I have not been blogging for quite some time - and there can be only one explanation: somehow my motivation to blog for myself and to encourage my students to do likewise has hit a snag - in Germany we say: Die Luft ist raus...and that may well be the case now that we will have only seven English sessions before the official summer break starts on July 2...there are however two more major tasks ahead of me: I need to come up with a fair grade for each student based on her or his individual performance during the last semester AND four students will have to come in and write their make-up tests.
In the meanwhile I continue my studies of the teachings of Eckhart Tolle and by visiting his new website I was linked to this fast paced TV interview...I hope that you will not only understand the spoken English but that you may enjoy these thirteen minutes of great insights as well...and let us not forget: Eckhart used to have Ulrich as his first name and he was born in Lünen not very far from our college - that makes him almost one of us.
June 11, 2009
May 12, 2009
All Learning is state dependent...
It is so obvious that the state ( Zustand ) I am in - deeply influences my learning progress...so in what state are my students in when I enter the room? And am I able to change their states for the better once I start the lesson of the day?And do I manage to maintain their by then hopefully resourceful state throughout the entire lesson?
And what about my own state? In what state am I in most of the time?
And who helps me to "recharge" either during or after the lesson?
Lots of good questions with their inherent consequences....so here is a video about how Barack Obama and his wife Michelle were introduced to a group of journalists the day before Mother's Day....just watch how people change their states in just a few seconds...so I know it can be done...and maybe I should bring a portable CD/Cassette player and turn up the volume and play some wake-up music as I enter room 1.11 at 7:45 in the morning ??? - this would certainly be a great pattern interrupt!
And what about my own state? In what state am I in most of the time?
And who helps me to "recharge" either during or after the lesson?
Lots of good questions with their inherent consequences....so here is a video about how Barack Obama and his wife Michelle were introduced to a group of journalists the day before Mother's Day....just watch how people change their states in just a few seconds...so I know it can be done...and maybe I should bring a portable CD/Cassette player and turn up the volume and play some wake-up music as I enter room 1.11 at 7:45 in the morning ??? - this would certainly be a great pattern interrupt!
May 10, 2009
Which one? The iPod Touch or the new Kindle DX
I love well designed high-tech gadgets...there are two that have caught my attention for some time new: the Apple iPod Touch ( without the phone function ) and the latest version of the Amazon Kindle e-reader.
Once you have watched the video you may just decide that paper based materials are definitely not as hot any more as they used to be - and maybe the paperless office
or the paperless school is not that far off anymore...
Once you have watched the video you may just decide that paper based materials are definitely not as hot any more as they used to be - and maybe the paperless office
or the paperless school is not that far off anymore...
May 09, 2009
Are we as humans the only creatures who are conscious.Yes or No?
In class we are currently practicing how to write a comment.There is a certain structure to it and it usually has four parts etc. etc. and as I was searching for some additional topics for our pre-test practices I hit upon the above key question involving human consciousness and it led me to a series of ten minute YouTube films - the speaker there is Peter Russell whose book: The Global Brain is available in German under the titel:Die Erwachende Erde.
These books were published in the early eighties - just after my return from a very stimulating sabbatical year in San Francisco and they played a major role in my renewed interest in human consciuosness - the first exposure happened thru the writings of Timothy Leary in the mid-sixties..then Peter Russell crossed my path and now some 25 years later the writings of Eckhart Tolle deepen my understandings in this area even more.
And my thought was: what if my students were one day ready to argue in ENGLISH the most difficult question if we as humans are indeed the only creatures who are conscious - and as a meaningful preparation for this exam we would go thru some of these fifteen YouTube based mini lectures?
These books were published in the early eighties - just after my return from a very stimulating sabbatical year in San Francisco and they played a major role in my renewed interest in human consciuosness - the first exposure happened thru the writings of Timothy Leary in the mid-sixties..then Peter Russell crossed my path and now some 25 years later the writings of Eckhart Tolle deepen my understandings in this area even more.
And my thought was: what if my students were one day ready to argue in ENGLISH the most difficult question if we as humans are indeed the only creatures who are conscious - and as a meaningful preparation for this exam we would go thru some of these fifteen YouTube based mini lectures?
May 03, 2009
Seeking Oneness via Twitter?
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Most teachers would probably argue that nothing good will come out for our students when they engage in the microblogging service Twitter....some would state it is just another annoying platform - like Facebook or MySpace and the rest - that hinders the student to appreciate written language...they fear that what gets expressed within Twitter's 140 character frame will be the profane and not the profound...
I have not tried it myself but I would go along with the embedded cartoon - Twitter seems to be just another "form giving" tool whose constant "in-form-ations" distract students and retirees alike...but then I had a second thought:what if Twitter messages ( tweets ) get rushed out of my electronic device or onto any of my chosen screens in such a rapid sequence that it would create an almost permanent reporting link between myself and my "friends" who would share my entries all so very fast that the feeling of a networked ONENESS could suddenly pop up in a logged-on user??
