(Elementary) Nature and the Environment Vocab

(Upper-Intermediate) What is the Internet, really?

When a squirrel chewed through a cable and knocked him offline, journalist Andrew Blum started wondering what the Internet was really made of. So he set out to go see it -- the underwater cables, secret switches and other physical bits that make up the net.

Watch:

What is the Internet, really?

Roll on summer

Cake courtesy of Bibi on the terrace steps, Wynyard Quarter. My lovely C1.3 class. Roll on summer! Happy birthday Bibi. Safe travels Ahmed, Simon and Bibi.

(Advanced) HyperNormalisation

No one talks about power these days. We are encouraged to see ourselves as free, independent individuals not controlled by anybody, and we despise politicians as corrupt and empty of all ideas.
But power is all around us. It's just that it has shifted and mutated into a massive system of management and control, whose tentacles reach into all parts of our lives. But we can't see it because we still think of power in the old terms – of politicians telling us what to do.

The aim of the film I have made, HyperNormalisation, is to bring that new power into focus, and show its true dimensions. It ranges from a giant computer high up in the mountains of northeast America that manages and controls over 7 percent of the worlds total wealth, to the complex algorithms that constantly monitor every move and choice you make online, to modern scientific ideas about what the normal human being should be – in the their weight and in their feelings and moods.

If you pull back and look at the everyday life all around you, you can see the cracks appearing through the shiny surface of the cocoon we are living in. So much of the modern world is beginning to feel odd, unreal and sometimes fake. I think these are the dynamic forces outside beginning to pierce through as the system begins to fail.

- Adam Curtis

Vocab:

think tank



Watch:

Excerpts from HyperNormalisation

True or false?

Tall buildings are essentially worthless.

The Brexit showed us that we live in a dream world.

The original vision of social media was to create an echo chamber.

The reality opens us up to more perspectives.

Your real job is shopping.

The original idea of cool was more political.

Politicians are cool.

Their real job is to make us click more.

Ours is the first all-encompassing system.

Hypernormalisation means pretending everything is normal when it isn't.
 

(For Teachers) Using a blog with students

Blogging lessons is easy and fun. I find it stimulates lateral thinking for me as a teacher.

Some suggestions

Indicate the level of the material

Engage interest by sourcing images for each post (very easy). Make them big. Be lateral in your choices.

Involve the students in the blog (use their material, post pictures of outings and activities)

When using student writing, do allow some errors to be published, highlight them and then add teacher corrections at the bottom. Give students pride in their writing by using online sourced pictures to enhance their text. Add comments, especially praise. Also, extend the material by turning student writing into practice exercises (scrambled sentences, gap fills etc.), or use it as the basis for discussion topics.

Make worksheets etc. to go with input material. Post these with answers when you have time.

Use your blog as a way of preparing a class. Make it on the blog, then cut and paste the material onto a paper worksheet if desirable.

Cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste... grab transcripts, questions, images. It's all just sitting there on the Net. Plonk it on the blog. Adapt the hell out of it!

NB: Some links can be unreliable – check them before using in class.

Add extension material. Encourage students follow up on input material they see in class. And do this yourself. On a theme or just a name that comes up, for example “Tom Waits”. The students might say, “Who is that?” So chuck on a post  with a song by Tom Waits, or film clip. Google the lyrics perhaps, write out some simple guiding questions - make it into an exercise that they do in class or on the iPad.

Supplement the textbook stuff. The references to cultural content made in the books is often not followed up much. Think of this as an invitation for the teacher to seek out that content and use it in class through the blog. I do this all the time. It’s so easy to do and it makes sense.

Make input on the blog a homework task. Make a Kahoot quiz for the post to use the next day.

Make a Kahoot for a series of posts (for example the ones you used for a particular unit). Offer a prize for a winning student or team? This encourages students to explore the input thoroughly over the week.

Finally, redate posts if you want to assemble them in a chunk for a particular lesson or week unit.Otherwise they are archived in chronological order.

(Mid Level) Irish Stu

Worth the long read for some sublime trolling.

Irish Stu

(Mid to High Level) The Aviators Speech - A Night at the Opera

 Marx Brothers- Aviators Speech. Keep that water coming.

Watch:

Aviators Speech

(Mid Level-Advanced) How to learn a language in 6 months

Watch lecture:

How to learn a language in 6 months