!anaj ,em s’taht

While I am in the process of writing the very last evaluations of work students have submitted in the semester, I begin to realize how wonderful a world without these students is going to be. Most of them are ok, of course, some are even wonderful, but there is always a certain amount of people who are dragging the whole course down. And, quite annoyingly, they are the ones who get the most attention, thanks to an evaluation system that doesn’t discriminate between differing qualities of feedback.

I did the last course evaluation on Tuesday, in which students got the opportunity to fill a form and cover another page with their ranting about the course. If they are mature enough, this can be a very fruitful exercise, but if they’re not, they will just write down that the course was boring and a waste of time and hand it back to you with the attitude ‘I was bored - you deal with it!’.

It’s quite amazing: They really write ‘boring’ - and one might wonder where they get this idea from. It’s not only because course evaluations weren’t actually done when I was a student - it’s because a label of this would never ever have come to my mind. I don’t think I have ever been bored in any course or seminar. Even if I was not particularly interested in a subject (but I get easily drawn into ANY subject), I was still able to see that it is a matter of my own commitment whether or not I got something out of it. But things seem to be different in a world that celebrates consumerism.

So on Tuesday, at least half of the students in one group of the digital story telling course wrote that ‘the digital story part was boring’. And the funniest part is yet to come - they truly think that this is the tutor’s problem, that the tutor should simply offer something ‘more interesting’, and that they would be able to learn if the topic was interesting (and pardon me, we are talking about a digital story telling course here, not about grammar revision - they couldn’t recognize it had something to ). And they can neither be bothered by the fact that others probably learned something or created good story - those others must be nerds or the teacher’s pet.

Just allow for a moment to examine the underlying concept of learning here: They obviously seem to believe that a person from a certain age (probably puberty) is endowed with a certain set of interests, and that these interests are going to define and limit what the person is going to be able to learn in the future. Absolutely incredible - I suppose it would be pointless to tell them something about the joys I had felt when translating middle-Dutch prayers into a German, an activity for which I developed a predilection when I was 22, without hitherto having shown any interests in that area. The boring-sayers wouldn’t understand that. They would simply assume that I must have been born an odd person, and not that one can learn from anything and anyone if one manages to maintain an open mind and an open heart

Just a note on the side: This was also the group in which many students submitted stories which didn’t draw on the rules of story telling we had worked on together (in short: there was neither a particular change, nor did the ‘main character’ learn anything) and which, admittedly, were not particularly interesting. After having watched their own, mostly plot-less and message-free stories, and after I asked them to re-examine their idea of good story telling, someone said: “The most important thing is that a story must be funny.” Those around him nodded. They couldn’t further define what their idea of ‘funny’ was, and clearly didn’t see the problem with their definition. But it was clear to them that most of these stories were not funny, and that digital story telling as taught by me, as a consequence, must be boring.

I’m normally trying to make a student see the construction of their own verdict, even if the verdict is as debased as their ‘boring’ verdict. But meanwhile I am sooo fed up with trying to make them think that, for the first time ever, I said that ‘boring’ was not a qualified statement, and that it would be up to them to make an effort to get the most out of a course and to really learn something. I can’t remember all I said, probably something about their responsibility for their own learning, but I could go on about this forever. It as a relief to see my view supported by my colleague (with whom I had done the course) who said that the course had actually been about _them_ - their stories, their CVS - implying (though not saying explicitly) that _they_ were actually boring if they thought the course was boring. I couldn’t agree more

It also seems as if this ‘boring’ feedback is heard particularly often by students of media design - sometime is think this is the flip-side of offering content-based English course: that some of them become unable to see what they have learned on the level of language and communication.

In any case, and even if it is just a few folks in every semester who are just particularly lazy and particularly loudly tooting their horn: I am so relieved not to have to deal with any more passive learners in the future, no more with people who think that courses and lecturers are there to entertain them. Good-bye, wasteland of the degree mill - I cannot WAIT to move on to something else!

As a an addition to Lenina’s recent txt spk post, it might be worthwhile to have a (brief) look at the I Can Has Cheezburger blog which has been consistently among the top ten blogs in the past weeks. It works as follows: The owner(s) post a picture of a pet, mainly a cat, and add a bubble to it to indicate the ‘thoughts’ of the pet. The thoughts are offered in flawed English, the flaws supposedly representing the inferiorness of the animal to the human. The humans who visit this site, however, seek to come up with even more faulty language, and they assess each other’s comments too. The trashiest or most infantile comments (or those of members who have earned a standing in the group) get the highest ranking of 5 out of 5 cheeseburgers. Lolcats, according to the group’s language, are photographic representations of cats that make you laugh out loud.

