A Pill for MS is Coming and then a cure….

I know this is a language blog, but it is also about me. So please indulge me in a moment on the laura side.....

I have to be hopeful. It is all I have. I was in Brazil last summer, nine hours on the plane away from my family, when I learned that my 21 year old daughter has MS. How could that possibly be? These days we watch many of her AAU basketball buddies with whom she played in high school battling it out in the ACC and Big East- Duke, UConn, Maryland. My little girl with the six foot wingspan and leopard print cane battles a different opponent and we are proud of her tenacious D.

This is MS Awareness month. Every hour someone else is diagnosed. They will feel sick, feel hot, feel cold, lose their balance, sleep a lot and then suffer amnesia. They will lose feeling in their feet and legs and then get sensation back and lose it again. They will feel the love of their friends and family and still feel very alone. They will inject themselves every other day with the hope that their treatment will be successful.

Yet this is MS Awareness month and look what I found out today:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(09)70017-1/fulltext


In April, we will be walking in Walk MS. We have hope that a pill is coming. A pill and then a cure. All of you who have MS or have loved ones who do, we walk for you, too. MS does not define us. One love, one heart.

International Faculty Development Seminar:Brasil

As promised to my colleagues, here are a few more details of my study trip to what my daughters call “the land of my ancestors”. The college newsletter blurb had to be abridged, so I’ll be more expansive here . Anyone who occasionally visits here now knows that chronology (and sometimes editing) goes right out the janela……

 

This International Faculty Development Seminar held from June 1-10, 2008 in Sao Paulo and Paraty, Brazil was an exercise in absorbing contrasts- from the bustling city of millions of inhabitants to the last vestiges of the pristine Atlantic rainforest in  the southernmost part of Rio de Janeiro state. Although my roots are Brazilian and I am fluent in Portuguese, my family ties are much farther north, closer to the very different Amazon region. The seminar greatly increased my knowledge base on BRIC country economics, ever-controversial environmental issues and the changing role of Brazil today.

  

The first week was largely devoted to a vast variety of insightful pre-planned lectures and field trips. Some topics discussed included:

 

• Ecology and Politics in Brazil
• Education and Sustainable Development
• Challenges of Modern Brazilian Politics
• Development and Environmental Impacts in Brazil
• Social Movements in Brazil: Landless People and their Struggles
• Issues of the Brazilian Native Indians
• New Resources for Alternative Energy: The Case of Ethanol
• Urban Expansion, Population Growth and Quality of Life in Brazil
• Poverty and Development in Brazil
• Challenges in Brazilian Education

 The seminar was hosted by the Assessoria de Relações Internacionais (International Relations Commission) of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC). PUC, founded in 1946, has 22,000 students and 2,000 professors and is considered among the best universities in Brazil. It is well-known for its Paulo Freire Chair, one of the decisive factors in my selection of this seminar. The PUC organizers went out of their way to bring us in close contact with leading experts in their respective fields. For example, the noted economist, Ladislau Dowbor, appeared so in his comfort zone as he lectured on complex issues and promptly invited us to almost all of his scholarly works online. If your field is Latin American economics, you must visit him online.(My friends  all know of my delight in sharing ideas freely online.) Our expert on the current emergent economy was a senior macroeconomist from the prestigious Bradesco bank. It was ironic that the title of his talk spoke of the “Challenges of the Economy”, but his message was optimistic with Brazil on the move with the Chinese, Russians and Indians.

 

Movimento sem terra

Touring was fantastic. We were hardly settled in our modern business hotel when we were whisked off on a bus to a settlement of the Landless Movement or Movimento sem Terra with a group of CIEE students studying at the PUC. The student mission was to talk to the farmers about their settlements and their sustainable agricultural projects. The students were asked to translate these interviews for the faculty visitors. (My student guide had it easy since I speak Portuguese. We taked about his study abroad experience which seemed to be first rate.)  To reach the MST, we climbed unpaved rocky roads to three- room homes of settlers who were proud to speak of their hard work. We learned that this type of visit was atypical, mostly because the MST do not always trust outsiders. Reasons include security issues and the sometime negative depictions of them in the press. Yet because the MST members were treated with great respect by the mostly American CIEE students, they were very generous with their time and in sharing their community life with us. This visit was an eye-opener to me because it allowed me to see the kind of authentic experiences our own NOVA students might have on a similar CIEE trip. They were well-informed in advance by their teachers, they had been in Brazil long enough to communicate appropriately with the MST and all Portuguese speakers and they had obviously absorbed the Brazilian culture in which they were immersed.

