitches on Vimeo.

What are your thoughts when viewing the video? What parallels can you draw to education in the US? What implications do you see for the global future of our students?

At the beginning of most calendar years, especially at the beginning of a new decade, century or millennium, we tend to take a closer look at our past and future than perhaps at other times. In the past few weeks I came across the following two articles:

You’re Out: 20 Things that became Obsolete this Decade by the Huffington Post and Things that Babies born in 2011 will Never Know by Money Talks News are listing books, travel agents, video tapes, cassettes, watches, CDs and other items that will have or will become obsolete.

The above mentioned articles came to mind, as I was in one of our second grade classrooms getting ready to talk to 7 & 8 year olds about being promoted from merely commenting on their classroom blog to co-authoring a weekly blog post to document their learning and to be able to share it with their parents. Their classroom teacher and I had discussed that students would receive a weekly “Job Assignment” as the “Math Blogger”,”Science Blogger”, etc. and that these jobs would rotate among all students just as the other class job responsibilities.

Class Jobs & Responsibilities I

As I was in their classroom waiting for the students to finish a previous activity, I was looking at their prominent bulletin board displaying students and their corresponding class job.

1. Morning Opening Leader
2. Teacher’s Helper
3. Pencil Sharpener
4. Line Leader
5. Door Holder
6. Line Monitor
7. Paper Collector
8. Paper Passer
9. Board Cleaner
10. Book Organizer

The teacher wanted to keep the list of jobs to ten, one for each student in the class. The class started with a discussion about which current jobs they c(sh)ould be eliminated based on necessity and importance within the classroom community. Most students seemed to agree that the “Book Organizer” and “Pencil Sharpener” could be eliminated. I threw them a curve ball by asking them:

What classroom jobs could possibly not exist anymore in 50 years? What kind of classroom jobs would simply NOT exist anymore when their grandchildren would be going to school?

We looked at each job title individually:

1. Morning Opening Leader- Could still be around.
2. Teacher’s Helper- Could still be around.
3. Pencil Sharpener- I held up my iPad and my stylus and they immediately made the connection. Then I showed them how I use the NoteTaker HD app to take notes and how I could switch between different colored pencils as well as their thickness. They agreed that I was not in need to sharpen pencils anymore.
   
4. Line Leader-Could still be around, IF kids still were going to a physical school every day to learn. I reminded them of our Skype calls and how we could have class with children who lived in different cities, states, countries or continents. There would be no need for a line leader.
5. Door Holder- Virtual classrooms would not have a door anymore that needed to be held open.
6. Line Monitor- No students would be lining up in a virtual classroom to walk one behind the other to the lunchroom, resource or library…no monitor needed.
7. Paper Collector- I pulled my iPad out again and showed them how I could simply e-mail or share my notes with the teacher and she could do the same. We imagined how every student in 50 years would have some sort of device that allowed their teacher to simply have access to their work without the work having to be “collected”
8. Paper Passer- Passing out paper would also be obsolete, since teachers could share any “papers” or assignments via their device with students.
9. Board Cleaner- One click… board is wiped clean
10. Book Organizer- I showed the class my iBook and Kindle app and how I access any book on my shelf. Close the book…and it is “neatly” stored and even remembers the last page I read.

Class Jobs & Responsibilities II

Take a look at the new bulletin board, that their teacher created for her class the following day. Since her second grade is not a 1:1 iPad class, nor holds virtual class for her students, some of the original jobs are [still] valuable and necessary in their classroom. The new added jobs are:

1. Science Blogger
2. Spelling Blogger
3. Reading Blogger
4. Writing Blogger
5. Math Blogger

Their teacher created a “template” blog draft with an outline of a format including the different subject areas. The bloggers of the week will be writing daily in the draft version to document and reflect on their lessons and their learning in different subjects. They will collaboratively revise and edit the draft as a class before publishing and sharing the post. For me, this “blogger” job describes beautifully (at an appropriate developmental stage of a second grader), one of the roles to develop empowered learners that Alan November lists as “Official Scribe”.

I am looking forward to seeing their progress as they get comfortable with their new class job as bloggers, practicing online writing, documenting, reflecting on their learning, sharing, collaborating and so much more…

Adapted from Alan November (pp.188-193), Curriculum 21 (ASCD, 2010) by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.

