flnw08

This week we are pleased to announce an online synchronous meeting with Wayne Macintosh, who has graciously ceded some of his very busy time to join us for an open conversation on wikis, WikiEducator and open content projects. Wayne has also suggested, depending on the interest of participants, that COL (Commonwealth of Learning) could run 10 working days of online training (about 20 minutes per day required) on basic wiki editing skills.

The meeting will take place on Wednesday 6th at 21 GMT. We will be using the Elluminate platform generously set up by Leigh Blackall from the Otago Polytechnic University in New Zealand. Leigh, whom I met f2f during the Future of Learning in a Networked World event in 2006, has been heavily involved in open content projects both with WikiEducator, Wikiversity, Wikibooks and more recently with OER Handbook.

Please check details in the Primer as to pre-activities/readings and how to join. Write down any questions or concerns you may have so as to have them answered during the meeting.

While I was checking the survey you were asked to fill in to join SMiELT, I thought the information would be helpful to better perceive our collective background. There are presently 60 participants enrolled, EVO moderators excluded. I have played with Create a Graph to illustrate participants’ linguistic and teaching environment. Note that I have not added the EVO moderators nor all participants on the list (just those who answered this specific question in the survey) Besides, as many participants work in two or three different places at the same time , the numbers in the pie chart and the bar chart do not coincide.

You will clearly notice that we have a multi-lingual and multi-cultural community here, who usually operates in two or more languages, one of which is English. Monolingual native speakers of English seem to be a minority.

This reminds me of a teleconference with David Graddol I followed in 2006. David Graddol is a British applied linguist, writer, broadcaster, researcher and consultant on issues relating to global English who was comissioned by the British Council to write two reports In the Future of English (pdf file) written in 1997, Graddol shows the possible long-term impact on English language of developments in communications technology, growing economic globalisation and major demographic shifts at the end of the twentieth century and beyond. In English Next (pdf file), he analyses demographic and economic trends in the Twenty First-Century which affect Global English and language policies worldwide and will influence its future and suggests global English may mean the end of English as a foreign language. (taken from British Council Site).

During the event in 2006, Graddol predicted that in 10 years time the world’s leading economies would be (in order) China, US, Russia, India & then Brazil and that English would continue to be challenged by Spanish in Brazil for example, (‘a gentle threat’) but would remain very widely used. He mentioned EFL & ESL "are two sides of the same coin and this coin no longer has any currency" and that English will probably be seen as something as a basic skill instead of subject on its own, with other subject matters being taught through English medium. This does transform our role as teachers of language, doesn’t it? Listen to this audio snippet (Real Player). Food for thought and discussion.

Participants’ Native Languages

Number of Languages Spoken

Teaching Contexts

In September 2006, I was invited, with a group of educators from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Finland, for a series of f2f unconferences all over New Zealand. Since then, we have connected, interacted, shared knowledge and collaborated in diverse environments, on different occasions in 2007: one to one through Skype, one to many in blogs, many to many in wikis and presenting together in international events like WiAOC, Merlot and Sydney E-Learning07.

This year, the Future of Learning in a Networked World will kick off from Bangkok on the 16th January 2008 with a number of participants in loco and others online. I have not managed to make it there, but at the end of December landed mid-way - in Australia, where I have been warmly welcomed and pampered since then :-)

It has been a fabulous learning experience to be on this side of the world, close to the families and actually sharing the everyday life and issues educators here face - not very different from the ones we have in our own environments.

You are all invited to join and participate in the various events taking place online. Drop in when you can - an itinerary outlines all that is happening throughout January 2008.

What is the Future of Learning in a Networked World?