 

 

  

Parati, a walk in the past.

The other part of this visit was to Paraty, an historic, marvelously preserved colonial city in the south of Rio state. Here is an excerpt from an earlier post in this blog where I talk about  my experience in the Saco de Mamangua, our gateway to the Atlantic rain forest:

 

“It seems like an eternity since my wonderful time in Paraty, Brasil in the southeast of Rio de Janeiro last month. There I visited the Saco do Mamangua, clearly one of the most beautiful places that I have been in 50+ years….. So what if I capsized my canoe in the mangrove, all my valuables were safely in another canoe with  paddlers with skills. All I had to do was not move (or breathe) and I made it safely to shore in Paraty Mirim. Will never forget the hospitality of Dona Gracinha, the little barquinhos (boats) made of caxeta wood that I brought home with me, and the utter beauty of the Atlantic rainforest where beautiful orchids with their roots extending into the air were attached to the trees. I saw pioneer vegetation growing timidly on land being reforested.

I hope to be able to find the book by Paulo Nogara, our biologist in residence from the tour,  who paddled our canoe like some practiced gondolier. His love for this country was so evident. He was an excellent teacher who raised our awareness of both the beauty and the fragility of our surroundings. In retrospect, it was a great exercise in self-control to surrender to the movement of the boat. I finally “got it”, Type A as I am. Mentally, I can still go back to the peace of the setting sun in the beautiful sunset of Paraty Mirim.

 The little painted caicara boat that  I brought home from that day is sitting on my dining room table today. It helps me go back there in my mind.  When I think about the locomotion involved in it all- bus, boat, hike, canoe and  the plane ride home, the barquinho gave me a real workout then and now a lot of peace.”

 The CIEE IFDS experience was wonderful, particularly the hospitality of our gracious hosts, Ana Luisa and Mauricio. I think this faculty development trip should be offered annually in Brazil. The rich diversity of this country the size of a continent informs our world-view and our practice as educators.

Let’s talk amongst ourselves- MERLOT Voices

View my page on MERLOT Voices

MERLOT now has a social networking page where we can talk and share info. I do hope all my friends will join and make it rock! I’ll see y’all in there, voices.merlot.org.

Update 9/23: We have been having great conversations in MERLOT VOICES, Adobe Connect and at the TLT group site in a three-week, worldwide version of MERLOT 101. If anyone shows up here between 9/23 and Oct/1, you can register and join our group, where else? in MERLOT VOICES.

We are not quite as big as the 1900+ Connectivism Course that I am taking with George Siemens and Stephen Downes as facilitators. I am  learning amazing things there, which in my experience happens when you put the world together. I have found a worldwide community of bloggers called Global Voices and a related Lingua Project that has volunteer translators translating the GV pages. I love it!!!

MERLOT Africa NETWORK at MERLOT 2008

Dr. Bakary Diallo, rector of the African Virtual University presented the learning architecture and e-learning solutions currently in use in educational institutions in 27 African countries.  Currently a blended mode of instruction is used incorporating Internet, CDs and mobile technologies. Access to higher education in Africa  is often adversely affected by economic issues, bandwidth, outdated curricula and teaching and learning methods. Open educational resources are at the center of the AVU conceptual framework which draws inspiration from promising practices from other areas of the world and adapt these  to an African cultural context.

Dr.Diallo announced plans to release 73 Math and Science & ICT modules prepared by Africans, working with organizations like the MERLOT Africa Network. 

