Monday, October 17, 2011

Exhilarated [ig-zil-uh-rey-tid], (adj)

Week 4 - Beginning of Week

Last week we were asked about the use of technology for oral and aural skills. We were invited to draw up a list of websites that could be used in class for this. This reminded me of my very own website I had several years ago. It was a website I had created for my students. It had taken me years to create and students all over Israel used  my webpages. It had a special corner with listening activities for students who were studying towards their matriculation examination (called "bagrut" in Israel). One terrible day, however, some two years ago, I found out that my site had been hacked and completely deleted by the malicious hackers. All gone, and no backup. I never managed to find the energy to start all over again. It was a great disappointment.

When asked to find Internet sites for oral and aural skills, I tried to remember the sites I had put up on my website. And then, completely by chance, I heard about the "Internet Archive". This is a non-profit organization aimed at building a library of the Internet. The Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet - a new medium with major historical significance - and other "born digital" materials from disappearing into the past. In order to do this, the archive has been "crawling" the net from as early as 1996 and is archiving everything it finds. Using the "wayback machine"  one can submit the URL of a website and see how it developed over the years. Take a look for example at the first Google page. This first snapshot was taken on November 11, 1998. Didn't look all that impressive then, did it?

With trembling fingers, I submitted the URL of my long lost website. Would the Internet Archive maybe have a copy of my site? Could it be that I might be able to revive it? And lo and behold! There it was. My own site in (almost completely) working order!!

I cannot describe how I felt. I was completely exhilarated. I quickly copied a few of its links to the course site and then sat back to enjoy the sheer sight of my site.

Exhilarated means extremely happy, overjoyed, electrified, thrilled and intoxicated. It comes from the Latin prefix "ex" meaning "thoroughly" and "hilarare" = making cheerful. Ex, by the way, comes from the Greek cognate PIE eghs with its superlative form eks-t(e)r-emo and I can, without doubt, state that I feel eksteremo exhilarated at the moment.

Or "happy" as Jim would say:

Don't you just love how Jim explains what the easy word "happy" means by using more difficult words like "delighted, pleased and glad"? Now what kind of help is that?!

Anyway, if you ever had something get lost on the Internet, I warmly advise you to try and find it on the wayback machine of the Internet Archive.

4 comments:

  1. Congratulations Avraham.all your work is there so we can learn from you.I imagine how you may feel now. I am reading the fiest article about reading materials,e_books,etc.

    Thanks for the explation about exhilarated.

    regards, yariela

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good news that you could find your website. I heard a news report today about a politician in the US who recently made a post to his website he quickly regretted, then took it down. However, the electronic trail remained and his poorly chosen words were sent around the internet.

    The news report ended with the warning that your mistakes on the internet are permanent. It's good to hear your story, suggesting your successes are permanent as well.

    Robert

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Avraham! That`s good news you were able to find your page again, I can just imagine how you felt when you realized it was there! I also didn`t know about the existance of "Internet Archive" before taking our course. That is a great source for research, definitely! And as Robert has suggested with his comment, there is a trail that remais forever on the web, so we always need to be careful with the content we upload because it can be used in favor or against us.
    In relation to the video you suggested, I think it is a clear illustration of how technology might not be effective sometimes. I guess the main goal was to teach the word "happy", but he used much more difficult vocabulary to explain it. Happy is such a simple concept to understand that a simple drawing of a smiley on the board would do it! Maybe students actually learned other words (hug, laugh, smile) while watching this video.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Avraham,
    It's great that you could find your webpage, and that it works properly.

    Thank you very much for sharing this experience with us, so if we ever has this kind of problem with our webpages, we know where to find it and restore, but without forgetting to have a backup.

    Best regards,
    Blerta

    ReplyDelete