{"id":4136,"date":"2019-01-27T13:08:30","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T13:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"hhttps:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/?p=4136"},"modified":"2019-01-27T13:08:30","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T13:08:30","slug":"island-voices-moot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/2019\/01\/27\/island-voices-moot\/","title":{"rendered":"Island Voices MOOT"},"content":{"rendered":"

People sometimes ask what kind of project Island Voices is. There\u2019s no one simple answer to that question, as there are various ways of thinking about it. Here\u2019s a new one for 2019, which actually raises another question for our followers. Any answers or comments welcome!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve heard of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). Well, Island Voices, while being a fundamentally educational online project, doesn\u2019t do \u201ccourses\u201d. We don\u2019t take anyone step by step from A all the way to Z in a pre-determined order. The learning we aim to help is \u201cresource-based\u201d \u2013 we put material online for anyone to browse or sample or use in any way they see fit. That means it’s up to the learner to think about and shape their own learning path. This can seem scary or off-putting for some, particularly in the beginning stages of language learning, while others may find it liberating and empowering, especially when they\u2019ve already got past the preliminary steps. Obviously, we would hope that we can help move folk from the first camp into the second.<\/p>\n

Also, while we started out from a language teaching perspective, our interest is wider than simply helping people to learn Gaelic, or English (or any other language), irrespective of how they might subsequently use it. We\u2019ve always tried to present the \u201cbits of language\u201d that we place online in the real-life context of the community in which they were recorded. We try to recognise, record, and represent the social factors at play which influence the linguistic decisions people make when a range of different language choices is at hand. That\u2019s partly why, alongside the several pages of video and audio clips plus transcripts on our site, there\u2019s an additional page for research and reports<\/a> which attempt to tease out some of the wider issues, for example around bilingualism or biliteracy, which are not necessarily immediately clear if you\u2019re approaching from a different or narrower language background or perspective. This may mean re-thinking some pretty fundamental concepts, even around what we understand by a term such as \u201clanguage\u201d or \u201clanguages\u201d. These are questions which may be quite as meaningful for language teachers or mentors (and perhaps planners and policy makers) as for learners themselves.<\/p>\n

Further, we do not claim some higher teacher\u2019s authority that pours knowledge into the \u201cempty vessel\u201d heads of our visitors\/followers\/learners. We can never present a more than partial picture of the communicative community on which we focus. We make no promises not to leave you with as many questions as you started with \u2013 perhaps more \u2013 though we\u2019d hope some at least will be newly formulated!<\/p>\n

So, instead of trying to think of Island Voices as some kind of \u201ccourse\u201d, perhaps a more appropriate model might be a \u201cteach-in<\/a>\u201d \u2013 which is \u201cpractical, participatory, and oriented toward action\u201d and where \u201cdiscussion and questions from the audience are welcome\u201d. Wikipedia<\/a> tells us that this concept has a radical political background. Well, that\u2019s no disqualification! In a current UK climate in which language teaching of any kind (including of English!) is making difficult headway, and support for bi- or multi-lingualism is struggling to gain traction, we may be well advised to open ourselves up to more lateral thinking, and to be prepared to consider outwardly counter-intuitive solutions. And the Hebrides may be as good a place to start as any, perhaps better than most!<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s forget about an Island Voices MOOC. What we offer is a \u201cMultilingual (or perhaps Massive\/Medium-sized\/Mini) Open Online Teach-in\u201d \u2013 the Island Voices MOOT! Etymonline<\/a> tells us the word has a long history connoting free assembly to discuss community affairs. What could be more appropriate, especially when you consider the Gaelic word M\u00f2d<\/a> stems from the same root, and was long ago used to denote a parliament or congress, dating from the Lordship of the Isles!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Our source materials, to which we shall continue to add, are already placed before you on WordPress, Clilstore, and YouTube, and we know that plenty of folk have already put them to good use without further prompting. Hopefully, our Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a> channels will keep on pulling in new visitors too. But here\u2019s the question: should we also aim to create a new \u201cteach-in\u201d space? This could be a dedicated online forum<\/a> where MOOT participants can raise questions and debate points around language learning and language use, informed by their interactions with, and reactions to, Island Voices materials of all kinds \u2013 video, audio, transcripts, articles, papers etc. Or is the comment facility we already have on WordPress adequate as it stands? Is there a danger a new forum would detract from other online fora and\/or Facebook discussion groups? Comments here please (or on Facebook\/Twitter)!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People sometimes ask what kind of project Island Voices is. There\u2019s no one simple answer to that question, as there are various ways of thinking about it. Here\u2019s a new one for 2019, which actually raises another question for our followers. Any answers or comments welcome! You\u2019ve heard of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). … Continue reading Island Voices MOOT<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-call","category-community","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}