Mange ta banane!

I am very excited about the topic of fair trade and sustainable development in our language classes these days, because they give our students a more compelling way to connect with language. At the GWATFL YouTube plenary last week, a bunch of us swapped our favorite digital videos and up came this wonderful Mange ta banane.

What is beautiful is how the tous petits convince each other que ce n’est pas nul, c’est equitable!!

Bee rocks the house NOLA style.

It was a special morning in New Orleans on Friday when Bee invited the Webheads in Action to the MERLOT 2007 conference via Alado and Second Life. They checked in from Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and Taiwan etc. etc.. Bee was really effective in showing how small the world can be when educators with a passion for sharing get together. No more working in isolation. The potential for exciting collaborations between teachers and students worldwide is already  there. Hear/see the keynote at Alado and see Bee’s spectacular NOLA pics at flickr tagged merlot2007onlap. It was really a week to remember.

Our community workday at an historic elementary in Mid-City was a phenomenal start. Forty-two MERLOT folks taping and painting trim in an elementary school that saw five feet of water in its ground floor level after Katrina. They lost everything inside either because of the water or the mold after the water receded.  Our work was a small contribution in light of the need, but it did wonders for all of us. The school is going to be better than it was before Katrina given the hard work of the many volunteers who are working there. Troy, the volunteer coordinator told us that this was one of nine schools he was readying for a Fall start. Everybody wanted to do as much as he/she could.

MERLOT had a new feature called Learning Circles this year and they were very well received by the attendees. MERLOT World Languages sponsored one called The Many Languages of MERLOT where attendees from Brazil, Israel, Japan, Senegal, Canada, Italy, Chile, Spain, the US and the UK and other lands  all spoke volumes about how MERLOT could evolve into a more multilingual resource. The discussion moved from the political “Do we translate?”, to”What do we translate?” and then to a  more technical, but extremely stimulating conversation about metadata. Mous Diack, from Southern University and A&M College and director of the MERLOT African Network project, rightly identified  language as a real access issue. Susanna Dammann, project manager of Linguanet Europa (MERLOT’s 2007 Editor’s Choice award winner) and her Linguanet colleagues, Jose Ignacio and Luis, from the Instituto Cervantes and the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid gave MERLOT many good ideas on possible directions in which to proceed. This meeting was one of the more profitable new features at the MIC because it brought home the growing international  contingent in many different disciplines. The community-building was great as participants talked and MERLOT listened.

Back in the French quarter, we took in the wonderful Rue Royale at night. Art, jewlery, antiques, everything glowed in the light of the gaslight lamps.  The jellyfish lamps were among my favorites. Diane showed us some great art, including a few original Rodrigues at K-Pauls. Will we ever forget the Duck and Shrimp Vindaloo? The Creole Mary’s?

Geobeats

This morning, I visited the world from my sofa, with geobeats, a very 2.0 video guide to the world. Video tours produced by ordinary folks in-country give comforting help that goes way beyond text-based guides. The visual cues, subtitled authentic language and the quality of the videos I saw made me smile. I started with places I know- Provence, Santiago, Siena and in all cases the videos reminded me of some experience I had there. If I were planning a holiday, I’d definitely consult geobeats. Not bad for language classes, non plus.

YouTube,Teachertube, Languagetube

The use of digital video to teach language in a real-world context was  an inevitable development and it is here. Youtube no doubt will inspire all kind of tubes, hence languagetube.com where I went this morning. I was greeted by a young man teaching me how to greet in Thai: Sawaddee

Thailand, as you have heard and maybe learned this morning, is the land of the smile. I like learning this way. What about my students? What about you?

While you were sleeping

I have been checking out ways that digital video is going to change our lives as language teachers. First, I learned about rocketboom, just because I was in FLTEACH last September and a list member had noticed this video interview in French about podcasting, done by the anchor of Rocketboom, Joanne Colan. Well  I was very interested in the video, so  I went back and found it in the coolest archives I have ever seen. (As you read my blog, you’ll see I am given to hyperbole.)

 Anyway, I went back to Rocketboom on April 26, when Joanne was talking about dotsub.com. This software allows you to subtitle an already made  digital video  in the language of your choice. I got to thinking about it as a nifty tool for languages because you can write target language captions for any video you or students make or  you can get the permission from authors of other videos. I hope you’ll share your thoughts about how this captioning tool can be useful to us.