The World is at Our Command

Distance Education, The New Normal, Virtual Learning Environments, VLEs 0 comments

Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña at Musée Oceanographique, Monaco (2019)

The World is at Our Command

A time for seizing new opportunities

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
Head of Curriculum Development Academic Department Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano	Senior Language Professor School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Saturday, July 25, 2020 Post 349

Attentively listening to one of the institution directors in one of the three education institutions I currently work for, it was clearly stated in a staff meeting that whoever is now enrolled in the institution’s language programs is a student who wants to study there and trusts the institution’s educational policies despite the pandemic the world is going through. Current learners, who have evolved with these institutions through the virtualization of courses and the use of synchronous sessions, have been able to also evidence that live, online classes allow for the learning of a foreign language such as English. Learning does happen in virtualized environments within social, vivacious communities of learning.

The spiteful seeds of the pandemic we all are living are now here to sprout up and bring new opportunities for innovative education institutions ready to analyze and profit from the chaotic surrounding environment. Language education institutions must work with marketing and academic bellows, anvils, and hammers to take advantage of the current situation to take their virtual language teaching across the countries where they serve their target audience. The virtualization of processes and the work carried out due to telecommuting platforms or services have allowed institutions to continue operating and teaching their students. However, this very virtual teaching can aid language schools to grow in every single corner of a country’s geography or to export their talent to other latitudes and coordinates in their regions or beyond. Virtual teaching has made learning opportunity boundaries nonexistent.

Long ere this pandemic, many education institutions had been amply and timidly discussing virtual teaching and learning through online language programs. We teachers can wager our heads against the skeptical people’s that virtual teaching has come to stay and that those ones who were ready to face the education challenges foreseen some 10 years ago are standing tall and doing better than the doubtful. And the questions we have to ask ourselves now are: Do we want to be part of that future where virtual teaching is part of the new normal? Are we already looking for opportunities to grow beyond the market we thought we controlled before? Are we surely planning to have access to all these numerous chances the new normal is providing us?

The so-called new normal has brought alluring challenges at various professional and institutional levels. Despite the inescapable skepticism that the working force in education institutions can operate remotely, many language companies have realized that they can telecommute, hold remote classes, and provide their students with all kinds of services. All these processes can improve to satisfy clients in the new everchanging, elusive, and volatile historical moment we are living. Companies can boost their language students’ experience and make them feel satisfied with their learning. On the other hand, if human resources offices ever thought that making use of the Internet to work from home was not possible because of the so-called surveillance environments they came from, cohort of teachers, finance workers, and IT personnel have demonstrated from their at-home desks that it is possible and profitable for their education employers to have them work from home.

Are our language teaching institutions walking to meet with their doom or with their new commencement? If the last planning block is not laid on the walls of our new virtual classrooms, our growth can turn lumpy. Shrugging our shoulders in indifference to what is going on in the building of our new virtualized institutions is not a valid nor reasonable reaction to the current circumstances. If the companies’ personnel used across a full gamut of marketing strategies to attract new learners, they can now spot new like-minded individuals who really want to learn English and bring them into the virtual classroom to help them canalize their dreams of speaking this language. Slightly rephrasing The Beatles’ 1965 hit, Nowhere Man, “the world is at [our] command.” The new normal is now the new land of opportunity to grow.

The World in at Our Command by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd

Saturday, July 25, 2020

The Social Fallacy of Social Media

Ethics, Social Media 0 comments

Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña at Hyde Park, London, UK (2018)

The Social Fallacy of Social Media

Just an opinion

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
Head of Curriculum Development Academic Department Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano	Senior Language Professor School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Thursday, July 23, 2020 Post 348

Opinion Prompt

What’s your experience and opinion on if all media are social? Is your local media outlet open to two-way conversation?

If a two-way conversation is a means to exchange news and ideas, social media is not exactly meeting this condition. A conversation implies two individuals (or more) ready to engage in sharing points of view or presenting facts and opinions that can be discussed. Behavior in social media sites is not directed to the underlying reason to have a conversation with someone; there is a lack of engagement and sharing among users. It is needless to mention that unethical algorithmic “manipulation” of data within the media site.

