I was just checking my students’ blogs before calling it a night and discovered this extraordinary exchange between my student Jonah, and a Spaniard named Morgan.

Look at the time, and the care, and the detail that Morgan took to help Jonah with his Spanish. No one is paying or insisting that Morgan do this…he simply offered his services to me through an extraordinary “time bank” for Spanish speakers called Kroonos. In Kroonos (named after the Chronos the Greek god of time) individuals give an hour or two of time to others, and build up “karma” within the system of pedidas and ofertas, with the promise that someone within that extended online community will help you when you need something.

I mentioned my students’ blogs to Morgan, and off he went. Morgan and Jonah negotiated between themselves what would be helpful, what would be too much, what worked for them… all in the target language. Look at the conversation that emerged as a result. Look at the give and the take…the conversation that grew between them. And remember…these are strangers.

And then take a step back and compare this exchange to how Jonah was writing when the semester began

We have only been at this for four weeks, and already… remarkable changes and connections have emerged.

This week we have changed gears slightly in my class and have moved from “Secuestro Express” and the kidnappings in Venezuela to “María llena de gracia” and the story of women who act as “mulas” and transport drugs from Colombia to the United States.

With each class and each topic we address, the lines between the good guys and the bad guys are getting fuzzier. And the FARC… they seem to have tentacles everywhere. In Colombia, with the President of Venezuela…and now, the President of Ecuador?

As I am sitting here doing my work, someone in Colombia is watching the news in Bogotá. That someone is sending me (and others in his network) messages called tweets — little messages of no more than 140 characters– through a tool called Twitter.

My Colombian “correspondent” is watching the news, and reporting to me (and others) what he is hearing with regard to the FARC, his government, the recent capture and killing of one of the FARC leaders in Ecuador, and now the possible involvement of government of Ecuador with the FARC.

It is sort of like live blogging, but in micro form and coming at you at a very fast clip. Here is an example of the news torrent…

And yes, you can use twitter with your cell phone as well.

There are several news organizations that have twitter feeds in place (the New York Times, the BBC…) but the idea of citizen journalists has just taken another turn (for the better) with Twitter.

(LLU has its own a twitter ID: langlabunleashd and when we post to the blog the posts are announced via Twitter to anyone who is in our network…)

Oh, and my Colombian correpsondent just sent a link to this little gem via Twitter from YouTube as well… Chavez swearing to God and his sainted mother that he would not be involved with the FARC.

Here is the how El Tiempo de Bogota reported this same news, now 6 hours later than when it was unfolding via Twitter.

Hay muchas caras de la misma moneda, indeed.

Stranger danger? Pffft.

Week four of my Spanish conversation class has just finished. I am teaching 2X a week vs 3X a week…my hope was that we would have more time on task if we met for an hour and 15 minutes (vs 3X a week @ 50 minutes). The class meets at night. I am still not sure how I feel about the night class aspect of it…I know some of my students are as tired as I am if not more so at 7:15 p.m. And of course I have already work a whole day in our language center, go home, fix dinner, and then whip back to work again. The jury is still out as to whether this is the optimal schedule or not.

The students, however, as always, are wonderful. Many different nationalities, ages, and interests. They have begun blogging and are becoming a bit more comfortable with the tools as well as the premise (and the promise??) behind using these tools. The blog is their portfolio..an example of what they have done and what they have thought about what they have done this far. At the midterm point they will be asked to pick out some artifacts from their blog/portfolio and explain how these things shows growth or progress towards their goals for this class. More on that later…

Feel free to click here to take a look at their work, add a comment, etc.

The purpose of this class is to prepare the students to live, work, travel in “el exterior,” or in a Spanish speaking country. They have 4 semesters of college-level Spanish under their belts (or the equivalent) and now they want to do something with it.

In class, we are tackling some big things. We saw the movie “Secuestro Express” and have been trying to come to grips with the fact that this unpleasant and quite violent reality (there have been over 1500 kidnappings in Venezuela since 1999) is not something we hear about when we hear about Venezuela in the news. Our media tends to fixate on Hugo Chavez and his friendship with Fidel, or when he calls our president unattractive names. There is a disconnect between what is going on and what our media sources are reporting.

