Larry Lessig (second last video on the page) asserts that outdated copyright laws have turned our children into criminals. Kirby Ferguson would seem to echo that in his recently-completed Everything is a Remix series.

Finally, two TED talks worth watching – the first is an early one from 2007 by campaigner Larry Lessig:

The second is from earlier this year. Teacher-writer Clay Shirky talks about SOPA and PIPA:

Jack was wandering at his favourite place in the mountain range of Sierra Nevada, California. He was heading towards the bridge – that huge, oddly smelling thing. There was something fascinating about it that he couldn’t quite put his finger (paws) on. It was such an amazing masterpiece of architecture that made even him admit that those noisy fur-stealers, as he always called humans, were actually good at something.

When he got to the bridge he took a deep breath, letting the odd scent of the place get to his lungs, his head and every part of his body. That scent! Oh, he loved it! The smell of the woods, the river and the bridge itself mixed in the air calmed him down even on his worst days and he felt like he couldn’t get enough of it.

He wandered on with his eyes half closed, sometimes taking a quick look at the alley under the bridge and he couldn’t help but smile and thought: ‘Yes, I love life.’

As he got to the middle of the bridge with this tiny but strong thought in his head he heard something. Something was buzzing but he didn’t care enough to open his eyes. A few minutes passed and the buzzing started to get stronger and stronger – it was so disturbing after a while that he couldn’t enjoy his Sunday afternoon walk.

He opened his eyes.

Something was coming towards him. It was quite fast and it didn’t seem to slow down. He had never seen anything like that before but as an eternal optimist he thought he could just wait for it to slow down and then they might get to know each other.

That never happened. Whatever it was it didn’t stop and it almost crashed into him but luckily Jack was able jump out of its way and he landed on the ledge of the bridge. He was so shocked by whatever it was that he lost his balance and fell off the ledge.

For a second he thought he would die but suddenly an inner, instinctive self of him took over his muscles and made him catch the ledge with his paws. After a few minutes of hanging there he finally managed pull himself up so he was safe.

For now, he added in his thoughts.

Jack watched as the Sun went down and once again let the scent of the bridge embrace him. It made his shock pass and he fell asleep with a smile on his face (chops).

What Jack couldn’t know was that his next day would be very busy.

A bunch of noisy fur-stealers came as soon as they heard what had happened to Jack. They seemed to be quite concerned about him so they decided to help him. However, they knew that Jack was afraid of a single ‘whatever it was’ so they didn’t want him to see all those machines that they brought in order to get him off the bridge.

So on the very next day when Jack was just about to open his eyes and get up (and figure his way down) something really strange happened. He was just stretching when he felt something itchy in his back. He wanted to turn and see what it was but suddenly he felt tired again and fell asleep.

The noisy fur-stealers waited exactly for that. They put a huge net under the bridge and tried to push Jack into it with a pole. It took them some time but in the end he landed in the net completely safe and sound.

The next thing he knew was that about ten noisy fur-stealers were standing around him, all watching him carefully and glancing at each other with suspicious smiles on their faces. They probably thought he wouldn’t notice it but no one can fool a bear!

He stretched again and as he stood up and was about to leave the noisy fur-stealers leaned back while one of them gently showed him the way back to the woods. And as Jack was a very polite bear he gave the noisy fur-stealer a smile and nodded in a friendly manner.

A week later he went down to the bridge to have his usual Sunday walk and tried to remember the happenings of last Sunday. He smiled as he took a deep breath of the cool, oddly smelling air. Maybe those noisy fur-stealers aren’t so bad after all, he thought to himself. They gave him the bridge and they managed to take him down as well. He murmured something and nodded – that case was officially closed.

He then wandered on, humming his favourite song.

Nyan Cat is a happy little guy. He has the the body of a cherry Pop-Tart and leaves an unbroken stream of rainbow fart wherever he goes. Originally, he cruised through the cosmos in silence. The catchy music that you hear was added by saraj00n just three days after launch date (note that as well as getting involved in pointless practices, young people these days don’t have normal names). This was not a planned collaboration. PRguitarman and saraj00n had never met before.

Nyan Cat proved to be very popular with the kids and the YouTube video went viral. But young people these days aren’t passive consumers. Since the happy digital feline was created, hundreds of remakes, remixes, parodies and mashups have been uploaded onto YouTube. Here are some of my favourites:

The Nyan Cat is an example of an Internet meme. Internet memes have a habit of coming together in diverse and unpredictable ways. Watch the following two videos and you will see what I mean:

Despite the fact that Nyan Cat was born only 4 months ago, it is most likely that his time is up. He now joins the Internet meme hall of fame where he can mingle with other stars such as dramatic chipmunk, badger badger badger and the sneezing panda.

In the clip, James Thomas, my friend and colleague who is also working with the group, makes a cameo appearance.

After hearing about the clip, I replayed this recording of myself. That way my students were able to see their teacher’s spoken text a second time. Their task was then to make a note of all of the new vocabulary that was introduced to them via the videotelling stage.

I played this clip at the Linguascope conference in Brighton this weekend. I’ll upload the entire presentation when I have a chance to edit it.

• Traps that teachers may fall into when making use of ‘authentic’ materials (practical).
• The trap of assuming that a piece of material is necessarily good because it is labelled authentic (theoretical).

I attempted to get around this problem by focusing on the first idea (the practical) and stopping 6 minutes and 40 seconds from the end to deal with the second idea in a Pecha Kucha form. You can see the Pecha Kucha below. For the full presentation, click here.

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatles fan called Jerry Levitan sneaked into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. 38 years later, the recording was  edited down to 5 minutes and illustrated.

Here is an interview with Salavdor Dalí. I’ve no idea what it’s all about but it’s strangely captivating.

