On Dr. Alice Christie's Phenomenal Website

Alicechristie.org, the homepage of and information clearinghouse run by Dr. Alice A. Christie (President’s Professor Emeritus, Arizona St./massively informed and experienced techno-sage), gives prospective educators a wealth of resources and tools so that they may enhance their practice and their students' education. Really, there's no way I can properly represent the depth of substance here, except to say generally: from her online university to classes to her comprehensive introduction to GPS and Geocaching to her invalubale educational technology guide, any wise neo-futurist edu-person would do well to root around the site and interact with the materials she offers.

One subsection, however, set a handful of my synapses to tinglin': Dr. Christie's Internet Resources and Tools: IM. Language and dialect develops organically, and there's nothing we can to stop its evolution. One of the major issues in any educational setting -- and why stop there, when you can include any circumstance where adults try to communicate with kids, such as, I don't know, parenting, or existing anywhere in the world, anytime, ever -- is the hoary old "communications gap" between generations. But this cliche is alive, well, and happening, as children of the iGeneration interact with those from the "Me" generation. (Has anyone coined that comparison yet? If not, I call trademark.)

"Netspeak," or 1337speak, is the de facto lingua franca (pardon my language) of this generation's digital, textual interaction; it's pervasive in society, multinational in scope, and has significantly altered our lexicon while naturalistically becoming a medium suitable for worldwide reception. From the perspective of a future educator, who will at least interact with masters of this dialect (and who, at most, may use IM and MMS tech to interact with students), we need to remain fluent so that we may communicate with our students.

IMHO. TFWIW.