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17 Jul 09

Apparently babies need other people to learn. They take in more information by looking at another person face to face than by looking at that person on a big plasma TV screen," she said. "We are now trying to understand why the brain works this way, and what it means about us and our evolution."
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- "We can learn what to do by watching others, and we also can come to understand other people through our own actions," Meltzoff said. "Learning is bi-directional."
- "Educators know children spend 80 percent of their waking time away from school and children are learning deeply and enthusiastically in museums, in community centers, from online games and in all sorts of venues. A lot of this learning is highly social and clues from informal learning may be applied to school to enhance learning. Why is it that a kid who is so good at figuring out baseball batting averages is failing math in school?" said Meltzoff.
- Using technology, children are learning to solve problems collaboratively.

09 Mar 09

04 Oct 08

The French educational system introduces the first foreign language (première langue vivante) at the beginning of the secondary cycle (classe de sixième - around 11/12 years old). The first language learned is English 92%, followed by German, 7.5%. A second language is then introduced two years later (classe de quatrième - 13/14 years old). Spanish mostly (70%), then German (14%).
Bonjour, je suis désolé(e) je ne parle pas français, est-ce que vous parlez anglais ? (Hi, I'm sorry, I don't speak French, do you speak English?)
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- It's all about putting yourself on the same level, to avoid any kind of hierarchy that would hinder the communication channel.

08 Jul 08

06 Jun 08

16 May 08

"IM is interactive discourse among friends that is conducive to informal language," says Denis, "but at the same time, it is a written interface which tends to be more formal than speech."
Nor do teens use abbreviations as much as the stereotype suggests: LOL (laugh out loud), OMG (oh my god), and TTYL (talk to you later) made up just 2.4 per cent of the vocabulary of IM conversations - an "infinitesimally small" proportion, say the researchers. And rumours of the demise of you would appear to have been greatly exaggerated: it was preferred to u a whopping 9 times out of 10. Tagliamonte and Denis suggest that the use of such short forms is confined mostly to the youngest users of IM.