Ale's blog

Podcasting- First attempt

2006-02-24T15:24:00.000-03:00

Just want to see if I can embed the podcast here ...

Mark's ESL and Teacher Sites: Promote your website by adding your site

2005-07-02T11:13:00.000-03:00

Mark's ESL and Teacher Sites: Promote your website by adding your site

2005-06-26T16:56:00.000-03:00

Online Discussion -Teaching Writing Skills to Young Learners - June 25th Alado- Webheads

mayo 2005 017

2005-05-28T21:37:00.000-03:00

mayo 2005 017
Originally uploaded by aleweser.

Talking about blogs

May 2005

2005-05-28T21:34:00.000-03:00

mayo 2005 015
Originally uploaded by aleweser.

Presentation

Open Day at ABCI

2005-05-28T20:52:00.000-03:00

I remember some time ago Bee told me, "Don't forget to document all you do." Well, this post has to do with following her advice and also with feeling the need to share with you a most rewarding experience I had yesterday.

Our school organises an Open Day every year. This is not for parents to come and visit us as some of you might expect, but for some 40 teachers from other towns around Bahía Blanca who teach following the guidelines of our syllabus. The idea is to invite them to visit our classes and to offer them the opportunity to attend talks on different topics of interest to EFL teachers in general.

This year four talks were planned, two on Using Feature Films in the EFL Classroom, one on Developing Writing Skills and another which I delivered on Enhancing our Teaching through the Use of Technology.

My presentation tried to offer these teachers a very succinct view of most of what I have learnt and put into practice since EVO 2005 (blogs, creating webpages, communities of practice); it also included an email /MSN Group project Hans de Zwart from The Netherlands and I carried out last year. I also tried to encourage them to join WIA.

The presentation was a great success and I have already been in contact through MSN with one of the teachers who has already started her blog.

So it seems that once again Webheads rule.

2005-03-12T17:59:00.000-03:00

Another screenshot of interaction during Dafne and María's presentation in TESOL Spain

2005-03-12T17:45:00.000-03:00

Screenshot from TESOL Conference in Seville.

TESOL Conference in Spain

2005-03-12T17:03:00.000-03:00

Earlier today I took part, together with many other webheads - Vance, Andrew, Elizabeth, Sus, Susan, Lianne, Chrissan, Graham, Jude, Cora, Aiden, Buth, Jean, Teresa and Joao, Jane and Rick- in Dafne and María's presentation in Seville, Spain. Their presentation, Cultures, Communities and Classrooms: Diversity in English Language Education focused on the work done by this Community of practice and provided examples of blended learning.
The experience was very special to me as it was the first time I had taken part in this kind of session. We could listen to Dafne and Maria addressing the audience in Spain while we kept in contact with our colleagues of WIA in the text chat window of Alado. Most of us were also using Yahoo Messenger and could therefore keep parallel conversations and use our webcams there.
Towards the end of their talk, Dafne and María invited us to make short contributions in which we briefly explained who we were and how WIA was helping us become better EFL teachers.
I got some interesting screenshots that will show part of the activity during the session.

Away for too long

2005-02-22T20:58:00.000-03:00

I haven't been posting lately because I have started working and therefore juggling to get things done. I have not been participating actively in the discussions but I do manage to read all the digests and I have also done most of the readings. In fact last week I had to decide on my priorities and I thought that focusing on the Week 5 activities for the BAW group would be the best.
I am quite satisfied with my achievements up to now: I have managed to get several blogs going, I have created my webpage and have managed to use most of the programmes recommended for creating online exercises. I have also added zillions of links to my bookmarks which I hope to be able to read and analyse during the year. There's so much interesting information.
I hate not being able to attend some of the talks in Tapped In or LT but most of them clash with school now. Anyway, this of having the transcripts is great, even better than attending traditional seminars.
As for these week's comments I felt deeply moved by Hala's message. She clearly expressed what we all feel about these workshops coming to an end. Who in the webheads, weblogging or webpresence group could not feel a bit sad? On the other hand this experience has been so rewarding and I have no doubt we all feel so reassured by the moderators and the rest of our colleagues in the groups that I have no doubt we can all count on one another to continue working on projects, asking questions when we can't get things to work in cyberspace or just meeting for some F.U.N at Tapped In.
I would not like to finish this post without mentioning that whoever reads this - whether a webhead or a webhead in the make- can count on me for any project or any discussion or whatever help I can offer. I think this is what basically makes this community of practice so strong, the fact that we all want to share and help and learn together.