What are some of the classroom jobs that are becoming obsolete in your classroom? What jobs are replacing the old ones? Please share!

There are so many website out there… So many tools… so many NEW tools to discover and try out… Sometimes one can forget the “good old” ones.

I have not used Animoto in a while. I should, since it is one of the GREAT companies that gives us educators a break, meaning a free account for us and our students. This educator account allows you to create Those kind of companies deserve to be promoted, talked about, shown off and recommended whenever and where ever we can.

Add Animoto to your Digital Storytelling Kit

I wanted to highlight some of my favorite photos I took from Peru. They were already uploaded to my Flickr account. In a flash, they were imported into Animoto, added a song, saved and grabbed the code to embed the video here.

According to the Cambridge dictionary there is a difference between metaphors and idoms.

definition of idiom:

“a group of words whose meaning considered as a unit is different from the meanings of each word considered separately.”

definition of metaphor:

“an expression that describes a person or object by referring to something that is considered to possess similar characteristics.”

Looks like I have confused metaphors with idioms. I have not posted  metaphors idioms on Langwitches in a while. Looks like that I am going through phases when I use more or less metaphors idioms in my daily communications.

Metaphors Idioms are one of the things I have the most trouble with when I am in conversation with monolingual people. Using metaphors idioms conjure up images that when translated into a different language make PERFECT sense to my brain, but only earn confused looks or laughter from the others.

This one came up yesterday in a conversation:

Smearing honey around someone’s mouth (from German “Jemanden Honig um den Mund schmieren”)

After a few laughs, we settled that the English equivalent of the metaphor would be to

Buttering someone up

BTW, that visual is equally funny for a non- English speaker

Buttering someone up (or smear honey around their mouth) means, that you give him plenty of compliments or agree with his/her in order to get what you want.

At the beginning of 2008, I started a collaborative VoiceThread project “What Could It Mean?”Almost 1700 views and over 350 comments later, I have added two more images from Perú and I am inviting you and your students to add their comments on (from their perspective) what it could mean?

It is a perfect opportunity to discuss with your students that the same image might conjure up a different meaning depending on you cultural background.

If you would like to contribute an image from your country about a particular custom, habit or tradition check out the project’s wiki with specific instructions.

The teacher’s key on the meaning of each image is also available for you to view.

Here are the newest added images:

Image 18- Urubamba Valley, Perú
Urubamba Valley is the Sacred Valley, about one hour away from Cusco, the ancient capital of the Incas. Gigantic stones were placed on the road due to a strike in order to prevent ANYONE from passing by or doing or getting to work.

Image 19- Cusco, Perú
You will see statues of 2 bulls on top of many roofs in Peru. Many times they are combined with a cross. The bulls are a symbol for good luck.

As of today my VoiceThread "What could it mean?" has had almost 1000 views and has drawn 357 voices. These voices are commenting on images from different countries, depicting a unique traditions, typical customs, distinctive perspectives, routines, habits and practices. Together they are painting a story how people from different countries and cultures can interpret one and the same image in many different ways. Reminding us, that we need to take our different upbringing and cultural backgrounds into consideration before jumping to conclusions. We need to be aware of and recognizing possible misunderstandings due to cultural perceptions.

Through the Global Collaboration Ning , I found two new VoiceThreads created by Bill Ferriter, a Middle School teacher from North Carolina, USA.

The Cultural Photograph

One of the best ways to study the different cultures and customs of the world is to look at photograph from different places.

The other VoiceThread is "Welcome to our World" ,

Students from classes across the globe can explore the interesting differences between their communities by studying images.

Bill has also included great handouts for the students to prepare their comments. I am able to look and zoom in on the handouts in VoiceThread , but would love to be able to download them to use in my classroom. Next step, twitter Bill and see if he would be willing to share. These two VoiceThreads are great examples of how to expose our students to other countries and cultures, but as Bill points out in his post on the Global Collaboration Ning:

The only thing missing is conversation between students of different countries!

We need to make connections to teachers and their students in other countries, especially the ones that seem so under represented such as South America, some parts of Europe (Yes, surprisingly I do not have any teacher from Germany in my network!) and Africa. We also need to remember that the culture that surrounds us and seems so "normal", is "foreign" to someone else. It is a great opportunity to break down stereotypes that the media or movie industry has build up over many years. Believe me, I was very surprised what America was really like when I first arrived here and only had seen the country through movies of the 80s, like Flashdance and Porky’s.

