Among the greatest achievements in the history of photography, those of the early polar explorers surely stand out for the beauty of their images and the almost impossible conditions they encountered. None of these are more remarkable than the photographs recorded by the official chroniclers of two epic Antarctic expeditions–that of Robert Falcon Scott in 1910 which tragically resulted in his death and, four years later, and that of Ernest Shackleton, whose heroic sea journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia has become the stuff of legend. Their photographers–Herbert George Ponting and Frank Hurley–transported bulky cameras and glass plate negatives across the forbidding polar landscape to record some of the earliest images of this dramatic environment. That the photographs survived to be presented on their return to King George V is miraculous, and they have remained ever since in the Royal Collection.

Herbert George Ponting and Frank Hurley accompanied Scott and Shackleton on their Antarctic expeditions respectively, and were both very different kinds of pioneering photographers. Ponting considered himself an ‘artist’ while Hurley sought to document, however, the images created by both are outstandingly beautiful.

I was thinking about the pains and effort the two men went to create their images. Carrying bulky cameras and glass slides over demanding terrain,  working in darkrooms in freezing temperatures, struggling to keep the chemicals warm enough to work, nevermind their hands. It’s no wonder the images become works of art given the time and dedication paid to their composition and production.

On the Shackleton expedition of 1915, and the need to abandon ship with the onslaught of ice, Hurley was given the order to dispose of his glass slides as the men would be unable to transport their heavyweight across the drifting ice on their escape. So Hurley had to choose his best 100 images and lose 400 to the Antarctic wilderness forever. As an editor of his own work, Hurley certainly had his work cut out for him.

After stepping out back into the London streets on my trek back to KIngs Cross, somehow it didn’t feel so cold and wet anymore.

Here are some of my favourite images.

I find this last picture of Scott writing his diaries, particularly moving with the pictures of his young children on the wall behind him.

And published by the Guardian, the last paper I felt I could read – they should know better.

This grrrates me because….

1. it stems from notions that we live in a monolingual country but of course it is multilingual – one nation does not equal one language nor culture.
2. the onus of responsibility towards language learning is always placed on the learner – so what is the UK government doing in helping migrants to learn English, apart from slashing funding in English teaching?

Ah yes, but Fabio Capello is loaded so it doesn’t matter – he can pay !

But that’s not the point, no doubt that Mr Capello gave it his best, probably with little emotional support. I’ve listened to him on a number of occasions and his English has improved dramatically over the last few years for sure.

What really gets me though is the SHEER hubris of the British media, and equally the British government in the way they see and understand the English language as representative of Britain’s multilingual society.

Fabio Capello never bothered to learn much English, or much about England. His £6m a year was not enough to interest him greatly in the culture of the country whose national game he was hired to revive by winning a major international tournament. On Wednesday night his lack of understanding led directly to his resignation from the job of England manager, after a meeting in which he was confronted over his refusal to accept the stripping of the England captaincy from John Terry.

I hope the Guardian newspaper has plans to improve on its standards of professional journalism.

But more importantly that England starts to WAKE up from its empire hangover.

So the next England manager will be ENGLISH – won’t make a jot of difference. The problem is though, Harry Redknapp (expected successful candidate)  can’t write emails, or spell properly, so no doubt literacy rather than language will be to blame for our next world cup failure.

Perhaps England should accept that their football just isn’t good enough!

Reblogged from Nihal YILDIRIM's BLOG:

Teacher : What are you drawing? Little girl: I’m drawing a picture of God. Teacher: But, nobody knows what God looks like.. Little girl: They will in a minute. ———————————————————– Dear Blog, This is one of my favorite stories and it is from Sir Ken Robinson’s ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ talk. I know you are just a blog, but have you ever wondered why we don’t get the best out of people? In that talk I mentioned above, Sir Ken Robinson argues that it’s because we’ve …

I’ve just discovered the ‘reblog’ option on WordPress and I’m sure Nihal won’t mind my reblogging one of her great posts

I was inspired by this and whenver possible try to integrate video into my lessons somehow. I came across this clip by ‘the one Ronnie’ – a rather fruity take on the language of technology. I haven’t thought about how to bring it into an English lesson or a lecture on web technologies yet but any ideas of yours are very welcome

The talks are fascinating and highly amusing, so do take time to watch these video clips below. I think they raise really interesting questions about the nature of learning and the significance of the lives of the learners in relation to this. Enjoy the talks and please feel free to post your own reflections as comments.

as do my interests

 in English language teaching

A continual reshaping

that not only expresses

but constitues

my repositioning

in the ELT world around me

A world that like myself

never stands still.

This is how I’ve come to understand

my teacher identity

not one that is static

but in process of ‘becoming’

Teaching

is a life-long apprenticeship

no beginning nor end game,

there will be no final feeling

of ‘mastery’ over my profession,

the day I can say ‘I am a teacher’

will not come

I can only ever say

I’m learning to be a teacher.

Thanks to Paul and John aka the Henry Brothers for the request to turn my teacher identity post into poetry – go and have a look at their really inspirational blog

AND then the INTERNET came along….oh what joy

Of course there have been plenty of efforts by educational institutions and interested parties to fight off the threat, and we see it all the time in the anti-technology discourses, of ‘the Internet is evil and is bad for your children’ – yeh right, I remember when people used to get square eyes from watching too much telly. Of course there are security and privacy issues, and I have no intention of devaluing those concerns, but they are not valid excuses to deny the right of people young or old to new opportunities in learning.

