Frenchteachers.ning.com

[Pieter Jansegers]

I've started http://frenchteachers.ning.com a while ago. The idea is to promote to use of ICT in French language education.

I've always been keen on finding good resources for French, ever since the world wide web was 'gopherable'. [Do you remember the gopher-protocol ?]

I'm still waiting for the wiki feature to bring this ning up to speed, a wiki being the most interested way for direct cooperation in my view.

I place this message because due to a reform of the Ning listings and the effect of it on the search functionality, my ning isn't findable at the moment.

NOTA BENE It doesn't have enough members as yet; I've been promised findability in the next few weeks when the search function will be updated to search all existing ning once again in stead of only the popular ones.

[Perdita Harper]

Hi Pieter

This sounds an excellent idea. I am not French speaking but I am interested in your site as our children attend an English/French bilingual school. I will pass the URL on to their teachers.

It’s hard to tell how active French Teachers is without registering, but it is certainly still a very small community. Did you consider extending the site to language teachers rather than just French teachers to increase the opportunities for interaction? While sharing and collaborating around resources would need to be language specific, there could be benefit in discussing how these could be used in teaching languages in general. Tom March (2005) defines the term “resource” when applied to education “…this usually refers to extra supporting experiences/materials like field trips, videotapes, guest speakers, libraries and special interest magazines”…and I am sure there are others.

You could consider having categories devoted to resources that could be used in teaching a particular language and then categories relating to application of those resources. The one stumbling block of course is finding a common language for the application of resources section. Would English work or would it exclude too many people?

I’m interested that you mention that you are waiting for the wiki feature. Do you know if there is one coming or is it just a wish? I am very impressed with the Ning software. The interface is clean and it has a number of features that are excellent supports to community building. I am currently part of a team that is building a closed community of educators within a wiki, but the software lacks many of the features that support building an online identity which in turn helps to build community.

In case you or others are interested, see March, T., 2005. What's on the Web: Sorting Strands of the World Wide Web for Educators. Retrieved March 18, 2008 from http://tommarch.com/writings/webtypes.php.

Perdita

[Pieter Jansegers]

Thanks for the referral.

Thanks for the suggestiond, but I'm going to limit the community to French teachers and the language of both the interface and the articles mainly to French ( though English is tolerated).

The wiki feature was promised a way back and should be in development. Priority was shifted to enable OpenSocial and some other things first, but it should be on track again.

Which wiki do you use, BTW ? I'm a fervent microblogger ( http://microblogs.ning.com ) but I have also some wikis ( http://jansegers.cafewiki.org about French and http://jansegers.wetpaint.com about microblogs for example.)

[Perdita Harper]

It’s great to hear that wiki functionality is being added to Ning. The combination of a well-designed and easy to use interface, forums, wikis, blogs and all the features that encourage social interaction will make it a very useful tool.

I use two university wikis…one has been established for a community of academics and support staff to explore education technologies and the other is for Faculty of Education students exploring emerging learning technologies and learning communities. Both are closed wikis.

I hadn’t come across the term microblogger before and although I had heard of twitter, I didn’t know what it was. The good old Common Craft—Twitter in Plain English has given me the basic idea.

Good luck with your site…hope the anticipated improvements in the search function leads to lots of active new members.

Perdita

[Pieter Jansegers]

My twitter is http://twitter.com/jansegers, but I think that tumblr is more up adequate for educational purposes [ http://jansegers.tumblr.com but I'm not following nor being followed on this microblog ], with an ease of use only equalled by the social networks of Ning.com and the profiles of Multiply.com.

Microblogs are the fastest instant global mass media in the history of mankind.

Microblogs are changing the world - http://www.floort.com/show.php?fid=629

It's a pitty the wikis you're using are closed ones.


BTW I'm waiting for the search functionality reset (it worked in the past just fine, but when they decided to list only the networks with a certain amount of users in the listing of favorite networks, the search functionality was affectated as well).

[Perdita Harper]

I’ve looked at your links, but I am still wondering how microblogging is used in education. Do you use it with your students…and if you do…why?

I was interested in “The Truth According to Wikipedia” on your tumblr site, although I agree with Stephen Downes’s comment that there is no “way (or requirement) to substantiate perspectives with argumentation and evidence” - http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=44130. But is providing a link enough? Shouldn’t we be hearing your perspectives on it…or am I missing the point of microblogging?

[Pieter Jansegers]

Tumblr

I haven't used it myself for classroom purposes yet, though I have read about just an usage and I can very well image myself using it for encouraging students to express their views in a foreign language on self-chosen subjects.

To put up a video there you can either upload it to the site or give a URL from video sites like YouTube or Vimeo, or the raw Embed-tag from any video/flash site. (ie. http://youtube.com/watch?v=oCmAD-z7-mA)

Wikipedia

This video was shown for the first time about two weeks ago on The Next Web Conference 2008 which was e-casted live by the Dutch NOS and VPRO using the technology for the China Olympics.

http://thenextweb.org/2008/04/01/thenextweb2008-update-the-truth-ac...

Some discussion can be found at
http://thenextweb.org/2008/04/06/the-people-versus-the-expert/

And recently a professor launched this severe article about Wikipedia
Wikipedia and the blind trust in it - http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1828979092

The video gives both the critical view of the Encyclopedia Brittanica Chief editor and the enthusiastic one of the founder of Wikipedia and let people think about knowledge in a fresh way.

Wikipedia is too me the best way to find the common sense and basic knowledge of the postmodern human being about any subject. Sociologically speaking it is really enormously interesting.

Also because knowledge is indeed a construction mainly based on words defined by words defined by words. One big intertextual transfer from generation upon generation.

The only thing of which anyone can be really sure is what that person did do in person. Basicly all the rest is congesture at best based on some evidence.

The funny thing is that even evidence is only a material thing that can be displaid to the public to be watched upon. This thing has no meaning on it own without a linguistical context.

The idea in Prison Break to plant a ring of an opponent in the blood under the stairs to imply the guiltiness of a rival is quite a good example to this.

Facts are indeed things that are to be made up out of the stream of events. No one can fully understand the things that happened to theirselves, we all have to make sense of things, meaning to put things into context and perspective.

So we can only have probability, plausibility and coherence of possibility about anything that happened to anyone else, especially of something happened in the past. In the end. it virtually all depends upon the credibility of a story.

In science, the situation also depends upon modelling reality, which is as fuzzy as putting word labels on it because in order to quantify anything you have to categorize it first.

Categorization means comparing it to a definition upon which you first have to agree. Problem is that a definition by criteria means that there are quite a lot of things you have to exclude in other to be certain of the things you are going to say about them.

If an object is not completely corresponding with all the criteria of even a perfect scientific model anything that can be said about it is only as probable as the probability of the right categorization of that object.

I really like epistemology...

I always say that if you have 50 chairs and you cut them in two, you do have a 100 broken chairs...