Too much "terminal" ology????

I really believe the proof of our pudding is the language we use. Education, especially the last 5-10 years and more so recently, is flooded with terminology.

I decry this. It is specialization that is unnecessary and which to me, has been the bane of higher learning and now education in general. I won't bore you with all the acronymns or high sounding phrases . YOu know them, I know them. I read down the forums here on Classroom 2.0 and I'm astounded!!!! If I were an anthropologist from Mars, I'd really think something funny was going on.....a collective failure to communicate.

I say this sincerely. I am as guilty as anyone. How can we remove the blinders and see our language is hindering the possibilities we so sincerely wish....

I'm being purposefully vague. I'd just like to know if anyone out there feels the way I do. Not that we have to dumb things down but rather dumb them up. Intelligence in its most complete form is to communicate with simplicity and to reduce complexity into discrete (complete) units. Am I wrong in my befuddlement, especially over technology and it proliferates this language of obscurity, impurity, "i'm so new " [but just newly packaged]/.

David
www.ddd.batcave.net
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

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Permalink Reply by Scott Beiter on September 4, 2007 at 1:45pm

I feel that a great deal of the language used in Web 2.0 and technology is very straight forward. A social network for instance is a place for people to go and socialize and network. A blog is a web-based log. I find the language problem associated mainly with more specific web sites and programs. Ask some non-tech faculty what a "ning" is. How many teachers beyond the tech circle know what RSS stands for? I find a main stumbling block for the terminology to be its lack of use in professional journals and media outside of tech media. American Teacher will run a list of related web-sites, but rarely is there an explanation on how to actually USE technologies. Until the terminology becomes more ubiquitous in other media besides tech journals and edu tech websites the remaining professionals will be playing catch-up with the vocabulary. This is a great thread for the beginning of the school year because terminology is an important point to consider when planning any professional development with technology.

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Permalink Reply by Ian Carmichael on September 4, 2007 at 7:55pm

Yes, and no. Occasionally terminology provides a compact way of expression - but, at the same time it provides a divide between an 'in-community' and an 'out-community'. A key question, therefore, is who's actually in the conversation and who's intended to be?
Usually, in education, I suspect terminology is used to obscure and smokescreen. We hide from success, failure, interest, boredom, content, wisdom... (And I can feel the language 'doctors' swarming all over my tell-tale vocabulary right now.) As simple as possible, please!

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Permalink Reply by Laura Gibbs on September 5, 2007 at 3:07pm

Hmmmm, as someone who has been teaching both before-the-Internet and now with-the-Internet, I feel that thre are truly NEW tools available to me, tools that were simply not available in the chalkboard classroom.

NEW tools, NEW terminology. I don't have a problem with it. How else would we talk about the best ways to use these tools without terminology to describe them and their functions?

Plus, the Internet makes it easy to look things up - the dictionary grows faster online than it did in a printed Merriam-Webster.

Are there some specific terms that are annoying to you or unclear? (Your post did not have any examples, so I was not sure.)