microwave (was: Query to ADS)

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 11:16 AM 11/14/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OAK.CATS.OHIOU.EDU> writes:
>
> >>>>>
>A friend of mine is teaching a course for elem.-jr. hi English/Language
>Arts teachers this Winter on "The Development of American
>English."  Wolfram & Schilling-Estes is too long and technical for this
>course.  Does anyone have a good recommendation for a course that meets
>twice a week for 10 weeks (and will be taught largely by microwave?!).
><<<<<
>
>An indication of semantic shift (or what to call it?): My first reaction to
>this was to the thought of a course taught largely by microwave *oven*:
>"How in the heck do they do *THAT*?!"
>
>While I theoretically deprecate this kind of truncation (how many people in
>the sixties thought that "transistor" meant a small portable radio?),
>microwave ovens are common enough in my life and language, and microwaves
>themselves (i.e., electromagnetic waves of wavelength 1mm-1m) rare enough,
>that like most Americans I use the single word for the appliance.
>
>-- Mark
>Imprimis: Pro nugis noli sudare.
>Secundus: Omnia sunt nugae.

I have to admit I know nothing about this technology.  "Microwave" is the
term the gurus use here, but what is the full, or better, term?  All I know
is that the main and the branch campus are hooked up somehow, the
instructor is videoed, and the class can respond "interactively"--but the
one teacher I know who's done it says he had very poor response from the
more than usually passive students.  Has anybody else tried this?

_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm