Chalkboards & Sexy English

I'll take the first question as it will help folks to understand me better - as I feel I've misrepresented myself with my Virtual Zeal.

I began teaching English in suburban China in 2006.  

Classrooms where as has existed since the first part of the Twentieth Century.  The smartest part of the classrooms were the colored chalk - red, yellow & blue.  I preferred to use white, though, as I general wore dress shirts to class.  The combination of no air-conditioning & colored chalk, I discovered early on, led to a rainbow-tinted silt on my shoulders after four or five hours of black board scribbling & the concomitant erasures.  Good times!

I loved using the chalk boards to elucidate language with Pictionary & Win, Lose or Draw vocabulary lessons.  More good times.  I didn't reach a school with a smartboard until my fourth year in China.  And, I was resistant to change.  I had no idea how to use a smart board.  If someone asked, "Hey Bai Lao Shi . . . why no use computer?"  I'd huskily retort, "All I need is a group of Chinese minds & a sexy subject to create English conversation."

And that is still very true.  

I prefer to simply engage groups of English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) learners in Socratic Seminars.  The topics are endless & I don't believe we'll ever need media to teach language.  The media (our voices) & method (interesting inter-locution) that has existed for language learning these thousands of years is quite sufficient & necessary to create meaning.

I've only become an EdTech Strategist as I have found that it has far more appeal to youth.  Appeal is not necessary for language learning.  But, it enhances it greatly.  As there are so many wonderful & appealing digital flash card apps (Quizlet), speech-to-text capabilities (Merriam-Webster powered by Google) & tablet top quizzing platforms (Socrative) . . . well, I'm a kid in a digital eye-candy store.  

Digital media is not necessary to learn language, or anything else that was taught before the brilliant dawning of the Information Age.  But it really is a good time.  And I want to know & use every sexy novelty that comes along.  After all, we are here for a good time, aren't we?  Yes, I think I read that somewhere.

Thanks for your patience with my loony crooning about tech, ya'll.

Cheers,

Ry