Year 4
Number
92
December 21st
2002
4400 SHARERS are reading this issue of SHARE this week
__________________________________________________________
Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single
candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never
decreases by being SHARED
__________________________________________________________
Dear SHARERS,
Almost the end of
the academic year. Omar had his last board yesterday and I had my last one on Thursday. I still have to
keep my office at school open (…and working!) till Monday 30th. These
are the “fringe benefits” that come with a headship position: to keep on and on
long after everybody else has vanished into thin air and to start work much
before everybody else starts entertaining the idea that the holidays might
finish some day. Omar has changed into his shorts and will remain in this
blissful condition well into late February. Some people have all the luck! He´s
reading this over my shoulder and he says he´s got a meeting on Monday. I know
what all those “reuniones de cátedra” are all about : an opportunity for
sandwiches, coffee, coke and gossip while I labour hard… How I envy him!!!
On top of all that
he had a workaholic outburst this morning. Only that “he” is not working. He
called dear old Bernieh and made him busy with a special edition of SHARE for
the First Annual Conference of Applied Drama, he set Sebas to work on the design
of our Christmas card which you will receive on Monday, he told Martin to try to
solve the problem we have with uploading information to our Website and me to
proofread this SHARE and to write this introduction. And you want to know what?
He went off to the garden to read ( well that is “his” idea of
rest!).
Wwe have a special
party tonight. It is the graduation party (dancing and all !) of our dear
“girls” from College in Adrogué. To them , the first promotion of English
teachers from ISFD Nro 41 Omar and I would like to dedicate this issue of SHARE.
Love
Omar and
Marina
In SHARE
92
1.-
A Journey into Constructivism – Part 2.
2.-
Can Learning and Language influence colour perception?
3.-
Doctorado Universidad de Morón.
4.-
The Ig Nobel Prizes.
5.-
Programa de Normativa Española para Traductores.
6.-
Overheard at GCSE Examinations.
7.-
Web Portal for Teachers of English.
8.-
Pancho Santa.
9.-
APIBA SIGs Symposium.
10-
University Degree for Translators from Tertiary
Education.
11-
Stop Press: First Annual Conference of Applied Drama.
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1.- A JOURNEY INTO CONSTRUCTIVISM –
PART 2
Here
is the second and last part of this very interesting article that our dear
SHARER Maria José Insaurralde from San Miguel de Tucumán sent us. The first part
was published in SHARE 91 lat week.
A Journey into Constructivism
by Martin Dougiamas
Cultural constructivism
Critical constructivism
Constructionism
CONCLUSIONS
REFLECTION
REFERENCES
Cultural constructivism
We wandered among the walls of the ancient palace buildings, admiring
intricate Buddhist murals and statues next to signs in English telling us not to
touch things, not to graffiti, not take photos, not to eat food, not to sit etc.
It was hard to tell if they wanted tourists here or not. Did they think we
wanted to destroy the place? Perhaps they did. Perhaps we already had. I thought
about the amount of signs advertising western products I'd seen, I thought about
those herds of motorcycles eroding the quiet temples with their exhaust.
Beyond the immediate social environment of a learning situation are the
wider context of cultural influences, including custom, religion, biology, tools
and language. For example, the format of books can affect learning, by promoting
views about the organisation, accessibility and status of the information they
contain.
"[What we need] is a new conception of the mind, not as an individual
information processor, but as a biological, developing system that exists
equally well within an individual brain and in the tools, artefacts, and
symbolic systems used to facilitate social and cultural interaction."
(Vosniadou, 1996)
The tools that we use affect the way we think (by tools, I am including
language and other symbolic systems as well as physical tools). Salomon and
Perkins, (1998) identify two effects of tools on the learning mind. Firstly,
they redistribute the cognitive load of a task between people and the tool while
being used. For example, a label can save long explanations, and using a
telephone can change the nature of a conversation. Secondly, the use of a tool
can affect the mind beyond actual use, by changing skills, perspectives and ways
of representing the world. For example, computers carry an entire philosophy of
knowledge construction, symbol manipulation, design and exploration, which, if
used in schools, can subversively promote changes in curricula, assessment, and
other changes in teaching and learning.
Higher mental functions are, by definition, culturally mediated. They
involve not a direct action on the world but an indirect one, one that takes a
bit of material matter used previously and incorporates it as an aspect of
action. Insofar as that matter itself has been shaped by prior human practice
(eg it is an artefact), current action incorporates the mental work that
produced the particular form of that matter. (Cole and Wertsch, 1996, p252)
Cobern (1993) writes of the world of subject matter and the internal
mental world of the student as competing conceptual "ecologies", an image which
invokes pictures of competing constructs, adaptation and
survival-of-the-fittest. This is a somewhat more complex picture than radical
constructivism. It highlights the need to consider both contexts fully, that of
the student and that of the knowledge to be learned.
Critical constructivism
Later, walking back to the hotel, I thought about the conference starting
the next day. My paper about new technologies was starting to feel wrong, but I
couldn't quite put my finger on it. What right did I have coming to Thailand and
telling them what they should do to be like us?
Critical constructivism looks at constructivism within a social and
cultural environment, but adds a critical dimension aimed at reforming these
environments in order to improve the success of constructivism applied as a
referent.