And while I am struggling to suppress an allergic reaction when reading the comments, the ‘lolcats tagged for you convenience’ do make me chuckle

One of the things I’ll miss once I have left this place will be my creative Writing class… It is an amphibian type of class anyway: Officially a course in English as a Second Language, but as such a content-based course, I sought to marry the CLIL approach (Content and Language Integrated Learning) with the best of PBL (Problem-Based Learning) this time, and that in course titel Creative Writing for Film. While the PBL in particular puzzled the students in the beginning (it always does), I can see now that it did really contribute to creating an atmosphere in which students take responsibility for their learning (I sound so much like a teacher Instead of half of the students dozing off, they are all proactively engaging in discussions now, even in the one group that had a difficult start because one of the members blocked the PBL approach by ridiculing it (students have to appoint a moderator and a scribe, which they hate, and the tutor is supposed to shut up in the crucial first lessons, which most tutors hate, too). Using the aim of writing a good plot synopsis as a vehicle today, they even seemed to appreciate the grammar revision I did with them today (which was the second in two years). Next week I am going to have individual meetings with them to discuss and improve their story concepts - and that’s definitely something that I enjoy and that I am going to miss…

Today for a less topical and more personal post. So now I’ve met the “new semester”, i.e. the students who are actually in their second semester, but whom I hadn’t met yet. It’s always nice to deal with the “fresh students”, i.e. the ones who haven’t been disillusioned yet Also, it seems to be a rather lively bunch this year, with the proficiency in English being probably even a bit higher in average than normally. And the degree program is slowly beginning to come into swing. This university adopted the Bachelor/Master system three years ago, which is fairly early for an Austrian university, and of course it took a while until the nuts and bolts were worked out. But worse than the actual curriculum problems were the fights and panicked attempts to save the situation that arose around it. Partly justified fights, partly political fights to draw away the attention from other issues and to increase one’s power, false and justified accusations, etc. etc.

The worst of alle probably was that all parties instrumentalized the students to some extent: often unknowingly of course. Some thought that it would be the best to listen to and take serious each and every complaint that came from a students. The long term result of that was that no one really knew whether we were really in a crisis or whether the lazy students had simply become the opinion leaders. Also the students became frustrated - no wonder, if the institution itself doesn’t seem to believe in itself, how can you assume that you have made the right choice studying here? How are you supposed to understand that the value of your studies depends upon what you make of it more than on anything else? Of course there is a difference between Harvard and Pemberton College - just as there is a difference between a Harvard and a Pemberton candidate.

But with every new semester, this seems to slightly get out of the school’s system. Seeing that this is indeed the case is a comforting thought. In that sense it was a good day today - although I also got an email from a student today who wanted to know whether the mark he or she got was the final one: “as you can guess i’m not really satisfied :-)” The student got a B. Do they really expect me to respond to that? Tsk. (I didn’t respond, asking whether she wasn’t satisfied if she got a B; I’m simply too harmony-oriented

Daily Lent (Day 14): One thing about Lent that I might keep up is having just plain bread during the day, i.e. while I work. I taught from 9:50 to 1 today, then had to hurry to a meeting, leave the meating early to get to my next class at 2 and then finished teaching at 3.30. All I had to eat this far were two plain breadrolls, but I must say the I feel really good. Better than I would have felt if I had had a Leberkässemmel, a truly Austrian/Southern Germany delicacy which goes for just 1.50 at the cafeteria
Call it the Hamburger of the Alps, but rumours has it that it consist of 70% fat (and 15% pig poo;-). Ha! Urban myths uncovered, according to Wikipedia, there are ‘only’ 26g of fat contained in 100g of Leberkäs, and 2000 kilojoule (about 480 calories) in one Leberkässemmel (which sounds ok, actually… only that there are absolutely no vitamins in Leberkäs One way or another - I am happy to give up Leberkäs for Lent, but I would NEVER give it up for ever!

Surprise! At the end of the day, I manage to crank out another post, as I, even more surprisingly, managed to crank out a paper before the day ended.

It’s a proposal for the Microlearning conference in Innsbruck this summer. An old school mate pointed me to it, and its going to be nice to attend the conference with him. Provided they accept us.

The last conference (no surprise) was fairly male and age-dominated, even if they managed to push the lady on the left into the frame a couple of times.