There are plenty of things happening on social media that users just shrug their shoulders in an “I-don’t-care” attitude. This behavior just shows the lack of engagement people in social media can have when someone is telling others they do not even know what was eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. If people want to have attention from other individuals in this world, it can be simply stated that others will not follow them behind in chase to know if what was eaten had a burping effect on someone else. Sorry, but the current conception of social media does not meet the principle of engaging people in discussing ideas. The thousands of banal, trivial posts do not take people into sharing and discussing.

Is then social media “social?” The word “social” next to “media” can be rather tricky when both are juxtaposed with one another. This combination of terms is rather lumpy and boisterous when together: lumpy because the creation of social media sites are much more but social, especially when users are sanctioned for posting comments that, in the eyes of the social media site, do not contribute with the sharing of ideas. This means there is already an imposition to what the site believes a two-way communication should be. It looks like like-minded individuals are paired with one another not allowing other users with different ideas to disagree with the posting made by people who think alike. The combination is also boisterous since social media sites are used across a full gamut of reasons that are not exactly the sharing and discussion of ideas.

Is social media a place for collaboration and cooperative work? Now that I think about this, it gives me the creeps … Let me be clearer, I am certain that social media sites can be used for collaboration and cooperative work; I am sure of this because in university courses I took before with Laureate Faculty Development, social media was used for collaboration and cooperative work among the course members, including the instructor. However, how many people who are not studying do use it for the same exact reasons? Could it be possible that these other users who are not studying are misunderstanding the connotation and denotation of what these two terms mean? Is this misunderstanding triggering strange behaviors when “interacting” with people in social media?

To sum up, my experience and opinion on if all media are social, I must confess that I do not see it this way. Media sites exist but are not exactly social. Media outlets do not exactly foster and strengthen an open two-way conversation among users. First, social media people do not seem to be ready to engage in real exchanges of news and ideas to discuss. Secondly, the fallacy of like-minded individuals permeates the whole idea of social media. Web archaeologist will tell us much more about this in the future when users have met their ordeal with a duckface in a social media post.

The Social Fallacy of Social Media by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd

Thursday, July 23, 2020

The Ethics of Micro-Microcelebrities

Ethics, microcelebrities, Social Media 0 comments

Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña at Musée d’Orsey, Paris, France (2019)

The Ethics of Micro-Microcelebrities

Social Media Ethics

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
Head of Curriculum Development Academic Department Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano	Senior Language Professor School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Sunday, July 19, 2020 Post 347

As stated by Saltz (2014) on an article at Vulture.Com, “We live in the age of the selfie.” And whether we are producers and sharers of these fast self-portraits or not, the plain fact is that these pictures gush into social media effusively and plentifully by the hundreds every second and for many different and similar reasons. But when it comes to exposing babies, toddlers, infants, and children in the media by and with their Influencer parents (usually the mother), how ethical is it to do this? Is it legal to monetize with infants’ images because of advertorials and the need to get an online presence on social media sites?

Let us think for a moment on the various reasons people have to take selfies and post them online. On a research study carried out around selfies and shared at Psychology.Com, Dr. Griffiths (2019) numbers several reasons why people publish self-portraits. Among their justifications he cites “self-confidence,” “environmental enhancement,” “social competition,” “attention seeking,” “mood modification,” and “subjective conformity.” However, which of these reasons do you think apply for infants, whose lives are publicly exposed on the web by their parents (usually the mothers)? What about the reasons an Influencer mom has to expose their children to social media at an early age? Probably none of reasons mentioned by Dr. Griffiths apply to children who are publicly exposed by their parents in the media.

