The phrasal verbs ‘figure out’ in “Once we figure out what ...

Based on TEXT 2, a fictional blog, answer question

TEXT 2

I do realize that in the world of technology there are early and late adopters. I’m not the earliest of cutting-edge early TESL adopters, but I do like to try out new technology and incorporate it into my teaching. This list is a handful of technologies that are established enough not to be too problematic, user-friendly enough that just about anyone can start using them quickly, and useful enough that you’ll soon wonder how you got along without them. In short, this is a list of tech that just about everyone can (and maybe even should) be using in 2010.

1. Wikipedia – It has become popular to question its accuracy. Wikipedia has become a real knowledge bank on the internet. Once we figure out what it is (a compilation of all referenced knowledge) many of these criticisms fall down. Access to all this information means a reorganization of learning.

2. Google – No, I don’t just mean search, but all the other stuff: maps, docs, calendar, etc. It’s never been so easy to collaborate with other people.

3. Twitter – A year ago, I taught a course through Twitter with mixed results. This microblog is almost exclusively interactive, but my ESL students found it tough to collaborate within Twitter because of its constraints on length. The email by contrast, is very simple – it is equally interactive but it is constraint free. So, you should use it and you should see interesting results !

Can you learn the language by using the above alone? Of course not! But they are a good springboard and I hope they lead you to discover all other media available out there (ebooks, blogs, YouTube videos, music, movies, etc.).

More web in the pipeline. Please post a comment.