My new vocabulary

I have always told everyone that the time in which I learned the most was when I was blogging. And I think the reason for that is because whenever I learn something new, I think about it in context of how am I going to explain this new information on my blog. We have always told our students that if you really want to learn something then teach that something. Blogging is a form of teaching.

Here are some words I have just learned in the last few days since I've been blogging. Frenemy, vetting, staycation, gap year and sesquapadalian are just a few words that I have learned this past week. I want to take a couple minutes to explain each of them.

I got the word frenemey from following links from Liz Kolb's blog. Liz is really into cellphones in education. From Liz's blog, I went to lastspotted.com and guess what there is a wikipedia definition of a frenemy. Vetting is a word I just learned today from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and there is a wikipedia entry for this definition. But basically the word came up when she suggest that we try to get an international presenter from Australia sometime around the National Educational Computing Conference to add a "global" flavor to summer workshops we offer. Vetting just happened to be a word I was not familiar with. Staycation I heard on NPR.org and it is kind of this "green" way to take a vacation. Actually, staycations were taken a lot in the 1970's they were just day trips, but the idea of staycations being, well, green is a modern idea. You just travel near your home and see the sights. And the last word I learned is really two words and it is "gap year." I too learned this from NPR.org. A gap year is where students take a year either during college or before college to explore the world. Many 21st century skills are learned in these "gap years." And someone who is prone to use long word are are considered sesquapadalian. It seems as technology expands so too do the collective vocabulary. And as the collective of vocabulary grows so does our own vocabulary. I wonder if you have learned an words recently and do they have to do with technology? Are they words that were discovered by using technology or words that were invented because of technology?