Ed Tech in the Classroom

A Vision of the Student Today

IM Lingo in the Classroom: What to do?

Over at my class blog, I'm noticing some IM language creeping into student comments. Seems I'm not the only teacher wrestling with how to handle changes that are popping up in student writing. Blog conversations among international teachers are taking place Over at The Thinking Stick where Jeff writes a thought-provoking post entitled "Futr Lang".

Over at The Committed Sardine, Ian Jukes' posting of an article entitled "Students Use IM Lingo in Essays" generates more dialogue among teachers. As I say in my comment there,

"Language evolves over time. Compare the English language used in Beowulf to that used in Lord of the Flies. I suspect that it won’t be long until it will be perfectly acceptable to use “u” for “you”. Plus, the IM language of today will probably be obsolete within a decade or two. Until then, we need to assist students in being articulate in multiple settings, whether it be in cyberspace, on paper, or in a podcast."

(image adapted from Creating Passionate Users)

Future Schools

As Christian over at think:lab writes,

If you haven't had a chance yet to read Alvin Toffler's (author of Future Shock) recent interview with Edutopia, this link will whisk you away into a land of provocative ideas lasering in on the future of learning.  He's not pulling punches, to say the least.  In particular, I deeply appreciate the following challenge he offers towards the end of the interview:

So, let's sit down as a culture, as a society, and say, "Teachers, parents, people outside, how do we completely rethink this? We're going to create a new system from ground zero, and what new ideas have you got?" And collect those new ideas. That would be a very healthy thing for the country to do.

Imagine if we took Toffler's advice? What might happen?

James Daly of Edutopia: Walk me through this school you'd create. What do the classrooms look like? What are the class sizes? What are the hours? 

Toffler: It's open twenty-four hours a day. Different kids arrive at different times. They don't all come at the same time, like an army. They don't just ring the bells at the same time. They're different kids. They have different potentials.