Taylor (1996) describes critical constructivism as a social epistemology
that addresses the socio-cultural context of knowledge construction and serves
as a referent for cultural reform. It confirms the relativism of radical
constructivism, and also identifies the learner as being suspended in semiotic
systems similar to those earlier identified in social and cultural
constructivism. To these, critical constructivism adds a greater emphasis on the
actions for change of a learning teacher. It is a framework using the critical
theory of Jurgen Habermas to help make potentially disempowering cultural myths
more visible, and hence more open to question through conversation and critical
self-reflection.
An important part of that framework is the promotion of communicative
ethics, that is, conditions for establishing dialogue oriented towards achieving
mutual understanding (Taylor, 1998). The conditions include: a primary concern
for maintaining empathetic, caring and trusting relationships; a commitment to
dialogue that aims to achieve reciprocal understanding of goals, interests and
standards; and concern for and critical awareness of the often-invisible rules
of the classroom, including social and cultural myths. This allows rational
examination of the often implicit "claims to rightness" of the participants,
especially those derived from social institutions and history (Taylor, 1996).
Cultural myths that are prevalent in today's education systems include
(Taylor, 1996):
o The rationalist myth of cold reason - where knowledge is seen as
discovery of an external truth. This can lead to the picture of the teacher in a
central role as transmitter of objective truths to students. This philosophy
does not promote clarifying relevance to the lives of students, but instead
promotes a curriculum to be delivered.
o The myth of hard control - which renders the teacher's classroom role
as controller, and "locks teachers and students into grossly asymmetrical power
relationships designed to reproduce, rather than challenge, the established
culture".
Together these myths produce a culture that portrays classroom teaching
and learning as "a journey through a pre-constructed landscape".
Modification of such entrenched environments to reduce these myths and
promote approaches based on constructivism is problematic, because of the
self-reinforcing nature of administration, and the effects of wider culture.
Taylor (1996) argues for an optimistic approach, and that teachers need to work
collegially towards reconstructing education culture together rather than
heroically on their own.
Constructionism
I got back to my room and read my paper again. No, it was all wrong. I
spent an hour or so working on it, but still couldn't get it right. By the bed
was a postcard I'd bought at the palace. I stared at the picture for a while,
then turned it over and started writing to Sarah, telling her about my walk
there that afternoon. Suddenly, I knew what I should do at the conference. I
reached for my laptop and started jotting ideas.
Constructionism asserts that constructivism occurs especially well when
the learner is engaged in constructing something for others to see:
"Constructionism shares constructivism's connotation of learning as
`building knowledge structures' irrespective of the circumstances of the
learning. It then adds that this happens especially felicitously in a context
where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity,
whether it's a sandcastle on the beach or a theory of the universe... If one
eschews pipeline models of transmitting knowledge in talking among ourselves as
well as in theorizing about classrooms, then one must expect that I will not be
able to tell you about my idea of constructionism. Doing so is bound to
trivialize it. Instead, I must confine myself to engage you in experiences
(including verbal ones) liable to encourage your own personal construction of
something in some sense like it. Only in this way will there be something rich
enough in your mind to be worth talking about." (Papert, 1990)
In studying constructivism through my recent course, it has become
apparent that one of the most important processes in developing my knowledge has
been by explaining and exploring my ideas in conversation with fellow students.
I have noticed, on reflection, that a great deal of my own development was
fostered by participating in ongoing dialogue and creating "texts" for others to
answer back to, whether in conversation or as a class presentation. I feel also
that the construction of web sites and computer sofware (Dougiamas, 1999) has a
similar effect.
Gergen (1995) explores the use of the metaphor of dialogue to evaluate a
number of educational practices. Particularly, he views knowledge as fragments
of dialogue, "knowledgeable tellings" at a given time within an ongoing
relationship. This relationship can be between learners, between a learner and a
teacher, or between a learner and an environment experienced by the learner.
Gergen describes a lecture as a conversation where, because the lecturer has
already set the content, the student enters part-way through the dialogue and
finds they have no voice within it.
Steier (1996) looks into this dialogue process in more detail. Unlike the
communicative ethics of Taylor (1998) which also suggest ways to set up a
discursive environment, Steier highlights the circularity of reflective thinking
in social research, and presents a number of ways mirroring occurs between
learners (like two mirrors facing each other) where each reciprocator affects
the other. Awareness of such issues can help 'frame' the dialogue used to
communicate more effectively.
I've found these constructionist metaphors powerful in thinking about
Internet-based tools to support learning, and it will help inform me in research
I'm just starting (Dougiamas, 1999). Particularly, the Internet's strengths as a
resource and for communication support Gergen's advocation of problem-centred
inter-disciplinary study, and the problems of representation are also crucial in
a low-bandwidth environment.
For your own learning, this single essay is a very poor vehicle, no
matter how clear I try and make it. Here I am, late at night, stringing together
words about constructivism in my word processor, and there you are, reading
these words using your own cognitive framework, developed via your own unique
background and frameworks of language and meaning. I am translating a variety of
texts, using them to build an understanding on my own background, then
translating my new understandings into building my own text, which you are
deconstructing to reconstruct your own understanding. Like Chinese whispers, all
these translations are introducing unknowns. I don't know, and can never know if
I am reaching you. In attempting to teach through this medium, all I can hope to
do is to stimulate a curiosity in you to read further on these subjects, to
write about them, to talk to people about them, and to apply them wherever
possible in your own situations.