Presented by Hall Davidson

The Revenge of the Digital Immigrants: Revise Teaching with Media Technology
What veteran teachers suspected the research has proved: 21st Century students are different. They have different attention spans, test much higher on IQ tests, and reach sophistication earlier with new social skills. The modern media environment indelible effects developing minds. Psychologists call it a �new brain.� The fantastic thing is we can teach this �new brain� more effectively, more efficiently, and more engagingly. Because we have the technology! Media has evolved and education must evolve to match. Learn from the real world and see how media providers have adapted to deliver accountable information. Then explore applications to your school.

Kids’ brains are different, we should work with them. Brains deal with images (emotion, instinct, impulses) differently than with text. The way your students think has changed. If you watch too much TV while you are between 5-7years old your attention span changes when you are between 13-15.

Teachers tend to teach the way we were taught. It does not work anymore. We have to develop new ways to teach this kind of “new” brain. The new brain can get the new information a lot quicker than the old brain. We just have to feed them in a different way. Advertising industry has realized that. Commercial times have changed from 60-30-15 seconds.

Radio Commercials – 5 seconds ads (applets) & 2 seconds (blinks).

We have the technology to build short lessons (imovie or windows moviemaker) Use more short interval teaching.

Each generation is shaped by its environment.

Ex. Comparison of two doctor TV shows. Dr. Kildare and House.

Kids are tool users. We need to use that ability. Use green screen and video to have kids create. Tools: Microsoft Photostory. We need to get our students to use these tools. They NEED that kind of “stuff”.

We need to rethink how we use media.

Building with Google SketchUp

Teach the old brain and reach the new brain.

Watch this presentation on Ustream. Thank you to Colemama

[tag]FETC08[/tag]

Crosspost from Egypt Blog .

While the boat is waking slowly to life, I am enjoying once again the quiet deck. Looking out on the West side of the boat, there are about 30+ horse carriages lined up in front of the boat�s exit. They are waiting for the passengers to get off and take them on a tour to the Temple of Edfou. The carriages have occupied the entire street. Cars that are trying to pass through are honking an echoing horn. There seems to be some order in this chaos though. Every once in a while everyone starts shouting and arguing. Maybe some carriage skipped the line and positioned itself in a more favorable place. I can�t understand what they are saying, but the voices do sound angry.

One man is feeding his horse, while I hear other horses neighing towards the food. The state which these poor animals are in from our point of view is heart breaking. They are extremely thin and you can count each one of their ribs. Although it is still early and the morning and not that hot outside, I can�t prevent imagining how thirsty these horses must get in a few hours after being �beaten� through the streets carrying tourists. None of them seems to ever have seen a brush.

I know that I am seeing just an outsider�s glimpse, just a frozen moment in time of the lives of these people. Everyone is out to earn a living. I have the mind and cultural background of a �Westerner�, we grow up with the notion of animals, such as cats, dogs and horses being our pets and friends. We do not use them to work and earn money in order to feed our families. There is a different relationship with animals than what we are used to.

I am trying to find a way to talk myself into imaging that these horses might actually have a good life compared to other animals. They must be a prized possession and might even receive better treatment than some of the human members of the family, since they are their means to earn their living. If they do not line up early, early in the morning in front of the tourist boats with their horse carriages, they will not be able to buy food.

I can�t help thinking what it must be like to see hundreds of tourists stream out of the boats everyday with expensive cameras in their hand and dressed in shorts and T-shirts. We probably seem just as strange and �foreign� to them as they do to us.

Photo by Nathan Gibbs
In the first out of three interviews by Alan November with Dan Pink, the author of “A whole new mind”, Dan Pink talks about how his own children attend an International school in Washington.

The reason behind the choice for this school was that it is a bilingual school. Since his wife and himself are not bilingual, they chose to have their children to go to a Spanish immersion school. He sees the benefit of growing up with two languages. He adds that the International environment that his children are raised is another benefit of a school like this. They are not learning from a book that there are many different cultures, nationalities and points of views, they are living it from day to day. I believe that children who are able to learn in such an environment will have the necessary skills and predisposition to work in a flat world.

I will be on my way today to get a copy of “A Whole New Mind”.