Anyhow, here is the abstract of my proposal:

The Dark Side of the Force:
The Issue of Microplagiarism in Microlearning

Based on the analysis of authentic examples of plagiarism in student assignments, this article proposes the term ‘microplagiarism’ to describe a new kind of plagiarism which uses relatively short sections of arbitrary sources and combines them to form a bigger, seemingly unified text. The authors examine to which extent learning through plagiarizing may be an effective strategy in some areas of language learning and discuss the difficulties in separating microlearning from microplagiarism. The current gap between the digital and the academic sphere and their methods of circulating and continuing knowledge is identified as a cause for the increase of plagiarism. While the hope is expressed that the Semantic Web will take care of this issue, it is suggested for the time being to minimize the risk by setting students tasks that don’t encourage plagiarism.

A friend sent me a link to the Scholar ship which - pun intended - is indeed a ship, a cruise liner, packed with scholars, students and teaching staff alike. The Scholar ship will depart in September 2007 from Piraeus (Greece) and, via Lisbon, Panama City, Papeete, Suva, Sydney, Shanghai and Okinawa, will arrive in Kobe, Japan, three months later.

But it’s not just a seacruise, it’s a university set afloat, offering undergraduate and graduate courses in Business & Management, Communication & Advertising, International Political Science & History, Conflict, Peace and War Studies, Cultural Studies, Social Anthropology, Sustainable Development, Art History, Fine Arts, Literature and Performing Arts - TO NAME JUST A FEW…. check out their study programme.

The second trip, starting in January 2008, begins in Kobe and goes back to Piraeus, this time via Cape Town and Buenos Aires. They’re still looking for students ($ 20,000 for one trip) and have just announced that they’re giving away 50 scholar ships (meaning that you pay only half the price). Also, they’re looking for ESL (English as a Second Language) staff… Am I tempted? Hmm, I guess I would go nuts if I were trapped on board a ship for three months, above all as a teacher, meaning approachable for all…. but the thought of seeing all those places is rather neat…

Just a quickie today. Do you know a tosser from a jumper? If not, play the “Smashing Slang” flash game on the PBS website. The game is based on slang expressions used in the TV series “White Teeth” (based on the novel by Zadie Smith).

“Even if you’re wrong, you’ll add a colourful phrase to your vocabulary”. That’s what the makers of the game promise. Just don’t use these terms in your essays, thank you

There’s more info about the novel and the series
on the PBS website.

I’ve always wanted to know what English speaking people call a Klostein.

Thanks to suggestion from my colleague Michael, I now have a whole range of labels to choose from:

Urinal deodorizer blocks are the small disinfectant blocks found in urinals. Other informal terms include “urinal mint”, “urinal cake,” “toilet lolly” (Australian), “urinal puck” or “trough lolly” (chiefly British).

This is just another way of saying that I’ve got the common cold, or an infection of nose (nasum) and throat (pharynx). There are several hundreds of viruses that can cause the common cold, and there isn’t really a cure for it, as there hardly is a cure for any viral infection.

Viruses, in my view, are extremely intimidating creatures anyway. They aren’t acually alive (not like bacteria or unicellular organisms), they are, matter-of-factly, nothing but information that reproduces. In my nostrils and throat, in this case, causing my mucosal cells to break down and be expunged as snot (or so I imagine - where does snot come from, actually?)

German learners of English: A possible translation for Tröpfcheninfektion is “to inhale droplets of coughs and sneezes”. I’ve always thought that Tröpfchen is one of the cutest words of the German language, in particular the Pfchen part.

Anyhow, what am I doing to fight the common cold? Hot Vitamin C drinks and high doses of aspirine. Three days of bed rest didn’t help at all.

Here is my collection of useful and interesting English online dictionaries (a few of them useful for natives of German only ):

For your everyday English language needs:

» Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary - definitions and examples, mainly British English

» Merriam-Webster Online - thesaurus (synonyms), mainly American English

» Princeton WordNet - a lexical database to browse online or to download (thanks to Automatthias)

» www.dict.cc - German/English - use only in combination with one of the dictionaries above

» dict.leo.org - German/English - use only in combination with one of the dictionaries above

Popular English, English of the people:

» Urban Dictionary - user-managed slang dictionary, mainly American English

» Peevish - English slang and colloquialisms used in the United Kingdom

» Online Dictionary of Playground Slang - including school slang, gay slang and nursery rhymes

» Dictionary of English Idioms & Idiomatic Expressions - i.e. not necessarily proverbs

» Word of Quotes, English Proverbs - Ale in, wit out