CONCLUSIONS
Constructivism has been said to be post-epistemological, meaning that it
is not another epistemology, or a way of knowing. It can not replace
objectivism. Rather, constructivism is a way of thinking about knowing, a
referent for building models of teaching, learning and curriculum (Tobin and
Tippin, 1993). In this sense it is a philosophy.
Constructivism also can be used to indicate a theory of communication.
When you send a message by saying something or providing information, and you
have no knowledge of the receiver, then you have no idea as to what message was
received, and you can not unambiguously interpret the response.
Viewed in this way, teaching becomes the establishment and maintenance of
a language and a means of communication between the teacher and students, as
well as between students. Simply presenting material, giving out problems, and
accepting answers back is not a refined enough process of communication for
efficient learning.
Some of the tenets of constructivism in pedagogical terms:
* Students come to class with an established world-view, formed by years
of prior experience and learning.
* Even as it evolves, a student's world-view filters all experiences and
affects their interpretation of observations.
* For students to change their world-view requires work.
* Students learn from each other as well as the teacher.
* Students learn better by doing.
* Allowing and creating opportunities for all to have a voice promotes
the construction of new ideas.
A constructivist perspective views learners as actively engaged in making
meaning, and teaching with that approach looks for what students can analyse,
investigate, collaborate, share, build and generate based on what they already
know, rather than what facts, skills, and processes they can parrot. To do this
effectively, a teacher needs to be a learner and a researcher, to strive for
greater awareness of the environments and the participants in a given teaching
situation in order to continually adjust their actions to engage students in
learning, using constructivism as a referent.
REFLECTION
I wrote about my experiences in Bangkok.
Looking back at my first impressions from the perspective of now I can
see how much my "eyes" have changed over this relatively short time of four
months.
I remember how difficult it was to make sense of my first few attempts to
read constructivism literature. As I read the texts the words "slipped" through
my mind, like trying to catch water in a net. The words made sense, the
sentences made sense, I could parrot the phrases, but the meanings were
threadbare. There were few connections to experiences and ideas that could be
said to make a rich meaning. I had "intellectual knowing", but not "knowing".
Now, after much dialogue with texts and people, reflection, and by
constructing representations of my understandings, I feel I have improved my
knowing of constructivism. I have a greater sense of the richer 'cloud of
baggage' I have developed around some of the concepts within constructivism, as
indeed any concept I develop over a long period. This cloud has been enriched by
multiple approaches to understanding - by listening, by reading, by speaking, by
writing, by working in groups, pairs and alone, by applying it to various
situations, and by having to write this essay. I find it easier to speak and
write about constructivism using my own words, and to apply the ideas in
situations I have not encountered before. I have a deeper understanding of
perspective and context, and try to be more critical of texts in terms of the
author's background, and social situations in terms of the environment and
participants.
I feel I have an understanding of the effectiveness of approaching
teaching by attempting to know more about the background of the learners, and
attempting to stimulate multiple situations of communication between teacher and
learner, between learners, and between learners and experience, in order to
promote their own development of knowledge relevant to them and to their
physical and social environment.
I can see the value of epistemological pluralism, and a variety of
referents held in dialectic tension. The various faces of constructivism can be
useful in their own right in various circumstances. In some cases, even methods
derived from an objectivist framework still have value, as long as they are
critically applied and their context is made clear.
From writing my journal and writing this essay, I also have a better feel
for the value of a constructionist approach, as well as the value of a
reflective account for qualitative assessment of learning. These aspects in
particular I think will help me in developing Internet-based learning.
Despite the very fluid nature of constructivism and it's many faces, I
now believe that attempting to understand it while simultaneously applying that
understanding in a reflective manner promotes the development of influential
mental constructs that are useful in the pursuit of more effective
communications, teaching and learning.
REFERENCES
Cobb, P. (1994) Where is the mind? Constructivist and Sociocultural
Perspectives on Mathematical Development, Educational Researcher, 23(7), pp
13-20
Cobb, P. (1998) Analyzing the mathematical learning of the classroom
community: the case of statistical data analysis, In: Proceedings of the
22nd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics
Education 1, pp 33-48, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
Cobern, W (1993) Contextual Constructivism: The impact of culture on
the learning and teaching of science. In: K. Tobin (Ed) The Practice of
Constructivism in Science Education, pp 51-69, Lawrence-Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Cole, M. & Wertsch, J. V. (1996). Beyond the individual-social
antimony in discussion of Piaget and Vygotsky. Human Development, 39, pp
250-256.
Costa,
A. & Liebmann, R. (1995). Process
is as important as content.
Educational Leadership. 52(6), pp 23-24.
Dougiamas, M. (1999). Moodle - a web application for building quality
online courses. http://moodle.com/.
Ellis, C. (1996). Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Emotionally about
our lives. In: W.G. Tierney and Y.S. Lincoln (Eds) Reframing the Narrative
Voice.
Gergen, K.J. (1995) Social Construction and the Educational
Process. In L.P. Steffe & J.Gale (Eds) Constructivism in education (pp
17-39). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Hardy and Taylor (1997), Von Glasersfeld's Radical Constructivism: A
Critical Review, Science and Education, 6, pp 135-150, Kluwer
Papert, S (1991) Preface, In: I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds),
Constructionism, Research reports and essays, 1985-1990 (p. 1), Norwood
NJ.
