“An article from the planetary online news show, September 23d, 2043 reads:

No Childhood

Year 2043 turned out to be triumphant for neuroscience, education, learning technologies, and global politics on the Earth. The united terrestrial government celebrated the first year of completion of its revolutionary “No Childhood” program – a new concept in evolution of humankind.

It had been known for a while that people’s brain has a limited capacity of absorbing and processing information. It takes a common person almost 30 years to become truly knowledgeable in one, seldom more, professional sphere. Desire to accelerate these slow biological processes was on educators’ mind for centuries.

Finally, a new way of educating newly born members of society had been created and approved for testing – educational programming while sleeping and growing. True, it doesn’t allow youngsters to enjoy their childhood, communication with family members and peers, grow emotionally in the usual way etc. Despite any drawbacks, “No Childhood” shortens time of relative social unproductivity in half – by the age of 15 people are fully grown physically and experienced in their occupations.

First 35 experiment participants are cautious, even-tempered and reserved, their emotions artificially suppressed. If they are for any reason not happy with their set of assigned skills, the choice being made by their guardians first, they can be easily reprogrammed.

Their brain is at its best, and exchange of its content components doesn’t really influence anything – thus the ability to paint can be replaced by the ability to write poems or make drawings of the buildings etc.

During the first year of their socialization, it became obvious that these 35 new people are useful members of the planet’s professional community. Are they satisfied with their accelerated life? How do they interact with their colleagues? Are they planning to have families of their own? Will they choose to teach their kids the same way? Will the Earth’s population accept this method of teaching its next generation? This is to be seen.”

STORY #2. A UTOPIAN FANFICTION – SUMMARY

“The Jump

Summary. In the long-forgotten year of 2055, the group of brightest tellurian scientists secretly started a cult – growing new people, half humans and half machines, to protect the mankind from space. Currently, in 13315, when the Sun is suddenly cooling down, it is up to the augments to save the unsuspecting humanity from the catastrophe. Their plan is clean and clear – to discretely move the Earth from the Solar system to another friendly star … “

MY COMMENTARY

As an undergraduate student studying languages and literature at the uni, I read tons of classic speculative fiction in my youth – of different genres, ages, and origin. After all, can’t we call John Milton a writer of speculative fiction? How about Jules Verne, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift? And what about fairy tales? For sure, they’re of speculative nature too!

Personally, I always preferred a genre of fantasy – some magic, witchcraft, comic and heroic situations, injustice and a happy end help me to unwind every time.

But when I started seriously thinking about our close future for this task, none of the utopian, dystopian, apocalyptic, alternative, supernatural, horror, or scientific fictions came to my mind. I remembered Physics instead, my high school major and favourite subject. Basic law of Physics tells me that if I want to gain something, I should sacrifice something else. If we want future education to be better, we must be ready to say good bye to something that we currently enjoy.

This Anthony Dunne’s resource is not bad at exposing the modern world with its problems, but I failed to find there any sound solutions suggested by the authors.

So, while fantasy can lull me into a dreamy world for a while, reality is always based on fundamental knowledge – formal and natural sciences. Life is about balance, and my first fanfictions – No Childhood and The Jump – are small, open-ended and, hopefully, optimistic.

Is this world fair or not? From what I gather, justice is a fickle thing.

In that simulation I could lean on the potential crime’s description, opinion of the prosecution, the algorithm, and the defendant’s plea. If the algorithm is unreliable, and many Module’s resources state that it is not, then it is only prosecution and my own gut’s feeling to trust which is practically nothing.

I also felt that the simulation in its turn was eager to make a participant regret his/her decision, so the exercise was biased and unfair even from the educational (organizational) point of view.

In general, it was a very unpleasant experience which tells me not to deal with the judicial system if I can avoid it.

In other words, avoid committing crimes at all cost, Anna!

Presentation Diversity in Learning based on diversity of students

Dear readers,

Welcome to my blog. Here I am going to talk to you about different students, and how they study. Everything will be based on my personal observations.

My area of specialization is English as a Second Language, and I have been working with adults for a very long time, and that is why I can always rely on behaviourism in my teaching.

No matter if my students are good at discovering the truth (a language topic in my case) on their own or not, in the end, everything depends on if they have time on these endeavours on not.