Solomon Negash introduced the audience to the MERLOT Africa Network. This project is about developing partnerships with institutions of higher learning to collect content and share ideas.  he introduced us to eGranary, a  tool that allows users to use Internet sites on an intranet when a web connection is not available.

Infrastructure challenges are huge in Africa, according to Negash, but he encouraged the audience members to share his vision to think big and start small.

Brief Hybrid Workshops: Live from MERLOT

Steve Gilbert, Ray Purdom and the TLT group presented on the 5 minute workshop. Faculty developers make 5 minute e-clips to introduce a new instructional strategy or concept.  These e-clips can be used alone, online and f2f. E-clips are easy to make and they are the central element of brief hybrid workshops which can be online or face to face. Here’s a blueprint for the workshops from the TLT’s site:

http://www.tltgroup.org/BHW/HowTo/Templates/WebPageBHW-BHTLM.htm

We looked at a video and did a very brief Think Pair Share which is part of the brief hybrid workshop, reacting to the content in the video. The final activity was an individual reflection on a 3×5 card to help the presenters refine their workshop and to help participants conceptualize the workshop.

MERLOT 2008- e-portfolios

First day of the MERLOT conference in Minneapolis and I’m in a session on e-portfolios done by  folks from the CSU system. I can definitely see the application of this type of project to show employers the competencies and skill sets our students have. For language students these portfolios can include work in the target language, showcasing their language skills and evidence of their cultural awareness through the posting of photographs, digital video and their own voice samples.  Many products are available for this work. Students can easily use a  blog format which encourages reflection on the part of students that reveal aspects of their personality to potential employer. The presenters showed various institutional e-portfolio solutions a few of which I ink beow.  In a video that they showed, one employer said that he felt like he knew a candidate before he arrived, based on his portfolio. The presenters spoke to the growing acceptance of e-portfolios by employers. Promising for getting known worldwide.

No more paper resumes!

eportfolio.sfsu.edu
eportfolio.merlot.org

O Museu da lingua portuguesa

First, it goes right to my heartstrings to find a museum dedicated to a language (as the name of my

Photo by Bee Dieu

blog might suggest). That it’s my heritage language, ainda melhor. I almost did not even make it to this gem in the Estacao da Luz in Sao Paulo, except for Bee’s tenacity on the last day of our visit. We had no idea it was the Day of the Portuguese Language, June 10, chosen because that was the day Luiz Vaz de Camoes died 428 years ago. Wikipedia has a very good page  to whet your apetite but you really just have to go, queridos.  How do I describe what we saw? A small auditorium where a ten minute multimedia presentation on the Portuguese language opened up into a planetarium-like space. Only in this room, the stars were words, verses and snippets of unbelievable literature pronounced by actors and poets and little children. Portuguese, indigenous and African words shot across the dark ceiling like shooting stars. Nothing is more delicious to me than a language in it’s natural beauty. This was one of those priceless moments for someone who love languages, like me.

Que Saco!

Laura is a tool

Summer 2008 is fleeting fast. It seems like an eternity since my wonderful time in Paraty, Brasil in the southeast of Rio de Janeiro last month. There I visited the Saco do Mamangua, clearly one of the most beautiful places that I have been in 50+ years….. So what if I capsized my canoe in the mangrove, all my valuables were safely in another canoe with  paddlers with skills. All I had to do was not move (or breathe) and I made it safely to shore in Paraty Mirim. Will never forget the hospitality of Dona Gracinha, the little barquinhos made of caxeta wood that I brought home with me, and the utter beauty of the Atlantic rainforest where beautiful orchids with their roots extending in the air were attached to the trees. I saw pioneer vegetation growing timidly on land being reforested.

On the way to the rain forest with biologist, Paulo Nogara.

I hope to be able to find the book by Paulo Nogara, our biologist in residence from the tour,  who paddled our canoe like a gondolier. His love for this country was so evident. He was an excellent teacher who raised our awareness of both the beauty and the fragility of our surroundings. In retrospect, it was a great exercise in self-control to surrender to the movement of the boat. I finally “got it” Type A as I am. Mentally, I can still go back to the peace of the setting sun in the beautiful sunset of Paraty Mirim.