Salomon, G. and Perkins, D. (1998) Individual and Social Aspects of
Learning, In: P. Pearson and A. Iran-Nejad (Eds) Review of Research in
Education 23, pp 1-24, American Educational Research Association, Washington, DC
Steier, F. (1995) From Universing to Conversing: An Ecological
Constructionist Approach to Learning and Multiple Description. In L.P.
Steffe & J.Gale (Eds) Constructivism in education (pp 67-84). Hillsdale, New
Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Taylor, P. (1996) Mythmaking and mythbreaking in the mathematics
classroom, In: Educational Studies in Mathematics 31, pp 151-173
Taylor, P. (1998) Constructivism: Value added, In: B. Fraser &
K. Tobin (Eds), The International handbook of science education, Dordrecht, The
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic
Tobin, K. & Tippins, D (1993) Constructivism as a Referent for
Teaching and Learning. In: K. Tobin (Ed) The Practice of Constructivism
in Science Education, pp 3-21, Lawrence-Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Von Glasersfeld, E. (1990) An exposition of constructivism: Why some
like it radical. In R.B. Davis, C.A. Maher and N. Noddings (Eds),
Constructivist views on the teaching and learning of mathematics
(pp 19-29). Reston, Virginia: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Vosniadou, S. (1996). Towards a revised cognitive psychology for new
advances in learning and instruction. Learning and Instruction 6,
95-109.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Wood, T., Cobb, P. & Yackel, E. (1995). Reflections on learning
and teaching mathematics in elementary school. In L. P. Steffe & J.Gale
(Eds) Constructivism in education (pp 401-422). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
©
1998 by Martin
Dougiamas
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2.- CAN LEARNING AND LANGUAGE INFLUENCE
COLOUR PERCEPTION?
Our dear SHARER Rosa del Carmen Aguero de Fern from Corrientes wants to
SHARE this article with all of us:
Different shades of perception
A new study shows how learning--and possibly language--can influence
color perception.
By Etienne Benson
APA Monitor - Volume 33, No. 11 December 2002
Color categories make the world easier to live in. Granny Smith (green)
and Red Delicious (red) apples belong in different bins; so do violets (blue)
and roses (red).
To most of us, those categories seem natural, but in many other languages
the categories differ. Some African languages have five primary color words or
fewer; Russian has as many as English, plus an additional kind of blue. Often
the boundaries between two colors shift as one moves from one language community
to another.
Now, a new study by researchers at the University of Surrey suggests that
the process of learning new color categories produces subtle but significant
changes in how people actually perceive those colors.
The findings, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General (Vol. 131, No. 4), support the linguistic relativity hypothesis--the
idea that the language one speaks can affect the way one thinks about and
perceives the world.
"The main conclusions of the study are basic: that color perception is
not as rigid and inflexible as was thought before," says the study's lead
author, Emre Ozgen, PhD. "This is the first time that it's been shown that a new
perceptual color category boundary can actually be induced through laboratory
training."
The experiment
Previous studies have shown that people find it easier to distinguish
between similar hues that belong to different color categories than between hues
that fall within a single color category. A bluish green and a greenish blue,
for example, are easier to tell apart than a bluish green and a yellowish green.
The central question of the current study was whether these improvements
in performance at the boundaries of color categories--an effect known as
"categorical perception"--are fixed or changeable. Can training enhance the
effect, making people more sensitive to color differences across boundaries? Can
new boundaries be created, even ones that lie right in the middle of
conventional color categories?
In their first experiment, Ozgen and Ian Davies, PhD, sought to answer
the more basic question: whether training could improve participants' ability to
distinguish between similar hues of a single color. The answer was yes:
Participants became increasingly accurate over the course of three days of
training.
Ozgen and Davies then moved to the second, critical question: whether
novel categorical perception effects could be acquired in the laboratory.
Participants were trained to divide a basic color category, blue or green, into
two new categories. The boundaries of the new categories lay at the focal points
of the old categories--the greenest greens, for example, now lay at the boundary
between a category of yellowish greens and a category of bluish greens.
After three days of training, participants were better able to
distinguish between hues that fell on either side of the novel color boundaries
than between hues within a single category, even when the absolute difference
between the two hues was the same--a classic categorical perception effect. At
the same time, participants effectively unlearned their pre-existing color
categories: They stopped showing categorical perception effects at "natural"
boundaries that lay within the range of hues on which they had trained.
A follow-up experiment showed that the change in categorical perception
could be produced after a single training session of 500 trials, though the
improved performance was not evident until the next day--perhaps, the
researchers speculate, because improvement at the end of the first session was
masked by fatigue.
In their final experiment, Ozgen and Davies explored whether participants
would learn new categories based on differences in lightness, just as
participants in the previous experiments had learned categories based on
differences in hue. They found that lightness training produced the same kinds
of categorical perception effects that hue training did, but they also found an
interesting asymmetry: Participants who trained on hue-based categories showed
no new categorical perception effects when later tested on lightness, whereas
participants trained on lightness-based categories showed categorical perception
effects for hue. The results suggest that lightness can be ignored when it is
irrelevant to a task, but hue is processed automatically.
"People have shown categorical perception effects for color before, but
there's been a large number of people who've argued that these are innate color
categories," says Robert Goldstone, PhD, a professor of psychology at Indiana
University. "What the current study shows is that you can get acquired
categorical perception."
