Out With the Old, In With The New

Another year is at it's close. I love New Year's--I always get excited about a fresh, new start. And it seems like I usually write something about the year that is ending. 2014 hasn't been quite as adventurous in terms of picking up new hobbies or traveling. But it still had some adventures. Here's a recap. Kind of in chronological order.

• Stopped teaching full time
• Quit my grad program in Spanish Pedagogy at BYU
• Got another neice
• Paid off my car
• Went on a cruise
• Went to Disneyland
• Did some serious searching for my next step in life
• Got accepted to Neumont University
• Cut my hair short
• Attended Salt Lake Community College
• Started some fun part-time jobs (see previous posts)
• Spent time observing audiologists and occupational therapists (interesting stuff)
• Learned how to make mosaics 
• Met a nice boy
• Asked and got an ok to re-enter my grad program in Spanish Pedagogy at BYU
• For the first time in my life, got a Christmas bonus--and then three more!
• Started learning how to play the ukulele 

The Times, They Are a Changing

Wow! It's been forever since I last posted something, and looking over the last few posts, it amazes me how much things have changed during that time frame. Here's a real quick overview:

• Like I said, there have been a lot of changes in my life, some of which I've chosen, some of which I haven't. I'm no longer teaching full time, but I've found ways to keep teaching languages in rewarding ways. I teach kids French and Spanish classes (and have a fancy website--take a look)--when I have enough students. I'm definitely not a salesperson, a fact that keeps becoming more and more apparent! I also tutor: one-on-one as well as at a inpatient treatment program for teenage girls. I love working with teenagers and am glad to have the chance to again--I also work with  just a handful of students at a time, which is much less overwhelming than a classroom of 35. It's a good job.
• I'm back in school, this time at Salt Lake Community College working on prerequisites to apply to the University of Utah's occupational therapy program. My degree didn't require math and science, so I'm making up for that now. Right now has kind of turned out to be a period of self-discovery, so I just may decide on a new direction, like, tomorrow. But occupational therapy is the current plan. 
• Along with tutoring and kids language classes, I have a couple of other odd jobs, one of which is working on the website and writing the blog for my dad's vet clinic. I mentioned that I have a standard poodle, Ditto, and I've had a good time writing about him or other pet-related topics (like Salt Lake County's canine mayoral race). Take a look!

I think that covers some of the big changes. I'll try to keep posting--like on how I'm actually making progress on a quilt (who would have thought). 

I Still Love Technology

I’ve been applying to scholarships lately. This scholarship asked me to blog about my favorite technology (hence...the blog entry). 

There are a lot kinds of technology in my life, and I can’t think of a reason I wouldn’t be glad for any one of them. I am grateful to have toilets, for example. Indoor plumbing is some major technology. So is my car, the radio I listen to, books…and about a zillion other things.  

Like a zillion. 

I have to add a little side note here. A few months ago, I went to an exhibit at The Leonardo in downtown Salt Lake on the 101 inventions that changed the world. I assume this meant the 101 inventions that most changed the world. It included things like the x-ray and the birth control pill, as well as good number of things I had never even heard of before, though they probably really have changed the whole world. And then…it included the Lego.

I do think Legos are great. In fact, here I am at Legoland.

Well, never mind. No picture. Blogger won't upload it. You'll just have to imagine me at Legoland.

Anyway, for me, choosing a most favorite technology, the Lego just isn’t one that’s hard to pass over.

If I had to choose one technology as my preferred, it would be…the internet.

Now, I do remember a time without an interweb. The first computer our family had certainly didn’t have it—though it did have a black screen with graphics in one color (green), it was controlled by arrow keys, and it ran Oregon Trail. I don’t remember doing much more on the next computer besides Math Blasters. And then things like cereal boxes and billboards started listing…websites.

Things have come a long way since dial-up noises and “you’ve got mail.” And along with developments in internet technology, I definitely enjoy things like streaming endless episodes on Netflix and music on Pandora. Though things might this might add up to be what I do most of online, however, they aren’t why I love the internet.