P.S. The little painted caicara boat that  I brought home from that day is sitting on my dining room table today. It helps me go back there in my mind.  When I think about the locomotion involved in it all- bus, boat, hike, canoe and  the plane ride home, the barquinho gave me a real workout then and now a lot of peace.

Re/merge

I cannot tell you all how wonderful it is to attend an e-learning conference online, as gas prices hurdle to $4.19 at my local gas station and the comfort of my living room surrounded by my dogs replaces airport gates and runway waits. (Ha ha! sorry for the pathetic rhyme.)

At any rate, a number of us on the MAN (MERLOT Africa Network) are attending e/merge and I thought it’d be very interesting to leave comments on this blog about what we all learn there. Today, I listened to the narrated presentation by Irene Ficheman of Sao Paulo, Brazil who compares today’s learning environments to digital ecosystems. We are reading many of the same people- Prensky on Digital Natives, Paulo Freire on learning theory and some new names for me which I will look at soon.

At any rate Ficheman talks about how learners, teachers, content and software act and interact (or not)

so that students can gain knowledge in a dynamic learning environment. We have a good opportunity for reflection on the roles of teachers and learners as actors in this environment. For deeper learning, it seems that the more interaction the better. (So, let’s speak up.)

Anyway, I look forward to checking into this Digital Ecosystem discussion tomorrow and to hear the voices of MAN colleagues so that we can all later interact with the digital ecosystem that is e/merge. I am honored by the privilege to learn from colleagues, Bronwyn and Maggie, who taught us netvibes yesterday.  Earlier in the week, they showed de.licio.us and Facebook. During the de.licio.us  portion, I came across George Siemen’s  Connectivism presentation  from 2005 and, coincidentally, also his blog post about the recent e-learning Africa .

e/merge 2008

What a week!!!

I began it at Carnegie Mellon University for a workshop sponsored by the Open Learning Initiative. I got to know their French Online course up close and in person. It was a fabulous f2f experience and  I am thrilled about the prospect of continuing to connect with my new colleagues there. It shows the longevity and proves the utter logic of OER that after all these years of OCW and OLI, we are building a network that aims at providing more access. Even more important to me as an individual practitioner, this work provides us a forum in which we can discuss what really constitutes quality in online teaching and learning. I really need to have these conversations. To have them with  language educators was real ‘icing on the cake”.

One interesting point that came up here regarding instructional design of online courses was the study on the expert blind spot. (Nathan and Petrosino 2003 . Preconceived notions on how concepts should be presented can cause a disconnect between teaching goals and learning outcomes.  five days later, I keep hearing the message “You do  not think like your students and they do not think like you”. When we build and teach our online courses, we need to keep this difference in thinking in mind.

The rest of this week, I have been participating in a superb online conference sponsored by the Centre for Educational Technology in Cape Town, South Africa: e/merge. From the website:

“e/merge 2008 – Professionalising Practices is the third virtual conference on educational technology in Africa and builds on the e/merge conferences in 2004 and 2006. e/merge 2008 will take place online from 7 – 18 July 2008.”

So far, I really enjoyed a presentation by Howard Rheingold, whose work I have followed since his book  The Virtual Community years back. He now has a very interesting course going on at UC Berkeley called Visual Communications/Social Media. His class as explained on his online syllabus is super participatory with subheadings like “Participation mandatory”, “Leadership required”. He has students interacting in ways that immerse them in collaborative tasks while using all the new tools,blogs, wikis, etc.. .  Anyway, he was a keynoter at e/merge and his talk was followed by a robust discussion by educators around the world.

This virtual conference is employing every kind of new technology to connect participants. As much as I love to visit  places physically, it is wonderful to be able to experience so much collective  expertise without leaving home. This is particularly true since air travel has recently become so difficult, grueling and painfully inconvenient. (Hear my anguish??) I see no reason why we can and should not greatly augment the online component of all major conferences, partly as an access/inclusion issue for people who cannot attend f2f , as well as  for many other very good reasons.