Monthly Archives: November 2007

Re-thinking language instruction

  By the time we finished school, 90% of my generation hated the mandatory Irish lessons. Hundreds of thousands of kids (aka language learning machines) failed to master even rudimentary communication in the language we had studied for years. If the teachers had set … Continue reading

Posted in Learning | 20 Comments

What’s happening at the Economist?

I love the Economist, but it ran an incredibly weak article today – False Eastern promise whose sub-heading tells us that the ‘craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad’. The craze for teaching Chinese may just be a fad? May be … Continue reading

Posted in Chinese | 45 Comments

A bit more Joyce

I thought I’d follow up on my last post with a little more about HCE, or Here Comes Everybody. To my mind he is not a generic ‘everyman’, but represents in fact, a complex alternative to it. As the newcomer … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Here comes everybody

I’m learning more and learning faster than would have been possible 5 years ago. The participative web (aka, web 2.0) makes this happen. The new-found capacity to participate through the web has put learning on steroids, and ushered in a … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments