(Original post date: Saturday, April 12, 2008)

Technology has had a profound influence on the way we talk. Pretty much everyone I know has accepted “google” as both a noun and a verb. In fact, there’s actually a term for looking yourself up on google – it’s called an ego search. I admit I’ve googled myself (oh get over it – it’s very natural and normal). I did not, however, actually find anything about myself. An actress shares my name, so most google hits are about her, not me.

Another way technology is affecting language is through the increasing popularity of acronyms, thanks largely to text messaging. It’s not uncommon to hear people actually say TMI, and if a kid leaves my classroom and says I had a total BF, you can be sure he’d been pushing my buttons, big time. BFF is another acronym that people actually use. I’ve yet to hear someone say LOL – largely because it means a sound, so chances are if it’s appropriate to say, you’ve probably already done it.

Meanwhile, we’ve been trying in earnest to incorporate technology into our teaching methods at school. Lately, though, it’s starting to sound like we’re all speaking another language. If you walk into the faculty room you’ll very likely hear a conversation like this:

Hi! I’m so excited – my moodle’s up and running, my kids just finished their web quests, and tomorrow they’re commenting about each other’s podcasts on the forum.

I’d love to see that. Do you know how I can incorporate my wiki into my moodle?

Select wiki from the “add a resource” pull-down menu… wait, that builds a new one. Hmm..

I’ll twitter it. When I had issues integrating sketchcast and my smartboard I twittered it and got a response in, like, minutes. It turned out to be a bandwidth issue.

Oh, so IT has to update the server before you can use them together. Gotcha. You should ITDirect it so there’s a record of that problem. Have your kids’ blogs been better since that video conference?

Not really, but they’re loving blabberize.

Who doesn’t? It’s sure more fun than criterion. Say, did you find the google.docs tutorial on teacher tube?

Yeah – it’s on my del.icio.us. I’ll send you the url.

If it’s on your del.icio.us I should have it on my RSS feed, then. Hey, did you hear about the kid who downloaded Ganja Farmer to all the PCs in the lab?

I heard his teacher caught him with net.op, and they gave him ISS for an acceptable use policy violation.

I love how it took some kid a class period to download unauthorized software and it took IT months to get photo story up and running.

I know. Oh, before I go… any idea why I can’t upload my exam.view files to a moodle quiz? I keep getting a terminal error message.

No, but if you want to cross-reference your moodle glossaries, I’m your girl. You know…

I know, I know… I’ll twitter it
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ok – g2g. l8r g8r. ttys.