Mac users again

2005-02-13T22:15:00.000-03:00

I have just found this information in a videoblogging group. Not sure it would solve the problem but have decided to post it just in case:

Mac OS 10.3 users can also download this freeware to watch videoblogs:
http://AntNotTv.org.
This application lets you subscribe to your favorite video feeds and
downloads new video to your computer automatically. It comes with some
great default feeds.

Mac users

2005-02-13T22:07:00.000-03:00

Mac users seem to be having trouble watching the video. I will try to find out if there are any instructions that I can post here for these cases. I suppose they would also be useful for the whole group.

Think I got it right this time

2005-02-13T01:36:00.000-03:00

Click to watch the video.

Videoblogging in the end?

2005-02-13T00:41:00.000-03:00

Well, I think I finally got to the last stage ... my video is in some server and if I am doing things properly I should be able to insert a link to the video here. I would prefer to have a screenshot or some picture that showed there was a video but that would probably be my next step. For the time being I want to see if the video can be accessed by clicking oh this link.

Videoblogging

2005-02-13T00:19:00.000-03:00

If anybody is interested in videoblogging I suggest they try this tutorial .
A series of screenshots that lead you through the whole process of uploading the video to a free server and getting your blog to point at the corresponding URL. Thanks, Michael Verdi for creating this tutorial.

More about digital storytelling

2005-02-12T12:16:00.000-03:00

Well, Mark asks me to give more information about Photostory 3. I am doing both the Weblogging and the Becoming a Webhead course so maybe it was in the BAW one that I first heard about it. Teresa D'Almeida and her husband Joao and Dafne Gonzalez posted short videos to the BAW list which they had made with Photostory 3. The site explains that you can add soundtracks and voice narration to the photo story you create with your digital photos. The program can be downloaded for free and I have already created several video clips with music. They look great. The programme has automatic panning and zooming effects but you can also customize these. I am pleased with the results. I just need to upload them and haven't been successful yet.

Videoblogging

2005-02-11T17:38:00.000-03:00

A couple of days ago I downloaded PhotoStory 3. I loved Tere's video on Piodao and I thought I could do something similar with some holiday photos- I am also thinking of getting my students to use these tools to create a short video of our school and add it to our Sixth grade blog.

It all ran smoothly at first. I managed to create the video, added music to it, showed it to my husband and he liked it as well. However, when I tried to upload it to Geocities I kept receiving an error message "the document contains no data". I tried several times, even created a new webpage with Tripod - same error. I was going to wait until the chat with Michael Coghlan later today and see if I could find out what was wrong.But this afternoon, while chatting to Bettina, she directed me to a link in her blog which contains to a nice tutorial on videoblogging by Michael Verdi. I have followed the steps suggested there of opening an account with Internet Archive , downloading ccPublisher tool, etc. This time I managed to upload the video. I just have to wait until tomorrow till the Internet archive curator aproves it and then it will be available to download and hopefully to edit my blog pointing to it. Thank you Bettina, thank you M. Verdi for taking the time to create such tutorials, thank you Bee for helping me get the audio right.

Comments

2005-02-10T08:22:00.000-03:00

This time ... one of the features I don't like about Blogger.I have received a comment from "Marco Polo" I get an email but I can't reply to Marco P because the address is a no-reply address. I come to my blog and I go to the comments area to see if I can send Marco Polo a comment from this part of my blog but I find Marco Polo's profile is not public ... doesn't seem fair ... So then, Marco Polo I can't answer your question I am afraid

Adding a slider ... sound again

2005-02-08T19:24:00.000-03:00

If this works properly you should see a slider this time to play the recorded message...

Adding a sound file to the blog

2005-02-08T14:04:00.000-03:00

Mmm not sure what I am doing will lead me to what I am aiming at. Quite frankly I am doing all this very intuitively ...