Barely speaking it can be stated that female Influencers who display their kids on social media are into “social competition,” “attention seeking,” and “subjective conformity.” Social competition is shallowly defined by Dr. Griffiths (2019) as “taking selfies to get more ‘likes’ on social media.” For Influencer mothers who expose their kids to the media, they take part in this competition due to “prolific, deliberate, and commercial” purposes (Abidin, 2015) linked to what is now called advertorials and the commissions gained through the selling of baby products. On the other hand, there is an underlying need for attention, and the one way to become advertorial creators of baby and infant products is through self-portraiture where the starring characters are their children. Dr. Griffiths also points out that one of the reasons for selfies is the need to “fit in with one’s social group and peers” (2019), which is a clear indicator of micro-celebrities’ behavior like the one displayed by Influencers who want to take people in their social clusters into buying the products they recommend in their self-portraits with their children.

Is all this social media exposure of kids by Influencer mothers morally correct? There is a prevalent online identity created by these social media female users or micro-celebrities in their online social networks; they seem to know what they are looking for with this presence. But it cannot be said the same for those kids who were, are, and continue to be exposed to social media in the search for monetization. “[P]arents who habitually underestimate or discount the privacy and long term effects of publicizing information about their children at the time of posting” (Abidin, 2015) do not exactly know what the impact of all this disclosure of “private” information of children is, and these kids who do not exactly know what is going on or why their images are being used to profit from advertorials won’t be aware of the impact of their public lives until they become old enough to make sense of this kind of micro-microcelebrity life encouraged by their moms.

It is uncertain to call this social media exposure child labor exploitation but monetizing the image of a child is one of those things we cannot believe ethically and legally framed. Legislation in various countries does not include anything about this particular issue. Abidin (2015), in her paper about Influencer Mothers, points out that there is no stated legislation in Singapore where she carried out ethnographic studies on micro-microcelebrities. She also brings up the fact that in the state of California no such law exists either (Abidin, 2015). In Costa Rica where I live, the current labor code does not specify anything about the monetization of young labor in social media through the use of self-portraiture and advertorials. Once again we find ourselves thinking that just because something like using one’s children’s images seems to be legal does not mean it is ethical because parents will not get into judicial trouble. Ultimately, when these children grow up, they may consider their parents’ pervasive exposure of their image their teenage or adulthood ordeal. And because legislation does not always walk hand in hand with ethics, this moral issue seems to constantly evaporate into the ethersphere.

References

Abidin, C. (2015). Micromicrocelebrity: Branding Babies on the Internet. M/C Journal, Vol18, (5). http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1022

Griffiths, M. (2019). The Psychology of the Selfie. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-excess/201905/the-psychology-the-selfie

Saltz, J. (2014). Art at arm’s length: A history of the selfie. Vulture. http://www.vulture.com/2014/01/history-of-the-selfie.html

The Ethics of Micro-microcelebrities by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Social Media Ethics: The importance of consent forms in research studies

Academic Research, Ethics, Research, Social Media 0 comments

Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña at Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France (2019)

Social Media Ethics:

The importance of consent forms in research studies

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
Head of Curriculum Development Academic Department Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano	Senior Language Professor School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Friday, July 17, 2020 Post 346

Back in 2012 a group of Facebook researchers carried out a “Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment” that was highly criticized because it sparked an ethical turmoil among those who oppose this type of psychological tests without people’s consent. As pointed out by Meyer (2014), this particular “study is different because, while other studies have observed Facebook user data, this one set out to manipulate it.” Verma (2014), in his editorial at PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), points out that this type of social research carried out by Facebook research team “needs to be approached with sensitivity and with vigilance regarding personal privacy issues.” The doubt arises; was this research proceeding then ethically approached by Facebook research workers?

The fact that something seems to be unethical does not necessarily mean that it is illegal. Nearly 700,000 Facebook users participated in the experiment without them knowing they were doing so. But how did this happen? Based on Meyer (2014), “The experiment is almost nearly legal” because in the company’s terms of service, any user cede “the use of their data for ‘data analysis, testing, [and] research.’” Using this legal maneuver we can assume that the experiment was legal because none of those 700,000 users can claim that they were manipulated by the fine print in the terms for service when you sign up for a Facebook account. On the other hand, as Verma (2014) puts forward, “the principles of informed consent and opportunity to opt out in connection with the research” in the Facebook paper were not respected. But because this research was “conducted by Facebook, Inc. for internal purposes”, “as a private company Facebook was under no obligation to conform to the provisions of the Common Rule when it collected the data used by the authors” (Verma 2014); consequently, the question about the legality of the paper cannot be disputed.