Linguistic relativity
The study also offers a new spin on the work of University of California,
Berkeley, psychologist Eleanor Rosch, PhD, who suggested in the 1970s that
linguistic differences have little effect on how people actually perceive
colors. She reported that speakers of a New Guinean language with only two color
words--one for cold, dark colors and one for warm, light colors--learned and
remembered colors more easily when they were prototypical examples of colors
identified in English, such as red, green and blue, than when they were not. The
results were a blow to the linguistic relativity hypothesis, also known as the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that cognition is shaped by the languages
people speak.
In recent years, however, University of Essex psychologist Debi Roberson,
PhD, and others have tried to replicate Rosch's work among other tribes with few
color words, and have found results that appear to contradict hers. Their
findings suggest that there are differences--small but nonetheless
significant--in the color perception of speakers of different languages.
"These kinds of categorical perception effects seem to be
language-dependent," says Davies, who has collaborated with Roberson on some of
those studies. "If an African language doesn't mark a blue-green boundary, then
adult speakers don't seem to show categorical perception across that boundary,
whereas English speakers do."
The current study is partly motivated by the cross-cultural research. But
as MIT psychologist Lera Boroditsky, PhD, points out, unlike the cross-cultural
studies, it does not directly address the linguistic relativity hypothesis. It
does not, for instance, provide evidence that learning a new linguistic
distinction can produce a new categorical perception effect.
What the study does provide, says Ozgen, is evidence that categorical
perception can change quickly as well as a plausible mechanism for how it
changes. It is a small leap from there to being able to show how a distinction
that starts off as merely linguistic--this sort of color goes in category A;
that sort goes in category B--can become deeply ingrained in perception.
"Linguistic relativity may work with similar principles, in that as a
child grows up, he or she will have to continually learn a category boundary
just as our subjects learn in the lab," says Ozgen. But he cautions, "neither
the linguistic relativity nor the universal hypotheses would hold if we were to
take an extreme position. To say that language completely shapes thought would
be as extreme as saying that thought is entirely hardwired."
© APA Monitor
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3.- DOCTORADO
UNIVERSIDAD DE MORÓN
El
Vicerrectorado de Posgrado y Extensión Universitaria de la Universidad de Morón
anuncia que está abierta la inscripción para el Doctorado de la Universidad de
Morón, con orientación en Ciencias Sociales, Humanidades y Ciencias Aplicadas.
El Doctorado cuenta con un programa personalizado de estructura modular, con el
objeto de que cada doctorando cuente con una formación disciplinar específica.
También se brinda la posibilidad de ingreso al programa de Doctorado en forma
continua, así como también la utilización del sistema de créditos por seminarios
cursados en la Universidad de Morón y en otras universidades. Aranceles
especiales para docentes y graduados de la Universidad de Morón. Informes e
inscripción: oficina de Posgrados, Cabildo 134, Morón, teléfono 5627-2000,
interno 282, e-mail posgrados@unimoron.edu.ar,
o visitando nuestra página de Internet,
www.unimoron.edu.ar
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4.- THE IG NOBEL
PRIZES
Our dear SHARER Joyce Spencer from North Carolina has
sent us this article about the Ignoble Prizes. Marina insists she heard about
them once on the TV and attests to their existence.
Today we are giving you a round-up of the 2002 winners
only. In future issues we will publish the names (and deeds!) of the lucky 2001
and 2000 recepients.
What are the Ig Nobel Prizes?
WHAT: Every Ig Nobel Prize winner has done something that first makes
people LAUGH, then makes them THINK. Technically speaking, the Igs honor people
whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced."
WHO: Here is a list of all the winners.
WHY: The Igs are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative
-- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. Here are
three discussions of what the Ig is and is not , and perhaps what it could mean.
THE CEREMONY: The Prizes are awarded at a gala ceremony in Harvard's
Sanders Theatre. 1200 splendidly eccentric spectators watch the winners step
forward to accept their Prizes. The Prizes are physically handed to the winners
by genuinely bemused genuine Nobel Laureates. You are invited to attend the
ceremony in person, or via broadcast.
WHENCE: The Igs are inflicted on you by the science humor magazine Annals
of Improbable Research (AIR),
and co-sponsored by:
* the Harvard Computer Society;
* the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association;
* the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students;
* the new book Ig Nobel Prizes, published by Orion, London, ISBN
0752851500.
The 2002 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
BIOLOGY
Norma E. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton, Phil Bowers, and D. Charles Deeming
of the United Kingdom, for their report "Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches
Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain." [REFERENCE: "Courtship
Behaviour of Ostriches (Struthio camelus) Towards Humans Under Farming
Conditions in Britain," Norma E. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton, P. Bowers, D.C.
Deeming, British Poultry Science, vol. 39, no. 4, September 1998, pp.
477-481.]
PHYSICS
Arnd Leike of the University of Munich, for demonstrating that beer froth
obeys the mathematical Law of Exponential Decay. [REFERENCE: "Demonstration of
the Exponential Decay Law Using Beer Froth," Arnd Leike, European Journal of
Physics, vol. 23, January 2002, pp. 21-26.]
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
Karl Kruszelnicki of The University of Sydney, for performing a
comprehensive survey of human belly button lint -- who gets it, when, what
color, and how much.
CHEMISTRY
Theodore Gray of Wolfram Research, in Champaign, Illinois, for gathering
many elements of the periodic table, and assembling them into the form of a
four-legged periodic table table.
