electro-textual

What’s your dream for e-learning?

Have you heard these dreams yet? On a few occasions, beginning with the ACE e-learning showcase this year, people have shared their dreams for e-learning. You can listen to other people’s dreams for e-learning on the voxopop board, and then post your own response.. put your dream into the world!

(The board is open to all your comments and dreams now – i think you need to register.)

You may notice on the Can You Hear Us? wiki, how the “RSS feed” from this voxopop beard can be embedded into a wiki page.. allowing extra access to the recordings. (We don’t think you can embed the whole board, only the RSS feed.)

Plus: take another look at the wonderful work Dale Pobega has been doing with voxopop, via his Free ESL Blog (look for the voxopop link, left-hand side). You could leave a supportive comment for his students.

(Related links: at the ACE e-learning showcase earlier this year, michael coghlan spoke of voxopop in his keynote address, as one of the tools that can add to social connection via the interwaves.)

feedback very welcome ;-]
thanks and kind regards, michael

..and on the topic of electric dreams, have you seen the grooveshark site yet? Embed any song you like, even the bad ones:

The AccessACE classroom practice group recently had a live session looking at Voxopop. (i’ve put the recording link in the ACE e-learning network Ning for members.)

Impressive use of google maps over at the ABC web site.

Moira and i were discussing this map of indigenous Australian languages.. so i looked to find some copies online while she looked in the book-on-shelf style atlas. Snap! We got our results at the same time.

Since i first viewed the map (large poster print), i’ve loved the way it gives a sense of how geography has shaped cultural and language groupings over many thousands of years. You can almost see the mountains, the desert, the rivers reflected in the language differences over the land.

But as we know there is tragedy behind this beautiful representation:

• The Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages (FATSIL) reported that the top end of Australia is among 5 global hotspots for endangered languages.
• Another reference on the Aboriginal languages of Australia – edited by David Nathan – tells me that of 200 Australian indigenous languages less than 20 remain strong.
• Wikipedia claims that there were 350-750 indigenous Australian languages at the end of the 18th century.

Recently the federal government agreed to give some money toward preserving remaining languages. i wonder if that’s anywhere near enough. (Some ignorance and unpleasantness in the comments on that news story.)

More enlightened discussion of that story over at the University of Sydney Transient language centre, where one of the language centre managers is optimistic about policy development (in the comment section).

In my opinion, the destruction of indigenous language goes hand-in-hand with the destruction of culture. That’s the way it happens all round the world. To have access to power you must speak the language of your oppressors. The Welsh were forbidden to speak their own language. Deaf people taught by the oral method were forced to sit on their hands. Indigenous people were moved to missions and taught the language of the “higher race”.

Of course it’s always done with the best of intentions. Giving people access to a world that excludes them. Rescuing the savages from their primitive culture.  Instilling the values of civilisation etc.

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You can find PDF versions of the map on a South Australian government education site, or the interactive version on the ABC indigenous place: search by cultural group, or scan by geographical location. The interactive version allows you to zoom in and match anglo-Australian place names with their indigenous overlay.

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