Multilitteratus Incognitus

Well, I am not quite sure what to make of this just yet, but I am keeping an eye on the situation to see how it gets resolved.  What situation am I talking about?  The seemingly under-reported (or not reported at all) situation happening in the course Teaching Goes Massive: New Skills Required , which is offered by Paul-Olivier Dehaye of the University of Zurich.  I have to say that initially the course description did not draw me in because anyone who claims that they will teach you about MOOC teaching is either naive, or selling snake-oil since the developments are so new.  I would prefer an approach, like a collaborative exploration (pioneered by a colleague), or something like #rhizo14 on the topic.  In any case, I re-read the description (below) and decided that I had 3 weeks to devote to the course.  My approach would have been a cMOOC style approach since the instructor didn't have a set syllabus. This way I could, potentially, continue to explore...

I was catching up on my Omniglot Blog unread posts and I came across this post asking people When is a language dead? This whole discussion come up because Manx was declared as a dead language even though there are still speakers of the language. The range of opinions posted in the comments was quite interesting, and it serves to point out there is not consensus on when a language is dead, or in some cases rather remains dead. View 1: A language is dead when there are are no monolingual speakers of that language. I find this line of logic to be wrong. Back when movement across country lines and continents meant long journeys, often expensive, this may have been a good indicator because a lot of people were monolingual. In these days bilingualism (or multilingualism) is the norm. In areas where there is a common language, or history of subjugation, its common to find the language of the conqueror taught first and then the native language. As we move into a more connected world, monolin...