a quick few thoughts before i head to bed.

a topic that i’ve found myself talking to two of my profs who i work with in my research group about recently is localization and how to define it.  now, i know that there is a whole body of thought out there about internationalization, and translation kind of localization, but what about closer to home?  what about deeper forms?  what about things that haven’t been planned – the kind of adaptations that take place in the classroom as a teacher is delivering instruction.  can that be thought of as localization?  or does localization involve something more?  do certain things have to take place for something to be called localization?  if so – what is the checklist?

or is localization just jargon for something that has been taking place since education started?  haven’t teachers been adapting resources on the fly in all kinds of teaching?  or is that individualization?  and if it is individualization, what is the line between localization and individualization.  i was talking to a professor outside our research group as well about this this week, a professor who has thought a lot about localization, and she felt that it becomes individualization when there is no longer a specific culture.  so, she felt that when material was adapted, localized, etc.. for a school that that was individualization  – that a school is not big enough to be thought of as a culture and so therefore it is individualizing.

personally, i think that each classroom has it’s own culture, and it becomes individualization on an individual level  – but i’m very concrete about these things and also very sensitive to the subtleties of differences in even small groups of people.

and so, what exactly is localization?  or does speaking the language really matter all that much?  is what matters understanding these different kinds of adaptations and what we can learn from how people do it so to make it easier for those that will follow?