This is my way of catching up on the A-Z challenge. Not sure it’s legit, but whatever.
I’m currently taking two education online courses, both of which are Excellent. But that’s not the E on my mind. I am feeling Jaded at times because J stands for gallons of Jargon oozing through the discussion forums (and I’m not innocent either!). The Highlight of the courses is learning cool ideas to improve my teaching, but I don’t approve of Hijacking familiar terms and reworking their use.
One example of Hijacking is “affordances of technology,” which was originally coined by psychologist Ian Hutchby “as a reaction against social constructivism. ” Yeah, I thought so.
An example of Jargon-creation is arbitrarily changing the definitions of words, such as this new one for abstraction: “Removing extraneous/irrelevant details from a problem to define the elements of a solution that are consistent.”
If you are still with me, can I hear a “HuH?” On the other hand, folks got to make a living, right? So is this what it means to be a 21st century learner?
I hate reading things that are so hard to understand, and require re-defining. If I can’t understand, how am I learning? Yes, well… jargon is everywhere. And I think you are allowed to catch up any way you can. I haven’t encountered any “challenge police”, lol.
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My brain is struggling to keep all these odd definitions in place. Mostly, I’m grateful that you haven’t seen any challenge police! Whew, I can relax. I appreciate your comments!!
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