Old Words and Meanings--New Words?

Another person at the Delnor Wellness Center today shared with me a list of words well known by people over fifty that have fallen out of use as slang today.  A news announcement in the past two months described some new words creeping into our vocabulary.  unfriend was a new one for this year, meaning to take someone off of your "friend" list at a social networking site.

The words in the attached photo represent a start of words that are disappearing from slang.  What others can you remember?   (Click on the picture to see all the columns.)

Workforce Development--Determining Training Needs

Workforce development--this is a critical concept for today's economy.  What are the training needs of people in the workforce?  How are community needs assessments conducted?  In the Hispanic community, to what degree is more training in English or in Spanish important to the workforce and to the families of workers?

DrM-Resources is conducting a project on Community Needs Assessment.  There is a need for new chambers of commerce to be involved.

Chambers of commerce have access to their members and can gather important information that can be provided to community colleges, universities, and other vendors to support custom-designed workforce training appropriate to the needs of member organizations.

Language Tests, Language Practice, Language Learning and Review

In previous posts I have talked about the importance of maintaining second language proficiency.  Today I ordered some DVD movies in Italian from WalMart.com and was watching another DVD movie in Spanish that I had ordered from Netflix.  I have also been watching several DVD movies in French--some from my own library and some from Netflix.

I received a call today concerning a business opportunity I had applied for on October 29, 2009.  Today was the first I had heard about that application.  In the next few days I need to take a battery of tests in Spanish to compete for the position.

I had signed-up for the online language program to review my French and will now be reviewing my Spanish grammar while watching DVD movies in Spanish. 

It is amazing how many business opportunities can come forward when second-language proficiency is attained and maintained.  I am happy that practice is as enjoyable as watching DVD movies in the target languages and that these DVD movies are so readily available.

Secure Websites, Identity Theft, Internet Purchases, DrM-Language

In setting-up Internet payments through PayPal, I was advised not to use a logo if the site was unsecure.  That would result in error messages saying that some content was not secure when someone wanted to make a purchase.

PayPal and many other websites are secure and protect payment information from clients and customers.  More and more products and services are available for purchase via the Internet.  Most of these payments are secure.

A few months ago I responded to an e-mail ad and purchased a service.  Shortly after that someone made an unauthorized purchase on a MasterCard, using data I had provided for that service.  My credit-card company refunded the unauthorized charge and I was reminded about the vulnerability we all have for identity theft.  In this case, I believe that the information gained about my card came from a telephone call follow-up.

Now I need to have the credit-card number changed and a new card issued so that no more unauthorized charges can be made against the card.

DrM-Language has some links for people to purchase an affordable, online language learning program. On those links there is an Enroll button which goes to a secure site for purchase of the online language program. 

As an Internet merchant who has experienced unauthorized charges on my credit-cards, I am even more sensitive to the need to protect my clients and customers.  At present, I rely on vendors to provide the secure websites for payments.

Making Connections between Schools, Parents, and Students

Teachers are often challenged to make connections between schools, parents, and students.  Many times parents regard their children and school work as unrelated to the "real world" of their day-to-day lives.  The Library of Congress of the United States of America has suggested that students capture oral histories of their families.

Last year I had two projects that I introduced at the middle school (seventh and eighth grade) level that could be adapted up and down and is relevant to adults as well.  These two projects were a Family Migration History project and a Footprints Project.  You can find out more about these projects on my digital portfolio for education on YouTube.  (Follow this link for the same video on Teacher Tube.)  You can find the details for the projects on these websites:  http://drmontgomery.wikispaces.com/ and http://drm-ms-resources.wikispaces.com/.

In the Family Migration Story we used the National Geographic Human Genome Project as our starting place for everyone's stories, then picked up personal family stories as far back as the parents could remember, talking about family members and reasons for moving from one place to another across the globe.  Using a collaborative writing technique guided by the teacher students in each class created a series of questions which they translated from English to their native language.  They asked their parents the questions and recorded the answers.  They also gathered family pictures, souvenirs, and other family treasures to support their stories.  (These are called primary source documents in historical research circles.)  We made digital copies of these treasures and returned them immediately to their parents.  Our goal was to have the students write a script from their answers and to digitally record their Family Migration Stories--accompanied by the digital photographs of their family treasures.  Ideally they would make the recording in both English and in their native language.  Our goal was to record their scripts onto DVDs which the parents could then play at home.  Due to technological difficulties the audio in our recordings didn't work last year, though the rest of the project went well.

The Footprints project takes the end of the Family Migration Story and talks about what someone has done with their lives.  Middle school students can talk about what they want to do with their lives and what kind of footprint they want to leave on the planet.  Parents and teachers can talk about footprint stories from the point of view of what they have done with their lives and of the footprint they are leaving on the planet.

These are very engaging projects and are good for the beginning of a school year, though they could be a focus point for anytime during the year.  Parents could come to the school to view multiple Family Migration Stories as part of a celebration of learning.

The key to integrating parents into the school life and the life of the students is to make the connections with the real world.  Parents and students studying language together can be a help as well as parents becoming involved as subject matter experts about their own families.

Why Set-Up an Online Support Network?

Why would anyone set-up a support network?  One reason is to create a sense of community, of sharing ideas and resources and innovations.  A benefit of a community is that members build a shared sense of identity.  I have been involved in building online support networks for more than 12 years, starting with eGroups--which became Yahoo Groups and currently focusing on LinkedIn Discussion Groups.

One of the longest running and most successful groups which I started--and which runs itself--is the Action Learning eGroup on Yahoo Groups, run by IFAL-USA.

My most recent group is the DrM-Language Network discussion group on LinkedIn.  This group was created to provide the opportunity to build a sense of community around the affordable, online language learning programs supported by http://www.drm-language.com/.  While membership is open to people learning languages with other online programs, the main focus is to have the community network available for people working with two different online language programs available globally.  Many of the people will be learning English, and one of the two programs offers eight other languages as well.

Many business professionals around the world will be working with me to enroll learners in these programs and this network is open to language learners and to entrepreneurs setting-up their own businesses concerning e-learning and these online language programs.

Some of the questions and answers and other support areas will also offer members a chance to practice their English in their interaction in the discussion group.