ELT notes

I won't play around this. So let me say it straight: I simply want you to watch this 15' video.

If you don't have the time, or rather, you *think* you don't, then read my post,which is loaded with the hope you will watch that video later.

The story goes back to 2007, but given the fragmentary nature of snippets of writing spread all over the Internet, I am confident to say that this post could well make sense without too much background.

What is more, it could even be worth it without a reader. I actually write this to make sense of my fledgeling thoughts around the experience of meeting people online.

If I had to be precise, I would say it was Alan's post linking to my post where we truly first met (see comments there). What happened to me the day I read his post was very similar to what happens to me now after watching that video.

At the same time, the immediate reaction after watching it was a mental link to a lesson I taught the day before yesterday as well as something I've read in the (online) paper this morning.

The image of one of my students came to mind as I watched. He has heard me speaking in class about RSS readers and blogging and tweeting making email quite a basic and moderate technology compared to all that powerful combo. You can imagine what I was talking about, but the point is his eyes and body language were showing uneasiness until he bursted:

"Oh you are a geek. I hate social networks".

The evangelizer in me was about to go on a rage of passionate thoughts about my online experiences, but fortunately I said nothing there and then. After all, my student had already declared war to Internet possibilities without any prior experience -good or bad or indifferent- to account for it.

Why my link to all this? Because I wonder about the people who do not share the same experiences of the web. People who have never read and felt deeply moved by Jabiz or Gardner also mentioned in the video. What do they understand from Alan's keynote?

What I wonder is, can meaning be made without a prior connection to those people mentioned there? I am sure the intended audience of the video -the Flat Classroom people- already have an idea of who Alan is, probably they've read a post or two of his and heard wonders about him from Vicky and Julie.

Probably someone is now clicking on my blog, not because I am who I am, but because I am who I became for Alan, whom they "know" already.

Two sides to this coin: how to express this concept of Digital Selves and how to grasp it.

Whenever I need to teach (whatever that entails) any skeptical student about being yourself online, I am faced with that feeling of being in a prison I'd call "wordless". Talking about these elusive concepts emerging from my online experiences, I know I simply go around the idea, but I do not always hit it. On the other hand, I am glad there are good storytellers out there who can summarize it in 15 minutes of video, from the experience of loss and receiving my email to the concept of a Personal Cyberinfrastructure. As you can guess, that's not an easy story to tell. Talk about literacy.

I said my thoughts also linked to the paper this morning. I read an article about the Malvinas/Falkland conflict. There was an online, perhaps via Skype, communication from a bar in Buenos Aires with another bar on the Islands. People, not governmental authorities, but ordinary people voiced their feelings about the most controversial issues around the conflict. In spite of the tension of the dialogue, some agreed both our cultures love spending time with friends at a pub. An Argentinean war veteran sympathized with a woman who lost her husband in the 1982 war as she still feels hurt. Neither of them knows the feelings at that moment had been foreshadowed by Thomas Hardy's poem long ago:

Would a war have taken place if people had been able to talk online like this 30 years ago? A participant in that conversation said that it will be difficult to solve the conflict while there are people who remember the war, who suffered the consequences and have too many emotions around it. It'll take new generations freer from the pain to really have some dialogue. And that's what I link to my feelings after the video. Alan made me play a big role in his story. I am so moved I write this right after watching -still exploring my thoughts about it. So how can I be the one to have distance enough to make sense of this for the audience of my blog or for my students? Can I? Really?

It seems incomprehensible for those who dread the idea of being online. But then again, Nicholas, who is online, is far too negative about it.

I'll try.

After watching the video today I felt something very similar to what I had felt when I first read/met Alan. It was the first link to my blog, I think. Definitely the first meaningful link. Because Alan had expressed how my idea triggered his thoughts and he developed it with a graph and all. I thought: he is teaching me what blogging means. There is a learning conversation starting here. This is good.