But was the study morally correct even though it was legal? One may tend to believe that “emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness” (Meyer, 2014). And if one is able to trigger a healthy, positive, downright state of mind through emotional contagion, one can believe that one can help foster and contribute with people’s healthy peace of mind. Yet, is this so-called good deed ethical? Are people expecting from a social media service to use their good deed algorithms to identify who needs some emotional coaching to provoke more and more positive statuses and to contribute with users’ mental health? I guess we are far from getting the moral answer we deserve to get from social media companies such as Facebook; the lack of a consent form to ignite positive thoughts among media users without them knowing is something that was not clearly foreseen in this project. “The collection of the data by Facebook may have involved,” says Verma (2014), “practices that were not fully consistent with the principles of obtaining informed consent and allowing participants to opt out.” To conclude, it can be stated that this particular study was not morally correct when it did not allow participants to know they were being random participants in a study and when they were not informed that they could opt out if they felt they did not want to take part in a research project on social media and emotional contagion because their privacy was at stake.

As quoted out by Dr. Pope (n.d) on his website, alluding to the American Psychological Association: Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, “When psychologists conduct research or provide assessment, therapy, counseling, or consulting services in person or via electronic transmission or other forms of communication, they obtain the informed consent of the individual or individuals using language that is reasonably understandable to that person or persons except when conducting such activities without consent is mandated by law or governmental regulation or as otherwise provided in this Ethics Code.” In conclusion, based on this ethics code referred by Dr. Pope, the Facebook research project was not morally conducted by the research team. The terms of use should not be used as a legal maneuver to avoid complying with the APA’s Code of Ethics just because they are not obliged by the law to use a consent form.

References

Meyer, R. (2014). Everything we know about Facebook’s secret mood manipulation experiment: It was probably legal. But was it ethical? The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/

Pope, K. (n.d). Informed Consent in Psychotherapy & Counseling: Forms, Standards & Guidelines, & References. Kspope.com https://kspope.com/consent/#:~:text=Excerpt%3A%20%223.10%20Informed%20Consent%20(,using%20language%20that%20is%20reasonably

Verma, I.M. (2014). Editorial Expression of Concern regarding the ethics behind the collection of data for the paper Kramer, A.D.I., Guillory, J.E. and Hancock, J.T (2014). Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, (111:8788-8790) http://www.pnas.org/content/111/29/10779.1.full

Social Media Ethics: The importance of consent forms in research studies by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd

Friday, July 17, 2020

Types of Hats

Vocabulary learning 0 comments

Picture taken form https://www.thegreatcourses.com/ for educational purposes

What Type of Hat Suits You?

Types of Hats

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
Head of Curriculum Development Academic Department Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano	Senior Language Professor School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Wednesday, April 2, 2020 Post 345 / Vocabulary 007

Who hasn’t worn anything on their heads to protect themselves from the sun, the cold, or just because. That is why this time around we can have our learners discuss a bit about the kinds of “hats” they have worn or continue to wear.

Though this is not an extensive list of hats, here you are presented with six types of types that we can work with our students when dealing with clothing, and from this point, we can go a bit beyond the mere concept of hat. With these two sample activities, we can ask them for their preferences, but we can also venture into asking them under what circumstances these types of hats can be worn. Give them a try.

Sample Activity 1 – What’s the occasion?

Provide your students with a similar chart (like the one you see below). Ask them to think of -at least- two different situations (occasions) in which these types of hats can be worn. Some of them may be a bit unusual to the learner, which makes the activity much more challenging for them.

Cowboy Hat	A cowboy hat can be worn in a rodeo.
	You can also wear it in a costume party.
Top Hat

Crash Helmet

Baseball Cap

Hard Hat

Bucket Hat

Sample Activity 2 – The Theater Play

Tell your students they need to imagine they are now in charge of the theater actors’ costumes for a series of theater sketches. Tell them to think of the kind of clothing (and hats, of course), the characters will need to wear.