Friday, February 24, 2006
Podcasting- First attempt
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Mark's ESL and Teacher Sites: Promote your website by adding your site
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Online Discussion -Teaching Writing Skills to Young Learners - June 25th Alado- Webheads
Saturday, May 28, 2005
mayo 2005 017
Talking about blogs
May 2005
Open Day at ABCI
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.
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.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Another screenshot of interaction during Dafne and María's presentation in TESOL Spain
TESOL Conference in Spain
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Away for too long
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.
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.
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Mac users again
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 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
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
Videoblogging in the end?
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
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.
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.
