People are talking about podcasts created by NotebookLM. We are astounded at how the two people discuss any topic we want, in such a natural dialog. The male voice sounds like a mild version of Howard Stern, and the female voice reminds me of…not sure. On the other hand, we complain that the voices are always the same, the speed and delivery also the same.
Google has another tool that lets you have more control over the output. Marc Watkins explains.
Right now you can write a prompt or link to a webpage for input, and select voices and dialog register (formality). Still no speed settings.
I’ve never seen a 7-year-old give a TED talk, but Molly does a great job. She even has an assistant Airi, with HIS assistant father, help out. This video has important lessons for child development, presented in a clear way that is easy to understand. So put away those iPads and phones, and PAY ATTENTION.
One of the important steps in vocabulary learning is to decide if a word is “worth” learning. Will I use it in conversation? Will I need it to understand an important idea or concept? (How is the word “idea” different from “concept”?)
The four words in the photo are pretty useless, unless I use a boat. But the ideas that make the differences (is it built on wood or dirt? Does it stick out into the water or not?) are important distinctions that can help in other areas. Just to think about how words are different can help you understand more about a language.
Here is another example: Smell and Stink. Something can smell good or bad, but Stink means it always smells bad. Now look up other related words like Aroma and Stench. Use a thesaurus (dictionary of synonyms or similar words) to find other smell-related vocabulary.
The important thing is to spend time with your new words.
While I am the first to decry the use of the textbook as the syllabus, we are going to stick pretty close to this book so we will be able to “cover” (another loaded word) the concepts in this course. Let me give my reasons here. But also note that the class plans will morph depending on the participants. I count it as my job to prepare for as many eventualities as possible. More on that tomorrow.
The book is a part of the Cambridge Applied Linguistics series. Read their blurb, and the iTDi (my) take on it in the course description.
For me, the elephant-and-3-blind-men approach to the theory made the book head and shoulders above others in the field. I am one of the blind men, feeling the elephant as either a wall, a rope, or a trunk. They look at TBLT from five different perspectives (Cognitive, Psycholinguistic, Sociocultural, Psychological, and Educational). I enjoy how each builds upon the others while introducing new aspects. That is what I meant by being inclusive.
Conflicting and controversial viewpoints come up and are hammered out. This is probably the result of having five authors. The richness they bring to the text is astounding. If they could have added Peter Robinson, it would have been a perfect book.
I get the Kindle version for these kind of projects. That makes it easier to “mark up” with highlights, quotes, notes, and even flash cards, then share those with others in the class. It’s also cheaper (US$25).
Probably the most remarkable content this week was an interview (45 min) with Rob Blair on his (and many others’) course on Democratic Erosion (syllabus). This was all part of the online course I am taking for #openlearning19 at the Open Learning Hub.
This is team teaching on a whole new level. It is team learning. It is collaboration between students, professors, and institutions. It works because faculty, starting at Brown University, then expanding last year to more than a dozen universities, were all able to work together on a common syllabus, then sharing comments and produced work. This year there are over 25 universities involved.
Do watch the interview. Gardner Campbell covers the issues, starting with the technical, then moves on to design and administration. They get into the nuts and bolts of how the program was set up. It was enlightening. It is revolutionary. It breaks down the classroom walls and tasks students with creating relevant materials for distribution to a real audience. The content is now being collected by graduate researchers who will use it to synthesize into a body of work useful to the outside work. This is a truly relevant audience.
I floated the idea of working together within our department, and it went nowhere. I am now considering how to adapt this framework to my language classes here in Tokyo. There is a lot of potential.
