I work as the director of the Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication (Movi) a the University of Jyväskylä (started in Sept. -10, after a 18-month period as the development manager). Before that I worked 12 years as a researcher at the Unversity of Jyväskylä, Centre for Applied Language Studies. My researcher past and my current work open up a multitude of opportunities: I finally get to work together with teachers in different kinds of projects and use my past experiences and knowledge in our joint efforts in designing genuinely new approaches to language teaching and learning. My past work was mainly focused on educational techology and multimodal language pedagogies and this is where also some of the challenges in my current work lie. The world has changed a lot and the ever present technologies and the masses of available information have changed the way we think, learn, work, communicate and exist. All this has inevitable consequences to education as well. My area, language teaching and learning, cannot be unaffected by the changes either.
A more broader challenge is to re-new and re-think languages and language learning in general. Why keep languages separate from other languages and other subjects? Why treat language skills as packages to learn when the individual needs/abilities vary in great deal? Why keep the informal knowledge out of the formal? Why teach languages the way they were taught 50 years ago?
(The picture is from Cape of Hope)
Here they are, just in case you need to contact me:
peppi.taalas_at_jyu.fi
+358-50-5541720
- In music - I think at least: Jury out on this one at the moment
- In movies/tv shows - DVD/BD boxes. Frasier, Ted Lasso, Last Tango in Halifax etc. etc.
- In gadgets - Samsung Z Fold 4, iPhone 13 pro, MacBookPro2021, a few other gadgets..and.. and..
- In life - Dogs! Especially Svante,
Loke
och Leo Ludvig,
Åke (2013-2015) always in
my heart,
When it comes to technology in learning, I am critical and always need to ensure that the technology brings added value to learning itself in one way or another. But when it comes to my private life, I am a true gadget maniac. Life is too short for denying that. And any way, what can be wrong with investing A LOT of hard earned money to get the latest gadgets. I mean the world needs us dummies who buy the first generation unfinished gadget so that the firms get more money for development and research and the rest of the world gets better products. I do play around with technology also to experiment and understand the deeper levels of human existence with and around technology, and to explore the potential of these gadgets and applications when designing for learning. (Honestly!)