And, unfortunately, most grown-up students, even the brightest ones, cannot find time to use their natural abilities for decision-making, problem-solving or creative thinking in their free time. Moreover, quite often they don’t have time to visit classes regularly, and therefore, a situation when A LOT of a foreign language material should be studied in a very limited time is unfortunately common. As a result, everyone appreciates it when I formulate the rule in the shortest and easiest way for them to understand and remember, and then provide exercises for practice.

However, since students are special in their abilities, previous knowledge, learning style, memory, attention, personality traits etc., I often feel myself as a conductor to the orchestra who is supposed to unite various musicians with different instruments and partitures and produce a nice melody as a result.

I would divide them roughly into three main groups while remembering that there are many people in between.

For example, when I deal with the students who would get most from cognitivism and constructivism, I truly enjoy their independent and unique attitude, especially when I can work with them individually. They argue, ask questions, find parallels with another linguistic material, use life examples etc. They like to work with the teacher, but they don’t mind studying with other students either. They are flexible, analytical, and easily accept the fact that there are exceptions to any rule. They are making our collaboration interesting, and I deeply appreciate that.

On the other hand, I can experience some difficulties with the students who are obvious extraverts as they sometimes behave as flowers without water – wither if their classmates are late or not coming to class. They need peer communication so badly that I try to avoid individual approach with them at all. They flourish in the group work though and often win English class competitions. And it doesn’t matter for them which topics we are studying or if there are exceptions to the rule as long as it gives them an opportunity of co-operating with others. I also understand that they are great at multitasking, so I usually don’t mind them doing a lot of extra things while studying. They are not getting distracted – they live their life like this; it’s their style.

As for those students who usually rely on the teacher to make progress together, they need a lot of attention and encouragement. Every small success should be pointed out and commended. They learn slowly but surely, and are not very fond of exceptions to the rules but will put up with them in the end. They expect me to be very diplomatic and creative with the explanations and exercises – if one doesn’t work, we will turn to another to succeed. Together with the “cognitivists”, they are interested in mechanisms of learning, and are grateful when I show them how to teach English better to their younger siblings. I don’t know if it is a good word to use, but they want me to love them deeply and unconditionally during our time together. This is how I feel when I work with students who prefer behaviourism – like a big sister at least.

So, due to students’ peculiarities, I am to provide intellectual challenge to one team of students, interesting group activities to another, and lots of love for the third one, and all these – in one lesson. Yes, it is an arduous, eclectic, but amazing job all the same. I happened to be an easily bored person myself, so using different approaches, methods and techniques for the same topic is what I like most.

I have a list of questions that I am contemplating myself. I would be grateful if you shared your ideas on them here or on Canvas.

1. If a student prefers constructivism, and a teacher prefers behaviourism, how do you think their communication will go? Will it be successful?

2. If the situation is reversed, and a student prefers behaviourism, and a teacher – constructivism, what will change in their cooperation?

3. I divided students roughly into three groups – curious ones, extraverts, and introverts. Did you discover any other group during your teaching or studying experiences?

4. How would you as a teacher deal with the student who came to class to see his groupmates and wasn’t psychologically ready to work with you only?

5. Do you think that studying online transforms learning theories a bit?

6. I named students’ lack of time the biggest problem of modern educational institutions which doesn’t allow an ESL teacher to use numerous methods in class. Which other barriers to the application of multiple approaches during one lesson do you see?

7. If a classroom unites students of different age, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, does it automatically mean that different approaches are necessary? Do you believe that learning theories are age sensitive?

In What Ways Does Oral Storytelling Differ from Written Storytelling?

Among those thought-provoking questions I especially liked this one because I had live examples – my grandmother used to tell me the stories of her life while I was growing. My grandad in his turn was very talented with the fairy tales. For many years I was their grateful introverted listener, so I am quite familiar with the oral tradition of storytelling.

Looking at this art now, I can clearly see that in oral tradition the narrator is the creator of the oral text and quite often the character of it.

There is an interesting phenomenon that oral text makes the figure of the speaker more prominent and sympathetic. We can compare this effect with the written text told from the first person when the reader cares for the character as a result. Not for the person who wrote the text, not for the author, but for the fictional speaker. So, owning the stage, i.e. performing any oral narrative, guaranties the speaker their listeners’ support.

I am inclined to believe that oral storytelling creates a special atmosphere and a bond between a speaker and the listeners. Oral story is expressive, full of emotions and passions of the characters, the performer, and the listener.

Next, oral storytelling, unlike written storytelling, allows interruptions, repetitions, and variations of the text – the listener can ask questions to add details, descriptions, or explanations to the plot. Also, the most impressive scenes can be performed again if the listener asks for it.

