Fwd: Brainstorming about cell phones

Gary Holton gary.holton at UAF.EDU
Sat Nov 3 04:51:14 UTC 2007


Andrea,

This comment is tangential to your question, but it should also be noted
that mobile phone text messages represent an emerging data type in many
endangered language communities. Collecting a database of text messages
can be fun for linguists and language workers, and encouraging people to
text in their native language may help to further language maintenance
efforts.

Gary


-- 
Gary Holton
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Alaska Native Language Center
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Box 757680
Fairbanks, AK 99775-7680     USA
tel. +01 907 474 6585
fax. +01 907 474 6586
http://www.faculty.uaf.edu/ffgmh1


> Hi,
>
> Why not look at developing learning communities thru the use of cell
> phones in your paper?  Cell phones could be useful in giving more
> opportunities to people to use their language(s) to communicate with each
> other. It seems that cell phones could provide a means for marginalised
> people to empower themselves by improving their opportunities for
> networking with each other.
>
> Mark Warschauer has written on the idea of the digital divide and
> e-learning and you might get some ideas from him.  He has published
> something for UNESCO about the digital divide.  This paper has something
> on how Hawaiian language programs have benefit from the use of new
> technologies to get speakers of Hawaiian who are spread out over numerous
> islands to interact by using ICT -
> http://www.gse.uci.edu/PDF/multipliers_1.pdf and
> http://www.gse.uci.edu/person/markw/revitalization.html
>
> Also, if you can get hold of a paper given at the IEEE conference in 2002,
> it might help you get other ideas (I've copied the web address and
> abstract below):
> "Mobile learning: cell phones and PDAs for education"
> (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?isnumber=26602&arnumber=1186176&count=496&index=325)
>
> Houser, C.   Thornton, P.   Kluge, D.
> Kinjo Gakuin Univ., Japan;
>
> This paper appears in: Computers in Education, 2002. Proceedings.
> International Conference on
> Publication Date: 3-6 Dec. 2002
> On page(s): 1149- 1150 vol.2
> ISSN:
> ISBN: 0-7695-1509-6
> INSPEC Accession Number: 7679063
> Posted online: 2003-03-20 11:23:29.0
>
> Abstract
> The authors introduce m-learning - learning with mobile devices, such as
> cell phones and pocket computers. They review the hardware and research on
> m-learning, and discuss their future work with mobile foreign-language
> study.
>
> I hope this helps a little.
> Best wishes,
> Theresa
>
>
>>>> Linda Barwick <Linda.Barwick at arts.usyd.edu.au> 3/11/2007 11:45 am >>>
> Sorry forgot to copy this to the list.
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: Linda Barwick <Linda.Barwick at arts.usyd.edu.au>
>> Date: 3 November 2007 11:44:31 AM
>> To: Andrea Berez <andrea.berez at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: Brainstorming about cell phones
>>
>> This isn't really dissemination, but a friend of mine who is a
>> music psychologist told me about an experiment she ran recently
>> where she had a text message sent out at regular intervals that
>> prompted volunteers to note down whether they were listening to
>> music or imagining music at the time. This gave a statistically
>> significant sample of how much music-listening or -imagining was
>> prevalent in that group.
>>
>> You could adopt something similar for noting down language use.
>> Might be interesting to put together a picture of how often people
>> are actually using a given language in day-to-day life over a given
>> period.
>>
>> Linda
>>
>> On 03/11/2007, at 8:37 AM, Andrea Berez wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> In preparation for a talk at LSA, does anyone out there have some
>>> suggestions about how cell phones might be used as a means for the
>>> dissemination of language information? A colleague working in The
>>> Congo, where cell phones--and not the internet--are everyone's
>>> main link to technology, is wondering how the language activists
>>> in her community might tap into them as a maintenance/
>>> revitalization resource (no pun intended).
>>>
>>> Any suggestions you have are welcome--no idea is too outrageous to
>>> mention!
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance,
>>> Andrea
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> -----------------------------
>>> Andrea L. Berez
>>> PhD student, Dept. of Linguistics
>>> University of California, Santa Barbara
>>> http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~aberez/
>>
>
>
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