SMART MOBS

We've been reading about the great social change that ICTs bring along, particularly in the evolution of social cognition, its generation, spread and growth. One of the most important books about this topic is

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold

This is a lecture he delivered in MIT. ENJOY!

The link is here
And here you will find the book's website with reviews, summaries, news, blog entries, etc.

Looking back, looking ahead...

The recent discussions and readings shared in our studies during the last two weeks have led me to re-view ("see with new eyes", as White and Arndt -1991; Process Writing- had defined it) all new technologies around me...

Internet+Me

View more presentations from Gladys Baya.

Some ideas I particularly want to remember:

• We need to make these tools ours ("appropriate" them, integrate them into our lives so that they serve OUR purposes) if the're to have a lasting effect on our lives... Then, we must look into ways to help our students do the same in turn!
• Different ways of doing things will inevitably lead to a redefinition of identities and social roles
• ... And that's about the only thing new technologies will "INEVITABLY" do... ;-) The rest is in the hands of the tool users...

BTW, this reminds me of something I read a long time ago, when I was studying the relationship between teaching and policy: "By refusing to take sides, the ELT community has actually been supporting the conservative status quo." We'd better make our choices this time, before someone else makes them for us!

Gladys

PS: If you've never watched The Machine is (Using) Us, don't put it off another day!

Off we go!

Well, campus for "Diplomatura en Educación y Nuevas Tecnologías" (FLACSO) opened yesterday at 9 PM GMT (that was 6 PM my time). Having taken online courses before, I was almost positive we'd be allowed at least a couple of days to log in and browse around, familiarising ourselves with the online environment and our partners (which turned out to be over 200, BTW!). Yet, can you believe I was quite upset because some "local" duties prevented me from entering the site before today? :-p!

It was nice to find out we'll be using a Moodle platform, which I'm a bit familiar with, and at the same will profit from seeing used in more effective ways. It was even better to confirm 3 colleagues I look up to are just starting walking along the same path at the same time. As I'm a social learner, this means a lot to me, and I hope they like the idea of collaborating in this blog and sharing a bit of what we go through in our course with every English teacher on the Web via this blog!

In his welcome "speech", our coordinator has invited us to record our feelings and impressions as we just get started, and save them so that we can go back to them. I've drafted my impressions here, feel free to peep if you like!

Gladys