MATHEMATICS
K.P. Sreekumar and the late G. Nirmalan of Kerala Agricultural
University, India, for their analytical report "Estimation of the Total Surface
Area in Indian Elephants." [REFERENCE: "Estimation of the Total Surface Area in
Indian Elephants (Elephas maximus indicus)," K.P. Sreekumar and G. Nirmalan,
Veterinary Research Communications, vol. 14, no. 1, 1990, pp.
5-17.]
LITERATURE
Vicki L. Silvers of the University of Nevada-Reno and David S. Kreiner of
Central Missouri State University, for their colorful report "The Effects of
Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension." [ PUBLISHED
IN: Reading Research and Instruction, vol. 36, no. 3, 1997, pp.
217-23.]
PEACE
Keita Sato, President of Takara Co., Dr. Matsumi Suzuki, President of
Japan Acoustic Lab, and Dr. Norio Kogure, Executive Director, Kogure Veterinary
Hospital, for promoting peace and harmony between the species by inventing
Bow-Lingual, a computer-based automatic dog-to-human language translation
device.
HYGIENE
Eduardo Segura, of Lavakan de Aste, in Tarragona, Spain, for inventing a
washing machine for cats and dogs.
ECONOMICS
The executives, corporate directors, and auditors of Enron, Lernaut &
Hauspie [Belgium], Adelphia, Bank of Commerce and Credit International
[Pakistan], Cendant, CMS Energy, Duke Energy, Dynegy, Gazprom [Russia], Global
Crossing, HIH Insurance [Australia], Informix, Kmart, Maxwell Communications
[UK], McKessonHBOC, Merrill Lynch, Merck, Peregrine Systems, Qwest
Communications, Reliant Resources, Rent-Way, Rite Aid, Sunbeam, Tyco, Waste
Management, WorldCom, Xerox, and Arthur Andersen, for adapting the mathematical
concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world. [NOTE: all companies
are U.S.-based unless otherwise noted.]
MEDICINE
Chris McManus of University College London, for his excruciatingly
balanced report, "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture." [PUBLISHED
IN: Nature, vol. 259, February 5, 1976, p.
426.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
5.- PROGRAMA DE NORMATIVA ESPAÑOLA PARA
TRADUCTORES
Our dear SHARER Silvana García Calabria from Círculo de Traductores de la
Zona Norte www.traductoreszonanorte.org sends this
announcement of special interest to translators:
CURSO ANUAL 2003
PROGRAMA DE NORMATIVA ESPAÑOLA
Disertante: Dra. Alicia María Zorrilla
Destinatarios: traductores de todas las especialidades y alumnos del
último año de la carrera de Traductor; correctores; profesores; periodistas,
etc.
Temario:
La Normativa: concepto.
La oración. El orden de las palabras en español. Ambigüedad o
anfibología.
La puntuación: su concepto. Uso correcto de los signos de puntuación. Los signos
auxiliares de
puntuación.
Diptongos y triptongos. Silabeo ortográfico. Unión y separación de
palabras.
La acentuación. Distintas clases de acento (ortográfico, prosódico,
diacrítico). Sílabas átonas y tónicas. Palabras agudas, graves, esdrújulas y
sobresdrújulas. Otras reglas de acentuación.
Uso correcto de mayúsculas y de
minúsculas.
Los barbarismos. Corrección de construcciones
vulgares.
La preposición. Su uso correcto. Palabras que rigen preposición. Las
locuciones prepositivas. Sinónimos, antónimos, parónimos (homónimos, homófonos,
homógrafos).
El verbo. La correlación de tiempos y modos
verbales.
Perífrasis verbales. El verbo "deber" y la frase verbal "deber de" más
infinitivo. Los verbos "ser" y "estar".
Uso correcto de los verbos irregulares. Clases de verbos (regulares,
irregulares, transitivos, in-transitivos, copulativos, pronominales, defectivos,
auxiliares, impersonales).
Paradigma de la conjugación regular. Derivados verbales. Uso correcto del
gerundio. El artículo. Su uso correcto. Dificultades que presenta el uso del
artículo con algunos sustantivos. El artículo ante los sustantivos que comienzan
con "a" acentuada.
Uso correcto del sustantivo. Sustantivos masculinos y femeninos dudosos.
Plurales dudosos. Uso correcto del adjetivo. La sustantivación del
adjetivo. Concordancia del artículo
y del sustantivo con el adjetivo.
El adjetivo en grado positivo, comparativo y superlativo. Uso correcto
del pronombre. Casos de laísmo, leísmo y loísmo. Uso correcto del adverbio. El
adverbio en grado superlativo. Las
abreviaturas y las siglas.
Lugar: Virrey Arredondo 2247 - 2.° "B" - 1426 Buenos
Aires
Inscripción:
durante todo el mes de marzo de 2003, en la Fundación fundlitterae@arnet.com.ar
de
lunes a viernes, de 16.30 a 20.30, y en el CTPZN, Martín y Omar 339, San Isidro.
4732-0303, martes y viernes, de mañana. / www.traductoreszonanorte.org
Fecha de inicio: miércoles 7 de mayo de 2003, de 9.30 a
11.30
Duración: 8 meses
Arancel: $120 por mes. No se
cobra matrícula. Consultas: info@traductoreszonanorte.org
---------------------------------------------------------------
6.- OVERHEARD
AT GCSE EXAMINATIONS
Our founding SHARER and fairy godmother Elida Messina has sent us this
contribution with the subject line “priceless”. We totally agree. Let´s read
what Elida has got to say:
You should stop laughing sometime next week! The following are quotes
from British GCSE exam answers by 16 year-olds.Various answers have been
collated together by subject (just in case you think the answers in each topic
were from just one candidate), and they were compiled by the examiners
themselves"
Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies.
