But in today's world the technology is everywhere. I am writing this post on my iPad, you are reading it on your phone. You could be in the middle of nowhere, while I am in a coffee shop. There is Wikipedia that Everyone likes to knock, because, "anyone" can change it. But that is a position of ignorance. Not that anyone can't contribute, but that anyone can put any shit out there and get it to stick. You can try, but the life of falsehoods lasting is short. I remember a very resourceful young man who tried to get a young woman to sleep with him by posting that his band was on tour in Montreal on the weekend. She sent me the post and sure enough it listed his band and the dates he performed, the next day it was gone. That was about ten years ago. Wikipedia has a lot of standards and every chunk of information must be verified and sourced, if if can't be substantiated, it gets removed. Wikipedia has a higher accuracy than any set of encyclopedias and is more up to date and is much larger too. But still teachers keep telling students, it is not reliable. There are few sources of information out there that are as reliable as Wikipedia.
The other big research of today was looking for resources on the Internet for teachers to teach science to different learners and English Language Learners. I had a distinct advantage here, as I had completed courses in Special Education and English as a second Language in 2007 and 2008 respectfully and they are oddly still in my mind so, boom down went my thoughts and boom went my research, and luckily split out went my thoughts. Basically the misunderstanding of children and learning languages is easy for them is false. The belief that children pick up languages quickly, more quickly than adults is not true. Children pick up language to the level that other children speak quickly, but to advance to speaking the technical terms and understanding can take much longer, up to seven years, because they are learning twice as much as native language speakers. The native speaker learns science, but the ELL is learning the terms and the language at the same time. Adults who know the technical information are merely learning the language equivalents and there fire take less time. Sure you see children quickly learning conversational English, but what we use in conversations is a small fraction of the words we use in school. What is it said about Chinese? The working language uses a thousand words but the language contains ten thousand.
As I put in my assignment, use pictures in place of words whenever possible to increase uptake. A picture is worth a thousand words, but it is also worth a thousand words in a thousand languages. The life cycle of a butterfly is a complex idea, but it can be graphically represented to anyone with a few select pictures and give perfect understanding.
I also got to use my latest push the use of interactive video. The ELL can pause the video and look up words on their own without slowing the class down, on their own time and thus gain a more complete understanding of the material. Different learners, ie those that learn differently, special education students, can benefit from both strategies as well. There is little difference between the appearance of and English Language learner and a student who learns differently.
All in all, I burned through the material quickly. It would have been nice to spend the full time on each subject and explore it more fully, but I only have a limited number of hours to do the research. One day a week, on holiday left. I have an extension into the month of July, so six more days to complete the course. Six days to do six segments, three lesson plans and one research essay. I was hoping to get the August long weekend added to the mix, that would mean three more days, but that is not likely. That is the frustrating part, I can do the work, I just don't have the time. I can do the work with half my mind shut off even.
Working long hours really sucks.
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