I have in my quotation collection this gem, which seems to track with your cartoon:

“People used to believe that a million monkeys at a million keyboards would produce the works of Shakespeare. Now, with the internet, we know that’s not true.”

Colin, thanks for the recommendation for the books. I appreciate it. The brain is a funny and amazing place.

Kevin

I appreciate your thinking about the scaffolding required to make blogging a rewarding and authentic experience and that we need to ween students off IM, SMS etc. and to get them to engage thoughtfully and reflectively. We need to get them off the ‘technology’ and into the language of reading and writing. I’ve come across a book, “Proust and the Squid: The story of science of the reading brain”, (by Maryanne Wolf) in which the question is raised as to the importance of reading (and literacy) as our transition to a digital culture accelerates. Interesting stuff.

The lessons I have learned are similar to yours, though I did not blog in another language — I just don’t feel comfortable enough doing that. I guess it’s about control and command of language. I want to be understood very clearly, and that’s just not possible in another language unless I am fluent in it. I’m passably fluent in French, and I find even that to be intimidating. I applaud those who are able to comment in languages other than their native tongue — it is difficult!

One of the most insightful things for me, like you, was the use of video comments. Video is a medium I am learning more and more about, and definitely need more experience in! But what a great communication opportunity!

Like you I commented in another language spawned out of a bit of software on the Internet. I made two comments on the blog site. One in English, that I had sent some time ago and got no reply. The other was in the foreign language – Spanish.

The response I got was an email, in very polite English, requesting that I remove the offending translation.

Peace in cats.

Ka kite

Great job