Monthly Archives: May 2011

Claude Duhamel (on right).

Join us at WAYK French Camp, in Quebec, for seven days of high-energy fun, music, campfires, good food, and accelerated French language learning on the farm with the “Where Are Your Keys?” learning game design system.

For this event, we will be hosted on Claude Duhamel’s farm-land in Ulverton, Quebec, having conversations with local French speakers.

Register now!

Two of our interns: Sky Hopinka (Hochunk) on left, Norah Zaharakis (Greek) on right.

We’re now filling intern positions at WAYK; we rely on these volunteer interns to help us carry WAYK games deeper into the community, and develop the WAYK system further. Thanks to all our interns: David Edwards (a student at Stanford, helping with our Numu/Paiute language program this summer), Sky Hopinka (Hochunk and a student at PSU, helping with video), Norah Zaharakis (Greek, helping us further explore the connection between theater games and WAYK), and Ariel Margulies (Jewish, helping us develop our Yiddish language program).

Would you like to revitalize your heritage language? Become a language hunter? Help other communities revitalize their languages? Please contact us for more information on becoming an intern at WAYK: info@whereareyourkeys.org.

How do you apply WAYK techniques to building a video curriculum?

As you know, WAYK is a design system for accelerating and improving the learning in any environment. So then how do you apply techniques obviously!, set-up, limit, and so on, to video?

Video presents certain challenges – the biggest is the loss of the in-person TPR (total physical response) environment. However, all the other techniques are still in play. How much can we engage the viewer, and include them in a conversation (tq fluency, everybody plays, same conversation)? How much can we apply my turn/your turn?

For us at WAYK, we’ve also been handicapped by the limitations of our technical video know-how. If you’ve been on this ride with us for a while, you’re aware of the infamous audio problems in our early videos, the confusing (via video) set-ups, and so on.

Recently we’ve had the chance to partner with videographers more skilled than us (fluent fools at last!), and so in that partnership we’ve been developing an “ideal” format that we’re modeling for you to copy-cat.

To be perfectly clear: our goal is to develop a same conversation for how language videos are made, a near-universal format so that anyone can experience accelerated learning for any heritage language video on youtube or other video hosting sites.

For video there will always be learning decelerators in play (such as the lack of TPR), but the ability to access them anywhere via the internet brings a massive amount of acceleration to learning that more than makes up for the challenges.

Compare the Chinook Jargon video at the top of this post to this video of Irish:

Yikes! Note the difference. Both videos have some important techniques applied to the video format; both have obviously! close-ups of the props in play, for example. However, the visual field for the Irish video is extremely cluttered. The Irish video is twice as long as the Chinook video. There are multiple players, but no one is pulling you (the viewer) through it. It has a lengthy intro, so you’ll need to edit it to be shorter if you want to put it on a loop and listen/watch until you’ve got it (or have it running over and over in the background). Also, one of the objects on the table is almost impossible to see (the penny owned by Patrick).

The Chinook Jargon video is ready to go; it has been stripped of an intro and outtro (application of limit) making it perfect for looping, the visual field is completely focused on play, with tq bluescreen/greenscreen applied to the environment. Now we’re talking! Keep in mind, the Chinook Jargon videos were filmed in an empty classroom at the Portland State University Native American Student and Community Center – not a specialized studio. It doesn’t take much to limit the set-up!

We encourage you to copy-cat along with the rest of these Chinook Jargon videos and experience the improved format, while thinking, “what other techniques can I apply to improve this?” One question we still have is, “how many (and which) techniques should we introduce at the beginning of each videos? How should we vary that?” For example, I mark bite-sized pieces at the beginning of each of these videos, and for the first one, also mention copy-cat.

Here’s the rest of the videos, up to want/have/give/take, I hope you enjoy them. One big opportunity for improving these videos is to have two players in the video, so that they can more obviously! model the goal conversation for the viewer-player. However, sometimes you only have one speaker who can put together a game like this for video – so these provide a good example of dealing with the toughest situation.

Chinuk Wawa 2
Chinuk Wawa 3
Chinuk Wawa 4
Chinuk Wawa 5

Experiencing accelerated learning can be magnificent, meaningful, emotionally moving, exhilarating. And yet, the techniques and principles of accelerated learning are simple and concrete.

Recently, I watched a video of speaker/author Stephen Covey talking about the power of what he called the “Indian talking stick”.

By definition, self-sufficient indigenous communities have mastered creating and maintaining the accelerated learning environment tuned to their place and time. This is what makes them self-sufficient – everything that the community needs, the diverse array of tools, materials, skills, are learned and relearned every generation, on a very small scale. If you’re paying attention, this should strike you as miraculous! Such a variety of cross-training and specialization on the village scale is remarkable. So it makes sense that such communities could develop a robust, effective conversational process that works even when relations are strained.

When I see something that works, I immediately start applying my “fluency hunter’s eye” to it: what are the techniques that make up that approach (or tool)? What “rules of the game” have they applied to generate that particular accelerated learning environment? Doing this keeps my skills sharp and helps me to understand and borrow insightful new (or old!) techniques. WAYK isn’t a system of brand-new methods, it’s a system for using anything that works. Things that work have often been around for a while – a long while!

The talking stick can be seen as the layering of three techniques: obviously!, my turn/your turn, and total physical response.

All application of technique is a response to a specific context, with particular people. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but only addressing the situation at hand.

1. Obviously!: Perhaps you’re in a difficult conversation, where the intensity of emotions and other factors are making it difficult to have a safe converation. Or perhaps you’re dissatisfied with a superficial exchange, and you want to make it richer. You need something that will make you obviously! aware of what to say, and how to say it.

2. My Turn/Your Turn: You employ the “traffic cop” of all game play, by trading turns in the conversation, using verbal and gestural language to indicate whose turn it is. But perhaps this still isn’t obviously! enough – you’re still getting mixed up due to emotions, or the conversation still doesn’t feel rich enough. So…

3. Total Physical Response/TPR: by passing a physical object back and forth, the participants in the conversation have a whole-body sense of the give-and-take of a healthy conversation. There is no ambiguity or guessing as to what to do, when.

Now, there’s one or two more elements to the “talking-stick” conversational process that Stephen Covey is speaking of, but that’s a good start for understanding how and why you apply techniques to improve the learning, communication, and performance environment. It really is that simple – with this approach you can generate all kinds of tools and games that enrich and accelerate whatever situation you find yourself in.

So get out there and play with your “fluency hunter’s eye”!