The Egyptians wrote in hydraulics.
Gyptians lived in the Sarah Dessert and travelled by
camelot.
The climate of the Sahara is such that the inhabitants have to live
elsewhere.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible,
Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of Adam and Eve's children, Cain,
said "Am I my brother's son?"
Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened
bread (which is bread made without any
ingredients).
Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten
Commandments.
Moses died before he ever reached
Canada.
King Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred
porcupines.
The Greeks were a highly sculptured
people.
Without the Greeks, we would not have had
history.
The Greeks also had many myths.
Actually, Homer was not written by Homer, but by another man of that
name.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher, who went around giving people
advice.
They killed him. Socrates
died from a large dose of wedlock.
After his death, Socrates' career suffered a dramatic
decline.
In the Olympic games, the Greeks ran races, jumped, and hurled the
biscuits. They also threw the java.
History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for
very long.
Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of
Gaul.
Caesar was murdered by the Ides of March because they thought he was
going to be made king.
Caesar's dying words were "Tee hee,
Brutus".
Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the
fiddle to them.
Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak.
She was cannonized by Bernard Shaw.
Finally, Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the
same offence.
The writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and
verses,and also wrote literature.
Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while
standing on his son's head.
Queen Elizabeth 1st was known as the Virgin Queen. As a queen she was a great success. When she exposed herself before her
troops, they all shouted "hurrah !"
It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and
the Bible. Another important
invention was the circulation of blood.
Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot
clipper.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was
born in the year 1564, supposedly on his
birthday.
Shakespeare never made much money and is famous only because of his
plays.
Shakespeare wrote tragedies, comedies and hysterectomies, all in Islamic
pentameter.
Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic
couplet.
Romeo's last wish was to be laid by
Juliet.
Miguel Cervantes wrote at the same time as Shakespeare. He wrote Donkey
Hote.
The next great author was John Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost. After his wife died, Milton wrote
Paradise Regained.
During the Renaissance, America began.
Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while
cursing in the Atlantic. His ships
were called the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa
Fe.
Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean. This was called Pilgrim's
Progress.
The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many died and many babies were
born. Captain John Smith was
responsible for all this.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in
their tea. Also, the colonists
would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally, the colonists won the war and
no longer had to pay taxis.
Delegates from the original states formed the Contented
Congress.
Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the
Declaration of Independence.
Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats
backwards. He later declared "A
horse divided against itself cannot stand". Franklin died in 1790 and is still
dead.
The Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic
hostility.
Under the Constitution, the people enjoyed the right to keep bare
arms.
Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he
was born in a log cabin which he built with his own
hands.
Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation
Proclamation.
On the night of April 14th, Lincoln went to the theatre and got shot in
his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. They believed the assassinator was John
Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor.
The incident ruined Booth's career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also
wrote a book called Candy.
Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn
when the apples are falling off the trees.
Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions, and had a large
number of children. In between, he
practiced on an old spinster which he kept in his
attic.
Bach died from 1750 to the present.
Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel.
Handel was half German, half
Italian and half English. He was a
very large man.
Beethoven wrote music even
though he was deaf. This was why he
wrote loud
music. He took long walks in the forest even
when everyone was calling for
him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died
from this.
The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted
into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an
heir to inherit his power, but Josephine was a baroness so she could not have
children.
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire was in
the East and the sun sets in the West.
Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on the thorn for 63
years.
She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Queen Victoria's death was the final
event which ended her reign.
The 19th Century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions.
People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by
machine.
The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring
up.
In agriculture, Cyrus McCormack invented the McCormack Raper, which did
the work of a hundred
men.
Louis Pasteur discovered the cure for
rabbis.
Charles Darwin was a naturist who wrote the Organ of the
Species.
Madman Curie discovered radio.
Karl Marx was one of the Marx Brothers.
The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an
anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human
history.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.- WEB PORTAL FOR TEACHERS OF
ENGLISH
To:
Teachers of English and International Educators
Dear SHARERS,
We
would like to recommend our updated English Forum website as a useful addition
to your bank of educational resources for international students:
English
Forum - http://www.englishforum.com
Comprehensive web portal with a wealth of resources for
students and teachers of English (ESL/EFL). Interactive Exercises, Message
Boards, ELT Book Catalogue, Good School Guide, Web Directory, World News,
Learning and Teaching Links, Cool Tools, and more ...
Some recent
comments about English Forum include:
"... a fabulous resource, with easy
links to loads of interesting stuff for teachers and students alike. It's very
comprehensive, varied and looks professional too." -- TEFL Farm
"...
excellent website" -- Andrew Hardy, Scanbrit School of English, UK
"Last
week out of the blue we received our first inquiry from 'The Good School Guide'
at English-Forum.com." ... "I decided to look into the website that referred the
student and was immediately struck by the high level of professionalism and
effort that has gone into the site." ... "These sites are very important to help
students make the difficult decision of where to study abroad." -- Jackson
Perry, Languages International, New Zealand
"I have looked at your Web
site and am tremendously impressed by its content and overall professionalism."