But now, five years on, I see that he was not just modeling what blogging means. He was reiforcing a blogging direction I had already taken. I was *becoming* a blogger. And this is the point: One thing is to simply read and get informed, perhaps learn something, and quite another is to become, to expand who you are. To revisit your identity.

Yes, quaint and curious the Internet is.

How else could it have happened? I mean, I had been reading blogs and seeing people linking to each other by then for sure. Yet that had been reading, not becoming. Blogging can be a loss of time to the outsiders while it feels perfect time spent to the bloggers. It's magic. We are so positive about it, but blogging just doesn't happen unless you make friends, folks.

We are who we are because of those people who care to read and react, let their hearts rage a little with your words and then -this is key- they *do* something about it. Maybe write a blog post, tweet, shoot a photo or edit a video. Even if they feel overwhelmed by your words, they do not comment as fans, but as friends sitting with you at the same coffee place. Only then you can go back to writing emails that make more sense that the ones you used to write before these open writing experiences.

I am so grateful to every reader who has been touched by my words. My voice, my digital self reaching out here to you has grown on echoes of all of them. There are so many potential friendships out there. It's just so much more than I can express.

So do go and watch that video, OK?

It's a video in which I have had the surprise of unexpectedly meeting face to face with a meaningful part of who I am.

Why? How did I start this?

Because whenever I read that teachers should...(you fill in the blank)..., I've always felt a need to resist inside instead of engaging in conversation.

Coming closer to examples, I think we mean different things when we use 'should'.

Generally speaking, in affirmative form, I think it sounds like a disguised form of protest.

e.g. "Every teacher should blog".

Which probably translates to "I would like, I need, it would be nice if... I do, it works for me, why not you? Come on!"

Speaking more personally, it's a bit of a diminishing word.

e.g. "I should blog every day."

Which may well translate as: "I think that my not blogging everyday is not enough" or "I wonder if I ever will". These phrases invite to approval or disapproval. A pass or fail in a test. (Who needs another test, anyway?).

I could go on. A quick search in my RSS reader gives me inspiration, but I won't quote. You go search for yourself and write your own subtitles to the 'should' movie. There is a lot in need of translation written out there.

'Should' works very well in question form, though:

"Why should I believe that?"

See? That's the kind of blogging I want to read on without feeling an internal argument building up inside me to resist it. It engages me to find my own reasons. I may even blog back at you. So we both get a chance to learn.

The mind has a natural tendency to resist change at times. if you mean to create or lead change when you write, watch your use of 'should'.

I hear the word very frequently in my network; I do not stop reading people who use it. I just read between the lines knowing I cannot assume what they really meant until I read much more.

Excuse me for contradicting myself in the same post, but I don't think anyone should anything, be it change the way they teach or publish their minds in blog posts, until they find their own genuine reasons. Anything else is as attractive as thoughtless cut&paste of ideas.

About writing, I think that there are more powerful words than 'should'. Only the sentences need to be more wordy, you need to go meta reflective to create meaning, you need to put yourself out there in the open.

How? Here's a possible structure:

"I would like this to change because..." Paragraph. Concise.

Followed by,

"I shape my thoughts like this because of where I come from". More paragraphs. These are key.

That's more humble and also less pretentious. Bonus: that's is the way I can get to connect to you. Speak from your known corner of the world to the unknown world wide web who might read and write responses, if they feel so inclined. Your ideology need not be photocopied elsewhere. Finland is already taken. Perhaps, we need to do differently.

If you ask me, I like sentences with a deep structure grammar based on freedom, not authority. Freedom from the critic or evangelizer lurking in your voice. Besides, 'should' is a poor authority invoker, in my opinion. It tends to overstep it.

So consider cutting down on affirmations with 'should', please. I'll see for myself what I might do with your thoughts, if anything at all.

Engage me. Show me your learning. I'd rather you tell me your stories.

Time Long Past, by me on Flickr