Beyond technology

You know I'm doing some online tutoring, a 6 weeks etwinning course for advanced users (although not many are really advanced), and it's quite popular, there are over 400 trainees each session.
One teacher there was writing about her first project: a simple Xmas cards thing. She teaches in a village, her pupils don't have computers at home and many of them walk for 14 km in order to get to school. She says: I can't describe the kids' reaction as they got a bagful of letters from children in the UK, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Turkey. They just could not believe it was for real.
This is much more valuable than all the innovative ICT use, mobile technologies, virtual environments and who knows what. At least, I think so. Much more than a European Prize, even.

Caring for the words

This is a book we were given for the Educational classes. I like it, I read it as if it was a novel: could not leave it from my hand. It's called "You are COOL (in English) even if you speak correctly" and it aims to show the young people the most frequent mistakes in the media and in our daily communication. It's the result of years of monitoring TV and radio stations.
It deals with pronunciation, morphology, stylistics, semantics, punctuation, subtle yet very common mistakes, when you get to take notice of them. It's very concise, funny and clear, has lots of examples, very short explanations and lots of exercises, too.
And the last cover says: if you are interested in many things, how about being cool not for having a laptop or great skates, how about being cool for the things you know? Accessories are not everything. How about being cool to your friends for speaking correctly?

This is another way of helping the language survive, of caring for its health and well-being.
Oh, I must admit I learned I was making a mistake...

Words, words, words

Planes, cars, trains, boats, internet for communication. Different speed, different price, different energy. But, we still have a more powerful tool: language. Words to express our opinions, wishes, pains. Words to show surprise, fear, happiness. Words to convey knowledge, feelings, emotions, gossips. Nevertheless, our language has not always been the same. Being, as it is, a living being, it has gone a long path. Unfortunately, there is not much public recognition for the early stages of our mother tongue. I am proud they have done it here. Just this monument to remember The Spanish Language Path: El Camino de la Lengua Española.
If you look at it, the monument is a kind of huge sheet of paper with a feather, symbol of the ancient writers.
It mentions the places where the first written documents were found.
The reading is from one of Santa Teresa's works. More or less: How great knowledge and letters are for everything! I like the quotation.

And the chosen setting couldn't have been better: this garden opposite the Rastro Wall where Doña Guiomar balcony is. That lady who communicated with her banned lover in the mountain with her handkerchief. Isn't it the perfect place to celebrate communication?
May our languages never get tired of us!