Eieio... (Phone)...

Two year old in restaurant.

- No no sit down. No, no!!!
- Please, if you sit down, you will have an ice-cream.
- No! NO sit down!

Parental exasperation, last resort.

Parent takes out iPhone. Two year old looks triumphant and sits down immediately.

- EiEiO, EiEiO!

Instantly the toddler is transformed, she is in a state of transe-like flow.

-Old Macdonald had a farm, EiEiO!

That App cost me three or four euros but it's worth every centime. If I had tried singing every nursery rhyme I know, my daughter would have ended up standing on the restaurant table, in the ice-cream.

-  No! No sit!

I am quite sure that we don't all bond with the same objects around us in the same way, so it is very difficult to judge technology objectively. For some kids, it's a handkerchief, for others a teddy, but heaven forbid that you should forget the object of love and its importance for the loved one.

As far as I can see, the smartphone to this toddler appears  principally to be an interactive nursery ryhme. To me, it is an essential professional tool for learning, teaching and networking.

For my colleagues at work, there are those who appear desperately attached to their cassettes, the photocopier, the cardboard folders, books and all and I can only say that I am beginning to feel empathy for their apparent resistance to another age.

The other day, in a frenzy of domestic space rationalisation my wife threw out all the CD boxes for my CD's. After all, who should give two hoots for plastic boxes? You still have the music and the sleeve notes.

Oh reader, my despair! For me, the joy was in the gestures; reaching out to the box, turning it around in my hands, feeling the slight designed-in resistance on opening the lid....The Cure! Boys Don't Cry!

All of this brings me back to the day I saw a TV presenter spread jam on a CD in order to demonstrate how relatively indestructible a slice of music this would be. It must have been in the 80's when I had time to listen to my music.... My two year old did the same test recently, I feel frankly that I have been conned.

I don't go for music downloads, I am like many of my teaching colleagues. It's not that I can't see that my students think me absurd for actually buying CD's but I suppose I am of another time. I have too many memories...

It is not that we cannot see that we should perhaps move on and keep up. Reason is what makes us grumpy. Giving up that which makes one feel secure, takes time and gentle encouragement. We don't like being dictated to, particularly when it comes to our tools (comfort blankets...)

Kids are generally pretty good at helping their parents to evolve. They are only too happy to show them what they know how to do. They have the time, peer support network, and curiosity to learn how stuff works. They have less or no nostalgia for the old ways of doing things. Their time is coming.

Now teachers, I feel we have to find some way to compromise here, to own up that it's ok to have teddy bears, to know nursery ryhmes. The kids wil help us learn, or they will learn quite happily for us, if we let them.

We all need to have confidence in our need for security and to let go. We are living in a different epoque but Old Macdonald still has his farm, with pigs, horses, donkeys, and sheep...

Eieio.

Sometime in the future

- When I was a kid we used to have a thing I loved. I think they called it an iPhone. But I called it EiEiO...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Le Retour de Mickey L'Ange...

It didn't work! Failure, total failure! How could they possibly understand so little? How might one come back after such a fiasco?

Thursday 25th August I was busy at Cyberlangues a grouping together of language teachers from all over France. I was due to 'animate' a workshop on the use of Smartphones and Tablets in the language learning classroom.

Everything was in place. The colleagues were there, in number, in the room and in other regions and other  countries following the events on Twitter and on Adobe Connect. The tests were almost conclusive. Nothing could go wrong...

Then it did.

First apparent problem was my own ambition.

 I was curious to learn how far one could go with the different spaces and tools linked to us at the same time: netbook linked up to video projector with a document camera pointed at an  iPhone and/or the people in the classroom,  microphone plugged into the netbook and speaker to transmit/exchange the sound from participants all over the world via Adobe Connect, chat enabled in Connect and Twitter stream, Adobe Connect app on iPhone to act as portable terminal for the participants to exchange with the other partipants coming from the UK, India, and France. The iPad (1) would be projected, after the netbook, with an AV adapter - excellent but limited to particular apps. Marvellous! I had just the app: Popplet. Great for presenting complicated ideas visually.

You understand  all of this with difficulty. I can almost hear the hesitation between the commas and the colons.

Well, I did try to make it simpler.

I had promised myself not to include the participants from around the world via Adobe Connect. Then I got taken up by my enthusiasm and that of the others; marvellous people from my PLN (personal learning network) on Twitter.

Frankly, I blame them!

Without them, I would have been unable to have so much to talk about, so much to share, so little fear for ridicule, so little reason to doubt that the game is never over....until it is.


Then even worse, I didn't do what had been on the advertisement for the workshop.

The lady from the Ministry apparently kindly, pointedly let me know that she was rather disappointed that we didn't actually get to touch the touchscreens and the myriad of applications behind the glass.

The teachers, after all were there, in number, to get to grips with IOS (or perhaps Android) in the classroom...


Ah yes...The teachers were apparently non-plussed by my introduction.

A snapshot of a painting attributed to Michel Ange (my spelling). What was the connection between my workshop on iPhones, iPods and this painting I asked ambitiously?

Well we tried reproducing the gestures, together, bravely, physically. I must thank the brave members of the workshop who did what I had begged: 'Get up and Move!'. Well they all did except @KedemFerre, (a rebel) who spent his time looking at my website and the lady from the Ministry who reminded me that her wheelchair dependence was an obstacle to such pedagogical innovation...

The teachers were confused.  I include myself in this category. @chrisjaeg asked @warwicklanguage, via Twitter, whether  @sensor63 was always disconcerting so? Others admitted to being elsewhere..(I didn't)  Some had clearly not been looking... carefully. Their fingers touched (on the painting there is a space between God and his Adam). Others looked at me, the ceiling, the others, anywhere anxiously. What on earth were we doing? Was it ok to stand up and be ridiculous in front of the lady from the ministry?  What about the applications?

Touch is not just tactile Mickey!

An Italian painting, it was, I was assured by Michel Ange (by an Italian teacher to be accurate).  Creation, a part of the Sixtine Chapel's ceiling. I learnt! The rest, I was obliged to find for myself, thanks to Google, Wikipedia, and Twitter.

Mickey Ange had a father. He was unhappy that his brilliant son chose to be a ceiling painter. Mickey the son rebelled. Thank God he did! Without his Genius, our world would be a worse place.

Of course this story is almost completely untrue!

He painted the ceiling with the help of his anonymous apprentices.

This article, owes much to @timbuckteeth, @warwicklanguage, @w2YAdavid, @Wagjuer the confusion of the participants present, my children and my wife and childish curiosity.

The lesson I learnt.

A tool is only useful when it is wielded with others and its product witnessed by others who might embellish its failings with their feelings, reactions, and presence.

Education is this new century with these new tools has more to do with love than with legend...