As Graham Stanley points out in an article this year on his blog – “Looking back on 2011…Dogme ELT & Interactive Whiteboards”

I for one have had enough of the 2 warring camps and the ‘Tech vs Anti-tech’ argument – I think we really have moved on. It’s no longer a question of whether language teachers should use technology, but that teachers should use it judiciously and only when it advances the language learning in the classroom. There have been a number of posts (by myself, Nicky Hockly here and here, Sue Lyon-Jones) on this.

With the introduction of the Internet and it’s associated media and technologies into education, we’ve seen a ‘tension’ between an ethos of control, hierarchy, competition and commodification, i.e. education, while in stark contrast a web 2.0 ethos of sharing, collaboration and community. In the end an almighty head-on collision.

The argument I’m building is leading to a defence of Dogme in ELT, not an attack. To my mind, and to many others I think, the Dogme approach is not at odds with the new technologies. Indeed Dogme addresses the concerns of control and prescription through the over-use and reliance on paper-based materials in ELT. Dogme seeks to draw on the real resources of the classroom i.e. the learners and teachers and their lives. As I understand it, Dogme has never pretended or intended to be a ‘methodology’, and certainly never one that fits all.

Through this discussion I would like to build a bridge between the tech vs anti-tech camps in relation to Dogme. As Luke Meddings points out in a recent seminar ’20 steps to Unplugged Teaching’, Dogme or Unplugged teaching can be based around a three-point framework, being;

conversation driven, materials light, and focussed on the emergent language

It’s the ‘materials light’ aspect that seems to be the sticking point in aligning Dogme and technology.

Perhaps a different perspective is required here in understanding ‘materials’ and their use. My suggestion is that rather than materials light it might be better to think about materials as being ‘learner-generated‘ . From this viewpoint we can see the valid use of technologies such as blogs, wikis, digital photography as a means of connecting to the lives of the learners (and teachers) and generating learners’ texts through talk, images, videos and so on.

I’m going to be blogging a few digital dogme lesson ideas starting with; ‘learners images’ – so watch this space

Incredibly funny (some bad language, though – apologies), and there are loads of opportunities for discussions in class with language learners or in language teacher education about language learning experiences. varieties of language, accents / dialects, language models and so on.

This video was recommended to me by a colleague who has used it successfully in teacher education – Thanks Jen.

The objective of this lesson is to get the students thinking and talking about how tourists might see their town / city / region / country. You could use the minimal frame I’ve suggested below with a tourist style video clip.

Search for a video clip about places familiar to the students e.g. where they live or perhaps the capital city of their country. The basic stages to the lesson are:

1. Before watching – Learners predict in pairs / groups what aspects of the the city / region they think the video will feature

2. Watch video first time to check to see if learners’ predictions were right and discuss the video clip, their thoughts, and perhaps surprises.

3. Watch video second time – learners´ focus on language you think is relevant and the emergent language from the discussions

4. After watching – Learners discuss what places tourists should visit, what time of year, must see sights, and attractions, food and drink to try etc.

5. Extension activity – Learners discuss and write up a travel itinerary to the place featured in the video for a group tourists.

We were working on an alternative version in class the other day, Only got to day four … here’s a taster

“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a very big flat screen TV”

What a fun idea!

By the way here are the original lyrics to the popular Christmas Carol – ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’

On the first day of Christmas My true love gave to me: A partridge in a pear tree.

On the second day of Christmas My true love gave to me: Two turtle doves and A partridge in a pear tree.

On the third day of Christmas My true love gave to me: Three french hens Two turtle doves and A partridge in a pear tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas My true love gave to me: Four calling birds Three french hens Two turtle doves and A partridge in a pear tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas My true love gave to me: Five golden rings Four calling birds Three french hens Two turtle doves and A partridge in a pear tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas, My true love gave to me: Six geese a-laying Five golden rings Four calling birds Three french hens Two turtle doves and A partridge in a pear tree.

On the seventh day of Christmas, My true love gave to me: Seven swans a-swimming Six geese a-laying Five golden rings Four calling birds Three french hens Two turtle doves and A partridge in a pear tree.

On the eighth day of Christmas, My true love gave to me: Eight maids a-milking Seven swans a-swimming Six geese a-laying Five golden rings Four calling birds Three french hens Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the ninth day of Christmas, My true love gave to me: Nine ladies dancing Eight maids a-milking Seven swans a-swimming Six geese a-laying Five golden rings Four calling birds Three french hens Two turtle doves and A partridge in a pear tree.

On the tenth day of Christmas, My true love gave to me: Ten lords a-leaping Nine ladies dancing Eight maids a-milking Seven swans a-swimming Six geese a-laying Five golden rings Four calling birds Three french hens Two turtle doves and A partridge in a pear tree.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, My true love gave to me: Eleven pipers piping Ten lords a-leaping Nine ladies dancing Eight maids a-milking Seven swans a-swimming Six geese a-laying Five golden rings Four calling birds Three french hens Two turtle doves and A partridge in a pear tree.

On the Twelfth day of Christmas, My true love gave to me: Twelve drummers drumming Eleven pipers piping Ten lords a-leaping Nine ladies dancing Eight maids a-milking Seven swans a-swimming Six geese a-laying Five golden rings Four calling birds Three french hens Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

AND here is one alternative version of the famous song from YouTube

Create a Word Cloud from the text of a Christmas Carol, pop song, story or poem using one of the Word Cloud sites on the Internet e.g. www.wordle.net

1. First use Google to search for your text
2. Copy the text – using right click on mouse
3. Paste text into Word Cloud site
4. Create / edit your Word Cloud
5. Save Word Cloud by using ‘print screen key’ then use free image editing software on computer e.g. ‘Paint’
6. Students create posts on a class blog with the Word Cloud image  and original text side by side
7. Have a competition – Students can vote for the best Word Cloud design

By the way, which Christmas Carol does my Christmas Word Cloud come from?

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL