My ESL Friends

Sounds cool doesn’t it?   A paradox is a statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition.  Sometimes it is simply a surprising revelation about an assumed conflict which simply required a nuanced view of a given situation.  Personally, I always thought it had something to do with two docks that didn’t function well in some shipping situations

As many of you know I am intrigued by the problems we of the older generations ar having in communicating and leading the younger ones.  It seems that every generation is becoming harder to connect with.  I am satisfied that this discordance goes beyond the typical generational gaps.  Something much bigger is going on and those of us who teach find ourselves at the forefront of an Event Horizon.  This event will have implications similar in scope (for inter generational communications) to the changes in civilizations before and after the printing press.

The short (10 minute) video below will clue you in to one more item that I have found.  It’s author is a social psychologist who has crammed a lot of current social research into a very informative (and entertaining) presentation.  Of particular note at minute 6:00 you will find a touchstone of some of the most common complaints of disenfranchised students.  E.G. class is boring, I have nothing to do in class, I cannot sit passively if you want me to participate.

At minute 7:00 you will see the standard misdiagnosis we apply to students who do not “fit in”.  Finally at minute 8:30  you will be given a few clues as to how we in the online teaching community can become the “avant-garde”  of a revolutionary paradigm shift for all future learners.

Please continue the conversation by posting your comments here or you can follow the further conversations re. my findings from the author’s book   at my blog here: http://myeslfriends.com/wordpress/2010/06/07/the-time-paradox/

Tags: concept, Cool, George

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 11:20 and is filed under Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.