Eko-nising

Aaniin gakina endashiyeg :)

I hope you are all doing well. I am so enjoying reading everyone's blogs and learning about the tech journeys of Tribal IV.

I hope the movies project work is going okay for everyone. If you have any problems using or accessing the technology please do email me and we can try to trouble shoot. You are also able to call me at 218-726-7772. I am here in my office a lot, and keep regular office hours Mon. Tues and Wed from 11:00 to 12:00. I will also happily phone you if you would like to go through any technologies with me as a "phone tutor". I also can email instructions for anything as needed. I also keep "office hours" virtually using a Chat Program, and I can show you how to use this next meeting :)

I am really looking forward to hearing about everyone's experience with this first Unit of the Movies project. The learning will be all over the board with our group. What you know coming in to this determines a lot about the learning you will do. For some it may be about hearing a few familiar words, and getting more accustomed to the "sound" of the language. Others may actually know all of the words being used but may be interested in differences in how the words are used from what they know, the accenting, or the dialect of the speakers. Some of you are familiar with the double vowel writing system while others are just learning how to write the language for the first time (or from a different spelling system like the kinds Basil Johnston, Larry Smallwood, or others respectively use). It will be so interesting to hear how language knowledge grew from simply watching the movies the first week to trying some of the activities during your second week.

It has been wonderful when people have been able to incorporate language in their posts - even just words or phrases are so helpful :) There is no 'correct' or 'better' way to write the language - we are going to go with the double vowel system as it is what UMD uses and provides you with access to many many many resources out there (including the movies project and the Gresczyk texts).

Please don't worry too much for now about the language requirements for this course. I have some good ideas that will let everyone grow and not feel to pressured to learn too much. We will go over that during our next face to face session :) I am going to keep the tech requirements limited to the blogs, WIKIS (only the two of them) and the movies project until we see other again. We can go over the other applications at that time :)

Please keep up the wonderful work.

Brian.