Only 271 no-hitters have been recorded in Major League Baseball. In this radio interview with Doc Ellis, pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the player talks about the famous 1970 no-hitter that he threw against the San Diego Padres while under the influence of LSD.

Here is the SMS that welcomed me back to the United Kingdom (click on pictures to enlarge):

It says:

Our records indicate you may be entitled to £3250 for the accident you had. To apply free, reply CLAIM to this message. To opt out text STOP.

What accident? I’ve been pretty careful ever since I went off piste at Hillend and broke a finger. Why would I be entitled to compensation for my own stupidity?

Of course there is no accident to speak of. This is a random text from an unscrupulous law firm soliciting potentially lucrative legal cases. The mantra of such people  is ‘someone is always responsible for your accident.’

If we wanted to use a pejorative or derogatory term for professionals like these, we would call them ambulance chasers. And although I would normally feel annoyed about an unsolicited text message of this nature, at least I’ll be able to make use of this one the next time I do the Say that grammatically lesson plan on Lessonstream. This requires teaching students about ambulance chasers and compensation culture in order for them to appreciate exactly what Marcus does for a living and why Anne Robinson gives him a hard time in this clip from the Weakest Link.

A clip like this allows us to make use of the greatest resource of all: other people. Human beings are fascinated by other human beings and after writing a lesson plan for this video (click here to see it), I have formed a different relationship with each of the individuals in it.

The lesson plan on Lessonstream makes use of verbal responses only. In this respect, it doesn’t even come close to exploring the more fascinating possibilities that the clip offers. For example:

• People: Personalities, appearance, ethnicity, etc.
• Reactions: Willing/unwilling to talk, uneasy about the camera, shy, brave, blunt, friendly, etc.
• Non-verbal communication: Watch the woman listening to The best is yet to come, for example. After Ty Cullen asks her who the song is by, she replies, “Frank Sinatra.” Her smile and her eyes flirtatiously communicate: You should have known that!
• Stereotypes: Did they react in the way you expected? Were they listening to the type of music you expected?
• Incidents: For example, the guy on the bike who doesn’t stop – he almost cycles into the shy guy in the hooded top.

I have to admit that I tried some more adventurous tasks and activities for this material with a group of teenagers this week. I wanted to explore the deeper possibilities of the video and get students speaking about them. I wanted students to focus on their own expectations of the peoples’ responses. I asked them to watch a slideshow of images of the people involved (see above) and predict how those people would answer the question. The idea was that we would then go on to look at perceptions of people, generalisations and stereotypes.

Unfortunately, things didn’t really work out too well (a hazard of off-piste teaching!) Perhaps the tasks I set were too complex. Or perhaps I just asked the wrong questions. Perhaps I was using too many images. It is also possible that I was trying to exploit aspects of the video that I could appreciate but my students didn’t. After all, the more you look, the more you see. And I have watched this clip about 15 times over the last week.

If I was going to try things again, I would make more use of the Rastafarian man. All of my students seemed to be fascinated by him. Here is what I would do:

• Introduce students to the words stereotype and stereotypical.
• Before playing the clip, show students a picture of the Rastafarian man and ask them to guess what he is listening to. They will almost certainly guess Bob Marley.
• Give students a hard time for stereotyping the man.
• Ask students to discuss the following questions: Can you judge a book by its cover? Should you judge a book by its cover? Are there times when we should generalise about people? Can you think of any situations when it is dangerous to do so?
• Show the clip and students will see that in fact he was listening to Bob Marley.
• Ask students to consider the possibility that the man said that he was listening to Bob Marley only to stereotype himself. After all, if the man had been listening to Lady Gaga, would he have admitted it?

The point is that I would never have thought of this idea if it hadn’t been for my learners’ reaction to it. So, in conclusion, despite the lesson plan’s lack of depth, it serves primarily to give the teacher a simple and safe task to use it in the classroom. It provides the teacher with an excuse to show the video to his/her students. From there, teachers can exploit any interesting points that arise in any way they like.

By the way, Ty Cullen’s video seems to have become so successful that a number of other YouTubers have created their own versions. London, Edinburgh, Lisbon and San Francisco have all featured. This gives a new dimension to the clip for the classroom – are there any differences in the way that Americans and Europeans react to being stopped in the street and asked a pointless but fun question? Perhaps!

Richard Webb

Bristle isn’t the most pleasant surface to ski on. It especially hurts when you fall over. And if you want to leave the bristle and go off piste, you can forget it. At Hillend Ski Centre, off piste means grass, mud and rabbit poo. Not very appealing at all!

When skiing on snow, there may be more motivation to go off piste than there is at Hillend. Slopes are often crowded. As a result, snow quality can suffer. And sometimes, for the adventurous, things are all just a bit safe.

KurtVon

If the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, then the snow is whiter and more abundant off piste. There are fewer people around and things start to get more exciting.

darkpatator

The same applies in the classroom. For us, the piste might be any of the following:

• The syllabus or curriculum
• Expectations of students, parents, directors of studies, etc.
• The course book

Often, we feel comfortable with the familiarity of the piste. And often, it is where our students expect to be.

But there may be situations when we want to go off piste. Beyond the course book, beautiful things are to be found: art, poetry, social campaigns, natural history clips, online newspapers, video poems and other online materials. Sometimes, the motivation to go off piste is too great.

But pistes exist for a good reason: they are familiar and safe. We can see what is in front of us. We can see what is behind us. Perhaps most importantly, when we leave them, there is no rescue!

(Photo from a Californian connection)

Off piste, there are hidden dangers. When we use materials that have not been created specifically for language learners and for language learning, there are all sorts of problems that teachers will have to negotiate. To an extent, the activities on Lessonstream aim to demonstrate principles that we can use to tame the beast. I will be posting about these principles one at a time over the next few months.

Jamie :-)