-- Terry Simon, President, American Association of Intensive English Programs
(AAIEP)
"Your site is terrific!" -- Anita Kuehnel, Marketing Manager,
Pacific Language Institute (PLI), Canada
Best regards,
Mike
Armont
Editorial Department - English Forum
San Francisco, CA
http://englishforum.com - Serving the world
of English language teaching since 1995
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8.- PANCHO
CLAUS
Our dear SHARER Caroline Evans sends this poem by Lalo Guerrero:
Lalo Guerrero (winner of the National Heritage Award and the National
Medal for the Arts, and a native Tucsonense) wrote this song in the 1960s. He
will be 86 this Christmas Eve, and is still adding and subtracting verses. This
is the current version as I heard him sing it a couple of weeks ago. It still ends, as it always has, with
what might well be the worst rhyme in the
English language.
PANCHO CLAUS, by Lalo Guerrero (who told me I could use it as I saw
fit.)
'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and all through the
casa
Mama, she was busy preparing the masa
to make the tamales for the tamalada,
and all the ingredients for the
enchiladas.
Papa in the shower was singing
"Jalisco,"
my brothers and sisters were dancing to
disco,
my Grandpa was snoozing, the neighbors were
boozing
and getting their low riders ready for
cruising.
When all of a sudden I heard such a
racket,
I jumped out of bed the threw on my
jacket.
I ran to the window and looked pout of the
house;
t'was my old Uncle Pedro, as drunk as a
louse!
He came into the house and grabbed a
guitarra,
and he let out a yell -AHOOOAH! and
sang:
Guadalajara, Guadalajara....
I started to wonder as I lay there alone
how old Santa Clause was to visit our
home
with all of the noise that would scare him
away,
When all of a sudden, I heard someone
say:
"Hey, Pedro, Pablito, Chichito, Jose!
Get up there, you bums, or you don't get no
hay!"
And what to my wondering eyes should
appear,
but eight tiny burros, instead of
reindeer.
They pulled a carreta that was full of
toys
for all of us good little girls and
boys.
The fat little driver waved his sombrero, and
said:
"Merry Christmas, Feliz Año Nuevo!
"I am Santa's cousin from south of the
border,
My name's Pancho Claus, and I brought what you
ordered."
And I heard him exclaim as he drove past the
porches,
"Merry Christmas to all, and to all, Buenos
Noches!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.- APIBA SIGS
SYMPOSIUM
Our dear SHARER and APIBA
SIGs Co-Liaison Officer, Alejandra Jorge, announced
that
the First Symposium of APIBA SIGs will be held on Saturday
14th of June 2003. It will consist of a number of concurrent
presentations and an exhibition of ELT resources.
All members of APIBA SIGs and SIGs from other FAAPI Associations are
kindly invited to present and participate.
Further Information from APIBA SIGs
Co-Liaison Officer apibasigs@apiba.org.ar
Web:
www.apiba.org.ar
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10.- UNIVERSITY
DEGREE FOR TRANSLATORS FROM TERTIARY EDUCATION
Our dear SHARER Prof. Lucrecia A. de Mulone, Head of “New Start” sends us this announcement:
Instituto Superior New Start D-130
Ciclo de Complementación Curricular para Traductores de Inglés graduados
en Institutos Terciarios
El Instituto Superior New Start D-130 de la Ciudad de Paraná informa que
se encuentra abierta la preinscripción al Plan de Titulación Universitaria para
traductores de inglés graduados en institutos terciarios por medio del cual el
profesional podrá obtener el título de Traductor Universitario con validez
nacional. Éste es el resultado de un convenio entre el Instituto Superior New
Start de la ciudad de Paraná y la Universidad del Museo Social Argentino,
tradicional universidad de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires.
El título será expedido por la UMSA y tiene validez nacional otorgada por
Resolución Nº102/02 del Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología de la
Nación. La duración será de dos cuatrimestres con una modalidad de cursado muy
ventajosa para el profesional.
Para solicitar más información dirigirse a la sede de New Start, ubicada
en Urquiza 1063, Paraná (ER), telefónicamente al (0343) 4318461 o por correo
electrónico a:
newstart @satlink.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11.- STOP PRESS: FIRST ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF
APPLIED DRAMA
Just a few words to say that The Bs As Players are organizing the
FIRST ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF
APPLIED DRAMA -"Drama at the service of the teaching-learning process", at
Teatro Santamaría, Montevideo 842, Ciudad de Buenos Aires, on the following
dates:
-February, Thursday 27 / Friday 28 -9 am to 5
pm
-March, Saturday 1 - 9 am to 1 pm
It is a great honour for Marina and I, in the name of all the SHARE
community, to give our sponsorship to this unique event and we promise to send
you full details in a separate edition of SHARE
soon.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today
we will say goodbye with a joke a dear SHARER ( whose identity she asked us to
withhold) sent us. Says she: “ it
may be a silly joke and we might think it the kind of thing only small kids
appreciate …only if you cannot read between the lines” We fully agree.
"Why didn't the lobster like to SHARE?"
"Because he
was a little shellfish."
HAVE
A WONDERFUL WEEK!
Omar
and Marina.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SHARE
is distributed free of charge. All announcements in this electronic magazine are
also absolutely free of charge. We do not endorse any of the services announced
or the views expressed by the contributors. For
more information about the characteristics and
readership
of SHARE visit:
http://groups.yahoo.com/sharemagazine
VISIT OUR WEBSITE
: http://www.shareeducation.com.ar
There you can read all past issues
of SHARE in the section SHARE ARCHIVES.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------