Thanks to the wonders of technology we brought in Dafne from Caracas via Skype. It is one thing to watch a movie about kidnappings and urban violence… it is quite another to speak with someone who has experienced them personally (Dafne’s own sister was kidnapped and has suffered lasting psychological trauma as a result).

But how does one, as a non-native speaker of Spanish, enter into these conversations with native speakers about potentially painful and upsetting events with people we do not know well (or at all)? Is it possible? How do you move from a list of questions that need answers to seamless conversation in a second language? Can there be a give and a take in a conversation where the native speaker is just so excited that someone is actually expressing an interest in his/her world and its reality that you sometimes cannot get a word in edgewise? How do you find a place in a conversation to stop someone and say, um, could you repeat what you have been saying um because I have no idea what you have been saying for the last 10 minutes??

After we listened to/spoke with Dafne via Skype, I invited a real live speaker from Venezuela to come to class and entertain questions. The students asked really wonderful, sincere questions. But it was so hard…linguistically and intellectually. I felt for them, really, because I remember that moment in my educational experience when I suddenly realized that the world was no longer just black and white…rather, there were many many many shades and textures of gray out there.

In the interest of making sure that all sides of the story were available to my students, I gave them a link to an interview a student of mine did for our class 2 years ago…a Skype chat with someone who was markedly pro-Chavez. Definitely food for thought…and hooray for past years’ blogs helping the current students build on previous (archived) knowledge!

It is quite hard to formulate the questions, listen for the responses, and then ask follow up questions based upon the responses in a second language. But this group is getting there, and I am proud of their struggles thus far.

And hooray for one of my students who is going to a presentation being made by one of Obama’s people on his foreign policy plans on campus tomorrow. Her comment? “I know the presentation is about the Middle East, but I want to know what Obama knows about Venezuela.”

I love it when what they learn within the classroom helps to enrich what and how they learn outside of the classroom.

[cross-posted on tech-o tuesday]

If you haven’t heard of the 1962 book that predicts (or, tries to predict) what technology will look like thirteen short years from the date of publication, please check out the Flickr photoset recently posted by Derrick Bostrom. I’m most frightened interested by the obsession with punch-card systems for language translation, making exact replicas of documents, and testing student knowledge, but the thought of irradiated beans doesn’t sit well with me, either. On the other hand, I might soon be blogging from the comfort of my own beach home:

Happy Friday, all, and have a great weekend!

[bostworld, via boingboing]

I am a visual thinker. I don’t do code. And yes, even though I teach languages words can escape me (oh what I could tell you about the number of things in our office that I have called “thing-a-ma-bob”)

However, what I can tell you what I would like the tools to do and have no qualms asking questions that begin with “Okay, so, on my class’ blog, would it be possible …” I believe I have asked this question enough in the past two or so years (and certainly o’er the last month or so) that Ryan has developed a slight nervous tick when I approach his office doorway. And this sign.

(Side note, I am continually reminded of how difficult this can be for some of our faculty, that is, the abililty to articulate what is missing from your class / what you would like the technology to do to enrich your class content vs jumping into the technology and hoping for the best… more on this later)

The above image is the whiteboard where I tried to “articulate” what it was that I was hoping to do via my class’ blog. Tag clouds, blog rolls, rotating images in the headers (ala Jim Groom… we < heart > Jim Groom) …yup its all there… somewhere.

And then there is the writing of the syllabus. Ick… I find the practice of creating a syllabus so constricting, so limiting. And, as indicated below…so messy.

I was reviewing my plans for the semester with a colleague and he shared with me this wonderful article entitled “Death to the Syllabus” written by Mano Singham of Case Western Reserve University as published in Liberal Education in Fall 2007. I have shared this with my students and await their response. It describes my frustration with the overplanned, micromanaged syllabi that we find ourselves creating… and then regretting because we have locked ourselves into an exhausting whirlygig of tasks.

Have a read and let me know what you think…

Oh and if you would like to see what “el blog central” for my class is starting to look like, please take a look here …and check back often!