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Friday, September 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Culture against Anarchy?
Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Minute on Indian Education" (1835)
"It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population."
~ ~ ~
"Let me remind you of Macaulay. He remains to me one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious for certain reasons which you know" - Lord Acton
Herbert Paul (ed.), Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone (George Allen, 1904), p. 210.
Culture, not Anarchy
American English 'Likely to Prevail': Lee Kuan Yew
Leow Si Wan - Straits Times Indonesia | September 07, 2011
(Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/international/american-english-likely-to-prevail-lee-kuan-yew/463863)
The American version of English will probably prevail over other forms in Singapore and teachers may have to eventually accept this as inevitable, former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew said on Tuesday.
The growing dominance of the American media would mean that Singapore's population would increasingly be hearing the American version of English, he said.
Speaking at the official opening of the English Language Institute of Singapore (Elis), he said that he, too, had been consciously switching between British and American English on the computer, and that he saw himself moving towards American English in a nod to the US being "a dominant force."
Teachers might thus do well to accept this trend, and teach their students to recognize - and even speak - American English, he said.
Accent aside, students will thus use the kind of English understood by the rest of the English-speaking world, he said.
Educators and MPs at the event agreed that it was important to teach students here to differentiate between the different forms of English.
Elizabeth Pang, the program director for literacy development in the Education Ministry, said it was pragmatic of Lee to accept that American English had become dominant.
"If you look at English that is in use in society, you have to embrace different standard varieties of English.
"It's not a sea change. It's an evolution," she said, noting that students are now not penalized for using American English, so long as they are consistent.
Elis' program director Ang-Tay May Yin said: "If we allow our students to learn different varieties of English, it will be to their advantage."
Tampines GRC MP Irene Ng said she believed many teachers and writers, having an attachment to British English, would likely continue using it, until 'we're quite convinced that the way to go forward is American English".
The chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Education, Lim Biow Chuan, said it was still critical to develop students' ability to communicate their ideas.
Leow Si Wan - Straits Times Indonesia | September 07, 2011
(Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/international/american-english-likely-to-prevail-lee-kuan-yew/463863)
The American version of English will probably prevail over other forms in Singapore and teachers may have to eventually accept this as inevitable, former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew said on Tuesday.
The growing dominance of the American media would mean that Singapore's population would increasingly be hearing the American version of English, he said.
Speaking at the official opening of the English Language Institute of Singapore (Elis), he said that he, too, had been consciously switching between British and American English on the computer, and that he saw himself moving towards American English in a nod to the US being "a dominant force."
Teachers might thus do well to accept this trend, and teach their students to recognize - and even speak - American English, he said.
Accent aside, students will thus use the kind of English understood by the rest of the English-speaking world, he said.
Educators and MPs at the event agreed that it was important to teach students here to differentiate between the different forms of English.
Elizabeth Pang, the program director for literacy development in the Education Ministry, said it was pragmatic of Lee to accept that American English had become dominant.
"If you look at English that is in use in society, you have to embrace different standard varieties of English.
"It's not a sea change. It's an evolution," she said, noting that students are now not penalized for using American English, so long as they are consistent.
Elis' program director Ang-Tay May Yin said: "If we allow our students to learn different varieties of English, it will be to their advantage."
Tampines GRC MP Irene Ng said she believed many teachers and writers, having an attachment to British English, would likely continue using it, until 'we're quite convinced that the way to go forward is American English".
The chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Education, Lim Biow Chuan, said it was still critical to develop students' ability to communicate their ideas.
"10 internet technologies that educators should be informed about"
Am cutting and pasting from a useful web article for our quick-reference convenience.
Original source:
Original source:
Walsh, K. (April 19, 2009). 10 internet technologies that educators should be informed about. Retrieved September 2, 2011, from http://www.emergingedtech.com/2009/04/10-internet-technologies-that-educators-should-be-informed-about/
1. Video and Podcasting - One of the most widely adopted internet technologies for use in instructional settings is video streaming. Between YouTube, TeacherTube, EduTube, and many other video hosting sites, there are an abundance of lectures, how-to videos, and supporting materials available in the form of web based video. Podcasting has also been used to provide similar offerings of audio materials through popular sites like iTunes. [Click here to learn more about video hosting for education, or hereto learn more about podcasting for education.]
2. Presentation Tools - This category is vast and rich. There are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of tools on the Internet that can be used to create and share presentations, from simple Powerpoint slide players like Slideshare to multimedia timeline tools like Vuvox and OneTrueMedia. These tools can be used to support classroom teaching or distance learning, or for student reports and presentations.
Have you considered outsourcing your call center?
3. Collaboration & Brainstorming Tools - This is another wide ranging category, including thought-organizing tools like mindmap and bubbl.us, and collaborative tools like web based interactive whiteboards and Google Documents. Additionally, some of the other tools in this list, such as wikis and virtual worlds, also serve as collaboration tools.
4. Blogs & Blogging – Bloggers and many other regular Internet users are well aware of blogs and blogging, but there are many other professionals who really are not frequenters of the “blogosphere”. In addition to a basic familiarity with this technology, educators should be aware of sites likeBlogger and WordPress, where users can quickly and easily create their own blogs for free.
5. Wikis – The use of Wikis in educational settings is growing every day. Sites like Wetpaint and others allow users to create free wiki web sites and are a great way to get started with using wikis for educational applications.[Click here to learn more about the use of Wikis in education].
6. Social Networking – All educators should have a basic understanding of sites like Facebook and MySpace and how they are used. This doesn’t mean they need accounts on these sites (and many educators would recommend against using these sites to communicate with their students), but they should understand what they are and how they are being used. Educators should also be aware of the professional social networking site LinkedIn.
7. IM – A large percentage of students use IM regularly, via Aim, IM aggregator site Meebo (Meebo allows users to combine messaging from Aim, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook, and other sites), or other tools. It behooves educators to be aware of this, and I have even come across various articles about using IM within the classroom setting (such as this one from Educause).
8. Twitter – This listing is really focused on technologies, not specificapplications, but this application is currently just too popular to ignore. You should at least understand what it is and the fundamentals of how it is used.[Click here for some insight into how Twitter can be used in education.]
9. Virtual Worlds – This technology has received a lot of press, with SecondLife being the clear leader thus far in this application area. In my experience, the use of SecondLife has been somewhat constrained by high bandwidth and processing power requirements, but this also means that there is still considerable room for increased adoption of the application as systems continue to become more powerful and higher speed bandwidth more prevalant. Active Worlds is one of a number of competitive technologies, and provides a “universe” dedicated to education that has been popular with educators.
10. RSS Feeds - RSS allows users to create their own “push” data streams (that is, define data flows you want coming to you automatically, rather than having to go and “pull” the information with a Google search or other browsing effort). RSS feeds enable you to take advantage of streams of published content that will be sitting in your In Box, or in an RSS reader, when you want them. There are RSS feeds available for many topics and many web sites.
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