tBLOG - Idioms Are Fun!

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Learning Design in the age of Generative AI

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Donald Clark has published a very interesting blog post about how 'Learning Designers will have to adapt or die' and suggests 10 ways for them to upskill to AI. Just how AI will affect the job market has been a hot topic for discussion recently. The Economist's message is that the West suffers from too little automation, not too much, and we shouldn't worry .  Anecdotally, I have heard of two very different sides to how generative AI is affecting work right now. A partner's colleague who works in educational publishing has reported that this publisher has stopped working with the three freelance graphic designers they regulalrly contracted work to, and instead have hired a ' prompt engineer ' for their illustration needs. On the other hand,  Mexican friend who works for a PR agency told me her boss has embraced the changes and is giving the team (copywriters and illustrators, etc) weekly training sessions on how to get the best out of AI tools, and is encou
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Using recorded Skype conversations as assessment tools

I was asked today by Barbara Sawhill to briefly take part in a presentation she's giving with Barbara Ganley on ' Using Skype, Podcasting and Blogging in Foreign Language Teaching ' Sitting here waiting for their Skype call, I decided to prepare myself a little bit and refresh my memory about their work. As soon as I start looking I'm struck by what I've been missing out on by not blogging much, or taking much notice of the 'edublogosphere' recently. I can't let this happen again, no matter how busy I get. First, I found a description of the workshop they are giving today: "Recently, new technologies have distinguished themselves as credible tools that increase students' production and competence in a target language. With this change, a new conversation has begun about the structure of a language class, thinking about moving from a traditional teacher-and-text-centered classroom to a student-centered and possibly even a totally un-centered, t
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Digital Literacy - Gavin Dudeney

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People are talking about DSL (Digital as a Second Language) nowadays and Gavin's talk was about the importance of being digitally fluent if you're a 21st century teacher. So important in fact, that Gavin has written a book about it, with co-authors Nicky Hockley and Mark Pegrum (Digital Literacies, Pearson, 2013) There are many different digital literacies relevant to language : (texting, print, gaming, mobile, multimedia, code); others with a focus on  information (information, search, tagging); those that relate to connections (personal, participatory, network, and (inter)cultural) and remix. The last of these Gavin illustrated by showing a video of Tony Blair and George Bush's love song. In the current age, we need to take all of these into consideration because they are part of the skill set that people need and in some ways, as Gavin mentioned, educators are now preparing people for jobs that currently don't exist. Mobility is now one of the key factors
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