Though I’m going back to school full-time, I’ve taught school for the last three years. It’s actually relatively regularly that I pull up some information on Wikipedia for my students, and when I do, there is always at least one who tells me how they’re “not supposed to use Wikipedia.” And I tell them? No! Use Wikipedia! And then I can’t help but talk about the democratization of knowledge that the internet has created.

And here’s what I mean. Everyone can contribute to Wikipedia (I myself am a Wikipedia editor), and everyone can access great introductory articles on a huge range of topics in dozens of languages because of this project in knowledge, collaboration, and access. The same with YouTube: no one has to wait for a producer or TV network to pick up their content in order to get it out to the world, and the ordinary individual has the chance to pick their content for themselves. This same pattern continues all over the internet: everyone can contribute, access, and connect. Ordinary individuals have more access to collaboration and information than any time before in history. And you know what they say about knowledge. Knowledge is power.

I don’t think anything drove this point home quite like a discussion in a class I took last summer. One of the topics was technology and learning. We looked at MOOCs and Khan Academy. One weekend I was on a long drive and put on a TED Talk (speaking of access to information and collaboration)—I was going to skip over the title on my podcast playlist until I realized it related to what we were talking about in class. And I’m glad I listened, because it was really interesting. The speaker explained some amazing stuff that happened when kids in the slums of India had street-side access to a computer and internet—like how they ended up teaching themselves computer skills, English, and DNA replication.

Take a look at his talk. He’s really interesting. He’ll make you laugh and he’ll make you think.

So why do I love the internet most of all? Because the internet…the internet is practically knowledge. It’s like it’s the key to everything else. I once had a teacher who only gave open-note tests. Knowing information, he said, is not as important as knowing where to find it. And, like I tell my students, we have more access to information—and to each other—than any time, any where in history. That’s why, if I were to choose a favorite technology, the internet would be it.

Fresh

The other day, after reading what seemed like a thousand fairy tale picture books that I very wisely assigned French 3 (which has by far more students than any other level I teach), I gave my students some general feedback about what I read--things like don't forget accent marks, stay consistently in the past tense, and...please don't use Google Translate.

The last comment took up the most time of my feedback. My main piece of evidence was the massive quantities of grammar in the books they wrote that they have never in fact learned. I told them how I don't think Google Translate is evil or anything, but you need to know how it works and its limitations, and you need to consider your objectives when you choose a tool. For example, if your objective is to learn French, maybe the best tool isn't a translator that you just drop the story you wrote in English into.

(One student had this very ornately written story that I don't even think he wrote in English. I challenged him on it, and he fought back until I asked him to just tell me what a couple sentences of the book actually meant. And he couldn't.)

As part of trying to make my point about Google Translate, I showed them a video that put the lyrics of the theme song of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air into it over and over. I figured, being from the 80's, my students wouldn't be too familiar with this, so I played them the video of the actual thing first.

Boy was I wrong. I swear half of every class I showed this to sang along. Someone said that they were watching the show that morning as they got ready for school. One girl commented about how much she liked Will Smith's style in the show.

Of course. Of course they don't know how to tell time on an analog clock or have their own email addresses, but they know The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

"You will."

Since I started teaching, I've thought about how I should write down some of the funny things that happen at work. If I'm going to start, I might as well share them.


The other day, a student told me how he has me for English next year. I looked at him, a little puzzled, and said, "I don't teach English."

"You will," he said. "You will."

***

I first heard about the artist Lorde on NPR--and, because of this, assumed her and her song "Royals" were pretty obscure. I loved the song, and I couldn't resist playing it during class the next day (even though it's not in French), prefacing it with something like, "I just found out about this new artist..." My students laughed at me right away and explained that the song had been in heavy rotation on the radio for quite awhile. I try to get my students to sing in French, and in this same class, there is a table with a couple of guys who really do sing. They sing loud and exaggerated and enjoy the humor of it (and of other situations). It's this same group of boys who, since the "Royals" day, will regularly sing the chorus of the song to me in falsetto.