GChat and Facebook Chinese and Technology Acquisition:
Perspectives from a Teacher and a Student, or Who is the Learner?!

This paper, to be published in the Proceedings of The Sixth International Conference of Technology of Chinese Language Teaching (TCLT6), June, 2010, is a collaborative work between Chinese Studies Professor Jinhuei Enya Dai and recent MIIS alumni Valkyrie Anderson.  It documents an ethnographic study of conversation between a teacher and a student.  The focus was on learning the Art of Sunzi (Prof Dai’s Fall class) and technology using functions of gmail chat and status change, and Facebook status updates.  Prof. Leo van Lier’s concept  of “ecology” (2004) was examined in this learning module, and participation and acquisition were exemplified throughout the gmail text-chatting history. Transactions and acquisition of knowledge range from Human Trafficking issues and Sunzi’s Six Terrain in Chinese to the use of PrintScreen on a Mac and with the Prezi presentation tool.  Real life roles of teacher and student morph in the virtual world.