Just as the early pioneers who experimented with basic flying devices were bicycle riders - they had a sense or intuition that if only they were able to pedal fast enough and achieve a certain speed they would eventually have lift-off!So if a given medium is accelerated beyond a certain point ( a grounded bike with extended wings on it ) something completely new is created: an airplane.
If the tweets are blogged and read at an ever faster rate by a circle of users - the previous sense of being separated and isolated may suddenly be transformed into a knowing and feeling as being ONE with the others....if Twitter achieved that liberating and sought after felt-sense of ONENESS in our students it would radically change the current meaning and experience of our present competition based educational system for the better and turn even sceptical teachers into supportive twitterers.
April 25, 2009
How to write a perfect pro and con comment (essay)
Soon our final English test for this semester will come up: it will again have two major parts: part A: Grammar and this section will most likely again cover the following topics: reported speech;if sentences; passive constructions and hopefully also the ability to recognize and name any given tense in i.e. a newspaper text.
Part B: Writing..here the students will be asked to write a pro and con comment or essay on a given topic using a minimum of about 250 words or so.
In class we practised our very first steps by using a Time article about the first baby steps the Obama administration may want to or should initiate to carefully lift the legal restrictions that presently govern the use of marijuana in the US and in most parts of the western world.So far we phrased the topic,listed the pro arguments,stated the arguments against the free use of pot and next we will have to develop a catching introduction and also our concluding paragraph.
While researching essay writings in pro and con style I came across this informative entry on youtube.com and I want to share it here....don't be mislead by the narrator's voice: this is NOT comedy....this is actually a genuine teaching video about how to write an great essay on the topic of outlawing fast food restaurants like McDonalds.....maybe we should have used this topic instead of the marijuana one!!?
Part B: Writing..here the students will be asked to write a pro and con comment or essay on a given topic using a minimum of about 250 words or so.
In class we practised our very first steps by using a Time article about the first baby steps the Obama administration may want to or should initiate to carefully lift the legal restrictions that presently govern the use of marijuana in the US and in most parts of the western world.So far we phrased the topic,listed the pro arguments,stated the arguments against the free use of pot and next we will have to develop a catching introduction and also our concluding paragraph.
While researching essay writings in pro and con style I came across this informative entry on youtube.com and I want to share it here....don't be mislead by the narrator's voice: this is NOT comedy....this is actually a genuine teaching video about how to write an great essay on the topic of outlawing fast food restaurants like McDonalds.....maybe we should have used this topic instead of the marijuana one!!?
April 19, 2009
Fighting back
While I was vacationing in beautiful Spanish Andalusia we stayed at a very popular hotel that tried so very hard to meet the expectations of its customers...every morning P. W. the Assistent Manager of the hotel would greet the guests for breakfast and sure enough P.would be there at dinner time and "work the tables" making sure the guests were satisfied and happy....
I am sure that his hard working style will eventually promote him to a higher position within this well recognized Spanish hotel chain ( just as it happened to our class text hero Mr. Horst Schulze )....and then one morning something really "bad" happened and I first informed the receptionist - she ran out to inform P.W....... he then gave his orders to undo what had happened but when evening came the damaging evidence was still there and after I had informed the Assistent Manager once again serious action was undertaken and the spook was finally taken care of!
I now wonder what would have happened to that hotel and its reputation if I had filmed what I had witnessed and had put that clip up on YouTube - just as two workers had done in North Carolina recently at a Dominos Pizza place?
There apparantly one of them put some cheese up his nose before placing it onto the sandwich that was destined for a customer...his female co-worker filmed the prank and provided the narrative...the damage must have been so intense that the top manager of that major US pizza system felt the urge to go on camera and to make the following statements......
The meaning of all of this will make great material for further discussions and maybe even writings in our class...and I wonder how I or my college or the Spanish hotel would be able to "fight back" if some of the students decided to post something similarly damaging onto the web and later retract it by claiming: "we are sooooooo very sorry"! We are living in very interesting and challenging times indeed.
Here is Dominos video based "defense":
I am sure that his hard working style will eventually promote him to a higher position within this well recognized Spanish hotel chain ( just as it happened to our class text hero Mr. Horst Schulze )....and then one morning something really "bad" happened and I first informed the receptionist - she ran out to inform P.W....... he then gave his orders to undo what had happened but when evening came the damaging evidence was still there and after I had informed the Assistent Manager once again serious action was undertaken and the spook was finally taken care of!
I now wonder what would have happened to that hotel and its reputation if I had filmed what I had witnessed and had put that clip up on YouTube - just as two workers had done in North Carolina recently at a Dominos Pizza place?
There apparantly one of them put some cheese up his nose before placing it onto the sandwich that was destined for a customer...his female co-worker filmed the prank and provided the narrative...the damage must have been so intense that the top manager of that major US pizza system felt the urge to go on camera and to make the following statements......
The meaning of all of this will make great material for further discussions and maybe even writings in our class...and I wonder how I or my college or the Spanish hotel would be able to "fight back" if some of the students decided to post something similarly damaging onto the web and later retract it by claiming: "we are sooooooo very sorry"! We are living in very interesting and challenging times indeed.
Here is Dominos video based "defense":
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