It is all right for the listener to join the performer in storytelling to check the memory or to live through the most dramatic moments together. Honestly, not even the most exciting book ever inspired me to read a passage aloud just to share the emotions of the narrator.

In addition, oral story is well-thought of and moralistic even in details – what should be done and what shouldn’t in a certain situation. I assume the performer contemplates the story many times while telling it and then chooses the best way to convey this or that idea to the listener.

Finally, the same oral stories can be performed again and again for the listener to memorize them better.

These are the main peculiarities of the oral storytelling that I can point out.

Also, when my aunt read the book to us, children, the outcomes were practically the same – unique atmosphere, connection and gratitude toward the reader, questions to understand the text better etc. Therefore, there are life situations when oral and written traditions are almost interchangeable.

After I learned to read, I enjoyed the libraries of my relatives, and I retold some books to my grandma. I don’t think I was a successful narrator though as I usually didn’t focus on details and considered retelling the main storyline most important. I always thought that too many details would kill the interest, but now I am of a different opinion. I realize that individual features are valuable too and sometimes the bright fact makes the whole story worthy, besides allowing the listener to remember everything.

To sum up, it was a great pleasure for me as a child to listen to those grandparents’, parents’, aunts’ and uncles’ stories, and I am glad that oral storytelling still exists.

PRACTICAL PART

My dictated text turned out to be funny partially because I have never done it before, and partially because of my accent.

I have used a speechnotes.co site to create a story, and I miscalculated its length a bit, made it smaller than necessary (around 400 words instead of 500). So, I can conclude that it is rather difficult to speak and calculate the words at the same time.

On the other hand, I was quite successful with the punctuation, and it means that my falling tone in English is close to authentic.

I can clearly see from the text that I should work harder on English word collocations or idioms since the machine couldn’t recognize them in my speech.
Also, suffixes of the words should be enunciated better, to be more noticeable in my speech.

In general, I consider this exercise very useful for the English teacher. I have to contemplate how to introduce this activity into my work with the international students, for them to have a reason to laugh and to learn something new about their English.

As usually, I am thankful to the collaborative team who created this program for their creativity!

“Hello this is anna with the voice-to-text that task well it’s early the hardest thing to create a text without writing it down first but I will try I will choose the topic I’m from the layaway is teaching English to adults and what can I say about that first of all I I have recently had some experience in teaching English to Matthias 2. And I notice psychological knowledge is very important for the teacher in this situation first because different aspects of English demands. Psychological attitude toward them and the teacher is supposed to help a student to to make a success in the listening and speaking in the writing and reading all together and different psicologico tricks 3 ft. I’m sick on thing I notice he is actually some psychological support that is necessary for the immigrants especially for the older immigrants are all of them became on some kind of ship the hardships on the on their way to success he and Canada and they are always eager to share their experience with difficulties they will negotiate disick’s. Learning something in English in a bit so they prefer to tell their life story to starting anything useful in English and the teacher should be ready for that and I should have some technique to tactfully you know our turn the conversation back to the language I want to be carried away from Mom from the topic of the meeting let it be said in this way so yeah this is important so no native speakers in Canada experience differ with life and influences their status as well so I make a conclusion that psychology is extremely important to teach of these days to in English in English teacher of these days you’re not only providing knowledge you are also in a weight is psychotherapist to a person who is supposed to use this knowledge in Canada yeah it’s extremely important and I want Old English speaking English teacher ready for that you are to be a psychotherapist do you drink some lessons please be ready with maybe some distraction methods with the complete with jokes with words of encouragement it will come in handy so that’s what I can say about material students from my recent experience you so much”

Well, looking at numbers assigned to the tracks, I can clearly see that no recording got just one fan – every composition chosen has at least two people who loved it. So, in a way, people of this group are adjacent, and there are ones between us as well as zeroes.
Also, surprisingly for me, all tracks from 1 to 27 are presented on the graph. I thought we would together skip a rhythm or two. Perhaps, this ratio – 22 group members vs 27 tracks – was against it. If there were 5 group members, some music would not be selected, I assume.
Among our group’s musical preferences, classic (old) music and most famous melodies of Western culture of the 20th century clearly dominate though our group members are not opposed to the folklore music.
These are my impressions at first glance. I am still struggling with the communities – I haven’t figured out yet what they are about, and what the criterion was used to create one. Need more time which I am lacking since the beginning of this fantastic course. Hope to edit this post for the better later. Thank you!