Listen to me ... a recording with Handybits

Doing activities for week 4

2005-02-06T23:38:00.000-03:00

The following post corresponds to Week 4 Task #3 . We have to use Flickr to post a photo to our blog. I have already posted photos using Hello, but it seems Flickr has some advantages. I especially liked the feature that allows one to chose the right size.

As for the photo I chose for this activity, it is one we took during our holidays in Bariloche, the first week in Jan. If this works properly you should be able to see a picture of a bird ...the lake is Nahuel Huapi in, Patagonia

A sense of community

2005-02-03T22:48:00.000-03:00

I didn't want to go to sleep without mentioning how I managed to post a picture in my profile thanks to Chrissan's help. Chrissan, I have already posted my message in YG but I want to mention it here as well, thanks for your prompt and detailed reply.

I am still on holiday, but one of the schools where I work opened the day before yesterday. This morning I decided to go and pay a visit to our director to tell her a bit about these courses I am doing (BAW, Weblogging and Webpresence). I was telling her today that what I still cannot understand is how we have all managed to create this sense of community - 200 people spread all over the world- when sometimes we don't manage to create the same kind of bonds between the 20 teachers that work in a school.

Apart from the tons I am learning from these groups in relation to pedagogy and technology what I will never forget is this feeling of belonging to a community that allows us to grow professionally because we are all willing to help one another as colleagues but, basically as human beings. There's always someone there to reply to our messages and I also have this feeling that I cannot move to another activity without posting a message on somebody's blog or replying to a query if I think I can help. I am sure this won't end in three weeks' time when we finish the workshops.

I have no words to express my praise and gratitude to the moderators of each of the groups that have managed to lead us way beyond what could be expressed in any syllabus.

Today's talks

2005-02-02T22:41:00.000-03:00

I attended both talks today at Alado and Learning Times. They were both useful; however, I believe that the technical quality of Learning Times and the Elluminate software they use is much better than the platform offered by Alado - or maybe it is the settings of my computer or my kind of Internet connection that gets on well with Learning Times?

From the pedagogical point of view, both Buth and Mary gave excellent presentations that focused on the educational applications of RSS and creating a webpage. The moderators' work and both Andrew's and Jonathan's technical support were impeccable as usual. I am sure we all feel proud of having joined such a cooperative group of educators. If only we managed to get educators in our countries to work as professionally as these people!

Yesterday I created my first webpage at geocities. It looks nice and I really found it easy following the step-by-step instructions. Of course, like with everything else I have created I still have to see how to apply it to the classes I have this year. I also want to see what other sites have to offer ...like Tripod and Bravenet. Flickr also sounded like a choice worth exploring. I am quite lucky I still have a month before we start classes. I will be able to experiment quite a bit before I put all this into practice ...

Getting ready for Will Richardson's talk

2005-01-30T23:45:00.000-03:00

I have been reading the articles suggested as Pre-reading for Will Richardson's chat and now start to understand how Bee, Aaron and Graham manage to keep up to date with the additions to our blogs. Up to now I had my doubts about whether it would be practical to have to check 25 or more blogs. This RSS tool seems to be the solution to the problem. I have already registered with Bloglines and have started adding feeds to my list. From the technical point of view, I think we have added one more piece to the jigsaw ... But then, there's the content to deal with, not just the form.
As for the articles by Will Richardson, I found this work he did with his literature class an excellent way of involving parents in their kids' learning process. As for the book, The Secret Life of Bees, I wish we could get it for the school library. At this point I am definitely positive I will use blogs with at least two of my classes, 6th grade and 5th Junior. The 6th grade blog is already in progress and I will try to link it to literature activities. 5th Junior ... there's so much I can do with them ...

Too much?

2005-01-26T19:25:00.000-03:00

I now realise that I missed the session at Tapped In. I had it down for 9pm but it was at 9am. Anyway, I would have had to choose as it clashed with the Michael Coghlan's talk.Well, the fact that I am trying to cope with 2/3 groups + working on a paper for the next LABCI Congress is definitely showing ... Anyway, glad this session was at Tapped In and the transcript was already uploaded. We are so lucky to have such efficient moderators!

Also had a chance to chat to Hans today. We started working on plans for applying all we are learning in a joint project again. Moving beyond MSN The Netherlands - Argentina Group into blogosphere? Hopefully ...

Too much?